boujou offers a big benefit for expediting completion of these and other complex scenes. We are constantly amazed at what the application is able to track. Even with wild perspective moves, tracking can be done automatically within a couple of hours not days, as is the case with hand tracking. And with boujou, we don’t have to tie up one of our Inferno suites to do the tracking work, which really maximizes our efficiency and gives us more time to finesse the shots.

Because of the ease of boujou's automated tracking abilities, Dave Funston of Zoic Studios encourages his clients to be as creative as they'd like with their camerawork.

Dave Funston, CG Artist for Zoic Studios

Zoic Studios completes CG, compositing and other effects work for a range of primetime television shows that includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. One tool we use to help meet the tight schedules and creative requirements of these programs is boujou by 2d3.

boujou is an extremely easy to use piece of software, yet it does amazing things. The beauty of the application is that is just does what it needs to do: produce a moving camera from film or video material without the need for the artist to track input manually.

One example of an instance where boujou performed beautifully for us was on a recent episode of Angel. The scene involved a camera move pushing into a jail cell and the director wanted to push all the way through the jail cage, and its metal door, to a close up of the character being held inside. To enable a move on screen that was impossible to create physically, we needed to take the 600-frame, all hand-held shot and reproduce the camera driving right through a digital element we had created for the door. Because we needed the scene done within a week, hand tracking was not an option, so we loaded the plates into boujou and had the shot fully tracked and locked down in just one hour and with just one pass.

boujou allowed Zoic Studios to push through a prison door for the TV show Angel on short order. On the left is a shot without CG, and on the right is the image with a CG door that the camera will "push" through in the scene. Angel courtesy of Zoic Studios.

With these automated tracking capabilities, we can actually encourage shows to be as creative and cool as they like with their camerawork. This runs the gamut from enabling one-off effects like the one above to facilitating effects that are used several times within an episode, or are recurring from episode to episode. On Buffy, for example, whenever a vampire gets “dusted,” or killed -- which happens a lot! -- this calls for a specific type of handheld camera shot effect. Here, the reliable setup in boujou has helped us generate great results, and inspired the production to make these moments even more daring and dramatic.

Most shots are plug-in-and-go, but even when a shot is not so straightforward boujou provides integrated internal tools that let you tell the application more about what’s happening. For a challenging spot -- let’s say something with a lot of talent in it and perpetual camera motion -- boujou offers features to help discern that the actors are not part of the scene geometry and that the backgrounds should be kept clean from any disruptions. It’s great to have tools to get around problems that are unavoidable, especially in television where re-shoots almost never happen and it’s up to you to make the effect work on the material you’ve been provided!