All the elements are together (top image), and Freddy’s wink seems to indicate that he’s had worse things happen. Blake (David Kopp) finds out how real Freddy (Robert Englund) can be, even in his dreams (middle). Lori’s (Monica Keena) world as she knows it is about to change. (Note the subtle color correction on each frame in the bottom image.)

Digital Dimension had a hand in creating 15 shots for the film, some of which were pivotal in showing how powerful Freddy really is. One sequence showed Freddy extending his shadow to attack one of the teen victims.

The end of the picture shows how powerful Jason is and how vulnerable Freddy is in the real world. Freddy gets decapitated and Jason carries his head away. As the camera closes in for the final shot of Freddy, Freddy’s head smiles and winks — you can’t keep a psychotic killer down. This shot was created with Digital Fusion, a powerful desktop compositing software package. The elements – a smoky background; Jason in front of a green screen, and Freddy in front of the green screen were shot and brought into the software

“We tracked the movement of his hand, and built a 3D head to follow along,” said Benoit (Ben) Girard, visual effects supervisor of Digital Dimension. Then we tracked Freddy’s head onto the rendered head, and used Fusion to warp and enhance the movement of the tracked head. When Freddy winked, we warped the underlying 3D surface to match the 2D action.

Digital Dimension was also responsible for the background change as Lori falls deeper and deeper into Freddy’s dream world. In addition to changing the backgrounds, a lot of subtle color work was done. “We had to color correct every frame of that sequence,” says Girard. The work shows – the subtle color changes hammer home the illusions presented in the film.

Scott Jenkins has been creating art on the computer since 1987. He has an extensive professional writing career, freelancing articles for print and online magazines. Especially interested in pushing the art of computers, he continued his career teaching and lecturing at schools, conventions and companies, on animation and compositing. Some of his clients include DreamWorks, Sega, Film Roman and Centropolis Special Effects. He is currently writing (digital) Compositing for New Riders and articles for Animation World Magazine. He is currently freelancing as a writer and digital content creator.