Effects For Life As A House

Santa Monica, California-based effects studio Sassoon Film Design (SFD) completed the visual effects for New Line Cinema's LIFE AS A HOUSE, now in theaters. SFD was the primary effects house and worked with the film's producers from pre-production, supervising on set through to completion of final shots. In the film's final sequence, SFD needed to create the illusion of an idyllic neighborhood with a long helicopter shot of the house that is the center of the story. Despite extensive pre-production, a lot of what resulted in the film's final shot developed and evolved during the course of the shoot. Due to high winds, what was initially planned to be a crane shot, was filmed entirely from a helicopter. As a result, the stages, set trucks and trailers were all in the shot and had to be erased from the scene to appear as if a normal neighborhood existed at the edge of a cliff. SFD used RealViz's MatchMover to track objects in 3D space then added transparent effects to a fly-over shot revealing the house at the edge of a cliff, circling around the backside of the house and up into the sunset to close the film. Extensive work was completed by SFD's artists to both track and remove production trailers, trucks and empty lots from the background and foreground of the shot, and fill in CG landscaping, trees and homes. The windows of the house were also tracked and replaced with CG windows reflecting the water below.