Before, during and after shooting I also take some reference pictures of the whole instalment with my digital camera, and when special tasks need more relief, I also measure set dimension, light source positions, hour, day and, in some cases, also the wind direction.

Surely, I always ascertain myself that no one put color correction filters in the camera’s matte-box or that the operator removed the gate to expose a full frame shot, so we can have more freedom in post avoiding other trouble.

Then, pictures and vfx logs are sent to our main office and put on the main server for operator’s consultation.

Very often we bring with us laptop PC and video mixers on set that we use to show a first preview of the final shot because it can help directors to frame the scene easily, and/or eventually to go for subtle camera aligns if some visual effect shot needs it.

Although we use those techniques carefully for pre-production and production phases, it’s very complicated to talk about a real visual effects industry here, especially for the movie world, because, while advertising is very open to the multiple possibilities offered from new digital media tools, the movie industry is still a little bit skeptical about digital grading applied in post.

Videa recently joined with the Mathematics and Communication Science and Media department of the University of Tor Vergata of Roma, to create an R&D team. This program has benefited both the students and Videa.

Sometimes this scepticism and lack of technical knowledge in our country generate an awful lot of hostility and mistrust about digital methods in general, and also toward those professionals who work with them. Often a great number of Italian cinematographers complain about some bad detail they “feel” about your image (even if non-existent) just to find some bad artifact you did. In this case, I use the “sea way,” which means that I go to spend a day on the beach, then come back, show the shot again and enjoy listening to the following response: “OK, man! Now it’s correct. I told you that was the right way.”

We constantly fight this mentality in several ways, sometimes proposing tests just to prove the results that can be accomplished with great quality. I remember particularly the movie Francesco where we proposed building a digital backlot to compose behind the real set. The director gave us the opportunity to do that while assuring us that he would cut out every digital contribution anyway, because he hates digital. Instead he retained everything we did. It’s all part of the education process.

Sometimes there is a lack of communication between production and postproduction staff, and a serious ignorance about the needs of digital tools to be used in post that would have been easy to manage, but became real blood-baths when the supervisor was not involved during the shoot. A good example was the movie Pontormo, the real life story of the painter and portraitist Jacopo Carrucci (nicknamed Pontormo) from 1400. Here the production had to shot long greenscreen sequences, but they did it with incredible carelessness, worrying only about putting a green cloth behind the actors. So when the ball was passed to us, we managed a shot operated with an ultra-high-sensitive film. Furthermore, the green “carpet” in the background was something like a gradient of greens; moreover, our frames were not coming from a film scanner but from a Telecine at 1,920 res. We said: “OK, let’s start to prepare towels, suitacases, toothpaste and other stuff to live at the office till next summer.”

To fix this terrible mess we used elbow oil and several tools and techniques, and finally came up with a solution to pull out the matte using multiple keying on a striped-subdivided image. So we divided the shots into three or four slices and applied the key on each portion. Then, we had to match the background image with a picture taken from a digital camera. Perspective was the only correct element in this image, but the color temperature, shadows and lighting intensity were way off. So while some were having problems enhancing mattes, others were correcting background images, striving also to maintain color palette, contrast and shadows of foreground image, because, after the matting phases, the foreground element couldn’t be touched to avoid other artifacts.