Cinesite’s Jose Granell (left) was a leader in bringing director Joel Schumacher’s lavish Opera to life.

The greatest challenge in building the miniatures was the shear amount of detail. Every inch of the exterior façade had some form of architectural detailing — gilding, elaborate sculptures, cornices and moldings. Plus, not only did the Opera House have to appear in beautiful pristine condition during its prime, but also in the ramshackle disrepair of its latter days. During a tight turn-around the same miniatures were repainted and damaged to show the ravages of time. Miniatures also helped create the dramatically inspired pullback from the Phantom perched between the wings of an angel sculpture on Opera House’s rooftop high into the sky.

The miniatures footage was combined with the live-action footage to create the illusion of reality by continuing the live-action camera moves. In pre-production, model unit director of photography, Nigel Stone talked with production director of photography, John Mathieson, to get the feel of the show. As dailies came in, Cinesite received tapes of the selected scenes as well as grading (color timing) clips. To match the shots by the visual effects unit to the live-action, the team studied the footage and lighting, the placement of key-lights and practical lights, from sources such as windows and lamps. For Granell the key to seamless integration of the shots is to mimic what first unit is doing. “You hope that you are able to create moves and to light in a way that is totally sympathetic to the main unit director and cinematographer, so you’re not going off on a tangent and start creating your own version. Ideally people shouldn’t notice your signature on the shot. At least that’s how I like to work. In a perfect world the main unit would be shooting everything themselves, but they don’t have the time to do that. Our job is to take a look at the way they light sequences, the style that they use, the types of moves that the director stylistically tends to go for and then use their approach in our part of the film.”

Much of the live-action shots were done on a crane. This style of camerawork made it difficult for the Cinesite team to track shots on set because the cranes weren’t encoded. Granell explains, “In one scene the camera was flying down a wire. It was the equivalent of a big Steadi-cam shot. Or unsteady, I should say. Who knows what the camera is doing up there.” When these camera moves needed to be extended in the miniature shoots, they were tracked at the Cinesite digital facility. The Cinesite team used 3D Maya to track the moves. From the selected takes of a shot, main unit dimensions and model dimensions were determined.

The grand chandelier was a key effect that plays a huge role in the story.

Cinesite 3D supervisor, Andy Bull, worked on set. The data he received from Maya was given to motion control. A graph of the move was charted to reveal consistent speed changes, the angle of the climb and the rate of the climb. Data recovered from the tracked move allowed the miniature unit to duplicate scale moves on the 12-scale miniature. But there were certain pitfalls that the team had to be careful to avoid when working with models.

The 3D team came in and took key dimensions and measurements from the miniature of the Opera House as it was being constructed. By the time the model unit was scheduled to shoot, a fairly detailed three-dimensional wireframe of the Opera House had been created. It was used for the model unit to previs their own shots—to check out the camera moves that they needed to mimic in order to extend the original camera moves. It was an invaluable tool for Granell, “We’d take over the move to make the shot last longer. I could look at the original moves on the wireframe. It gave us an idea of how far back we would have to track on that model and how high we had to rise above it. I have heard of instances where people built miniatures and no one’s paid attention to scale. Then you get on the set and suddenly you realize when you go to playback a scale move, your camera ends up outside the stage. You have a big problem. We like to plan ahead as much as possible here.”

Using miniatures instead of computer graphics for the set extensions draws on classic visual effects techniques aided by technology. The use of miniatures is a decision the production has to make which is not always practical in the real world. The benefit is that the shoot is done using all real elements. Although it is done at a smaller scale, it is done in the same manner as if it were done during the live-action shoot. If a hand-held camera is used on set, then a hand-held camera can be used with the scale miniatures. For computer graphics, the virtual camera can mimic the live-action move, but has a different feel for the traditional camera operator. The computer can do more extreme moves—from outer space all the way into an extreme close of an eye—but these moves by their very nature can lose a sense of reality. The realistic techniques used in a miniature shoot are generally more likely to look real by the nature of their limits and the comparable limits of live-action shooting.

However, the computer has become a standard method for finishing. When the 3D digital department received miniature shots for compositing, they used the beauty shot as a guide. As they started putting the miniatures into the live action, they broke the footage down into separate parts and tweaked the lighting. This allowed them to dial in higher or lower exposure values for all the different elements. Granell concludes, “Effectively, it gives them total control in post-production, which is the accepted way now. That’s the way we’ve been working for a long time.”

Mary Ann Skweres is a filmmaker and freelance writer. She has worked extensively in feature film and documentary post-production with credits as a picture editor and visual effects assistant. She is a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.