Examples of a bad composite?

mttjss · **Examples of a bad composite? -** November 26th, 2009, 08:08 PM

Hey guys,

I am reading through Brinkmann's book, and trying to learn all of this stuff. I was watching my son's cartoons - Blues Clues.
I noticed a couple of bad keying spots, but I am sure I am missing some stuff.

Does anyone know of any good examples of bad footage - whether it be keying, rotos or anything. Would like to see why its a bad composite and any notes about it would be helpful.

Thanks guys.

Matt -

passo3d · November 27th, 2009, 01:12 AM

actually, i don't know if it's a bad composite, but more of a compositing glitch.
there's a shot in the new transformers movie that was not QA'ed correctly.
there's a shot at 2:08:00 where Magen Fox & Shia Lebuff are slow-mo running.
and there's a roto mask that pops out of nowhere and fucks up the shot.
check it out - it's totally funny (to compositors anyway)
plus in the G.I.Joe trailer. there's a shot where a guy is firing from a Helicopter. and you can see it's a really bad keying job.
i haven't looked for it in the movie. but it's on the Trailer.

Ariel

Jaist · November 27th, 2009, 01:17 AM

avatar's first trailer is full of those. Just check out the guy get truncated by roto instead of by the mouth of the winged thing at the end.

Dotcommer · 02:00 AM

Another great one is the latest indiana jones movie. Check out this trailer: http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/indianajones.html
and watch the teaser trailer. Then in quicktime, set it to frame numbers and go to frame 1348 (also can be identified as indie surrounded by guards, just after he picks up his hat and dusts it off). Now watch the screen left edge. All of a sudden, you'll see a creeping roto shape come in. Also, where the hell did the guy walking behind the guys suddenly appear from? And another thing, check out the guys with guns in the background. Their torsos are moving independently of the rest of their body. hahaha. Some of my favorite little pieces from a trailer like this. And if you look at indie's chest, you'll see a patch on his pocket floating around trying to cover up where a gun was probably visible from the guard in the screen right foreground.

Now, I actually know the story behind this though. It doesn't mean the people who were working on it were horrible compers. Apparently in the original screening of this trailer, all the enemies around them, had guns pointed at the duo. But for the american release, it was decided last minute that that was too hostile to show on a preview for all audiences, so they were asked to change the men by having their guns lowered. And i'm sure this was last minute, maybe a day or two to work on it. So they did the best they could, and honestly, i bet 99% of the general public would never notice that all the guns in the shot were roto'd and tracked in, or that the boxes on the left are a still image tracked into the plate to cover up the guns sticking out from the enemies in the back. But thats what its like in this industry. Sometimes you're given amazingly short deadlines for turnarounds on things, and you just got to do what ever you can to trick the eye in the worst case scenario.

Jaist · November 27th, 2009, 07:57 AM

ah i saw that one! the belly of jone's friend wobbles, bad breakfast!

theta · November 27th, 2009, 10:45 AM

There's actually a lot of bad compositing(Not really bad, just un-finished) in trailers. Usually because they're so rushed to get it cut together and out the door, that the temps are good enough for the trailer. I've noticed tons of stuff in trailers, that were fixed for final release, including bad keys, sliding matte paintings, bad roto, etc...

Andreas.Jablonka · November 27th, 2009, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theta

There's actually a lot of bad compositing(Not really bad, just un-finished) in trailers. Usually because they're so rushed to get it cut together and out the door, that the temps are good enough for the trailer. I've noticed tons of stuff in trailers, that were fixed for final release, including bad keys, sliding matte paintings, bad roto, etc...

AMEN just wanted to point that out

mttjss · November 27th, 2009, 02:35 PM

Some awesome examples guys. I went through the Avatar, G.I.Joe and Indiana Jones ones.
I can see how the Indiana ones could have been seen in real-time or possibly because of the issues with this part of the trailer (as Dotcommer explained). But the ones in G.I. Joe and the one of the winged creature eating the guy were not so obvious. Is it a matter of going through these in QT or just a train of eye to catch these? I am guessing that going through trailers is not a bad idea since it will help me to notice this sort of stuff better.

Matt -

Gravy · November 27th, 2009, 03:47 PM

If you watch both the avatar ones you can actually see how shots have improved between the first and second trailer.

Andreas.Jablonka · November 27th, 2009, 03:57 PM

i see it more like one of my supes, if you dont notice it on the big screen it doesnt matter. sure you can freeze frame and knitpick and go through rgb channels but WHY?

Gentle Fury · November 27th, 2009, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andreas.Jablonka

i see it more like one of my supes, if you dont notice it on the big screen it doesnt matter. sure you can freeze frame and knitpick and go through rgb channels but WHY?

thats how i've always felt...there is a point where good enough is good enough. Pixel perfect doesn't mean perfect. Sometimes it's better to get everything done than to get every single shot absolutely perfect. There are a lot of things that will slide, especially if its on screen for 12 frames.

Andreas.Jablonka · November 27th, 2009, 05:22 PM

+1

shot_grable · November 27th, 2009, 08:05 PM

I don't want to be the person that starts picking on the optical printing comp mistakes but I'm sure everyone knows examples.

One example that comes to mind is from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". We're introduced to Jessica Rabbit for the first time at the Ink & Paint Club and she does her song and dance. After she pushes Eddie Valiant's hat into his face she walks around him to get back up on stage. As she walks around there's a 1 frame pop of a chunk taken out of her torso. It looks like a hold out matte that was printed in the wrong order in the optical printer.

Roger Rabbit also showed how hard optical line up can be. The scene where Tweety Bird pulls Valliant's fingers off the flag pole you can see the misalignment caused Tweety's head hair strands to disappear and appear white.

Optical printing is a nightmare and hats off to all those that ventured into that forest despite the agony of the technology. That said, Roger Rabbit's got some real great comping and I'm looking forward to the blu-ray release.

Gentle Fury · November 28th, 2009, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shot_grable

I don't want to be the person that starts picking on the optical printing comp mistakes but I'm sure everyone knows examples.

One example that comes to mind is from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". We're introduced to Jessica Rabbit for the first time at the Ink & Paint Club and she does her song and dance. After she pushes Eddie Valiant's hat into his face she walks around him to get back up on stage. As she walks around there's a 1 frame pop of a chunk taken out of her torso. It looks like a hold out matte that was printed in the wrong order in the optical printer.

Roger Rabbit also showed how hard optical line up can be. The scene where Tweety Bird pulls Valliant's fingers off the flag pole you can see the misalignment caused Tweety's head hair strands to disappear and appear white.

Optical printing is a nightmare and hats off to all those that ventured into that forest despite the agony of the technology. That said, Roger Rabbit's got some real great comping and I'm looking forward to the blu-ray release.

I watch those old films in awe and just trying to figure out how they did a lot of that stuff back then. I know how I would do it now, but the technology just didn't exist like it does now. The old ones that stand up are simply amazing. I just watched Back to the Future BD yesterday, and while a LOT of the make up is highly noticible now and a lot of the optical fx (the delorian taking off at the end mostly) is way off the mark, for the most part the fx were amazing and still work today.

tharrell · November 29th, 2009, 09:14 PM

Not entirely on-topic, but I find the mothership virtual set stuff in the new V series pretty much ghastly. Black levels and dynamic range aren't even in the ballpark of believable, and there's some seriously dodgy keying action going on.

Nothing personal for any folks here who worked on the show

Not sure if those shots are zoic or the in-house group.

The funny thing is that back in the day... nasty mattelines and floating blobs didn't yank me out of the moment in say, Empire Strikes Back. The guys who used to do the optical stuff were studs, full stop.

--T