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MPC & Cinesite Provide VFX for Little Man

Moving Picture Co. (MPC) of London was hired to create the little man character in Sony/Revolutions LITTLE MAN, while London-based Cinesite contributed 210 vfx shots to the Wayan brothers comedy.

The Wayans filmmaking team enlisted visual effects supervisor Alex Bicknell and visual effects producer Rob Yamamoto to oversee the complex effects process, which included hiring outside effects houses, to watching over daily principal photography, to overseeing post-production.

The filmmakers utilized the labor-intensive, old-fashioned 2D split composite to create the character of Calvin Sims so that Marlon Wayans comedic performance and that of his 26 body double would experience no technical inhibitions on the set. It also enabled the camera to move fluidly and left filmmakers free to use dollies, cranes and a Stedi-Cam. This technique, however, basically required shooting the movie twice. Each scene was shot normally with the entire cast acting with the body double, and then a second time with the actor performing with only his head against a greenscreen.

2D match moved-head replacement is not a completely new technique but the filmmakers took it to a whole new level. I believe it's never been done to this scale in a motion picture before and it's the first time it's been used for the lead character throughout a film, asserted Bicknell. The technique allows us to stay inside a photoreal world. Working in visual effects, we're more used to spaceships, exploding cars, CG buildings and CG characters, with the action frequently shot by the second unit. Here we were actually working with and creating the principle character. Every shot of Calvin was a visual effect.

Split screen compositing gave [director] Keenen total flexibility. He shot a regular movie and we did the mechanical work in post production, explained Yamamoto.

The filmmakers conducted their initial visual-effects camera tests in Los Angeles several months before production began. Prior to the test, filmmakers searched for a unique actor to play the body of Calvin Sims. They came up with nine-year-old Linden Porco.

Hundreds of artists at MPC and several additional visual-effects houses in London, Canada and Los Angeles worked around the clock to complete the almost 1,000 composite shots. Many of these effects houses were ramping up to full production by the time the film was just over half way through principal photography.

Multiple monitors were set up around the green-screen set and for Marlons eyeline, and to play back video mixes he could use for reference. I used a video overlay system, so I had one monitor that showed me the background plate with Linden and the other actors, explained Bicknell. The second monitor was a live feed of Marlon against the green. Then, we did an overlay on the third monitor, which showed a rough, realtime composite of the other two.

The main focus of Cinesites work was head replacements (removing the head of the child actor and replacing it with the head of Marlon Wayans). This resulted in the gag of a 2ft 6inch, 40 year old criminal.

Cinesites work on LITTLE MAN involved some particularly challenging shots and a team of 32 artists headed up by Cinesite vfx supervisor Adam McInnes.

Head replacements often incur the problem of matching the real cloth parts on the actors collar with the CG section; this can be difficult as cloth wrinkles randomly. To solve this problem, Cinesite's Michele Sciolette created Area Track, an in-house bespoke tracking system. This system tracks whole sections of an image allowing an artist to work on a large area rather than just specific points.

Working closely with Bicknell, Adam said, This wasnt normal, straight forward compositing, not just the integration of one piece to another but relighting tricks had to used to make certain pieces look like different shapes.

MPC (www.moving-picture.com) recently worked on POSEIDON and THE DA VINCI CODE.

Cinesite (www.cinesite.com) has such current and recent credits as UNDERDOG, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and THE OMEN.

Bill Desowitz's picture

Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.

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