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There are 168 posts filed in videos (this is page 11 of 21).

How to shoot in a hall of mirrors

[This post contains some very minor plot info from John Wick 2]

Last fall Spike Jonze released a new ad for KENZO fragrance with actress Margaret Qualley:

One of the most spectacular sequences in this ad takes place around 1:50 in, when Margaret dances in front of a hall of mirrors. As the camera does precise, gorgeous movements around her, you never once glimpse a reflection of the rig that the filmmakers are using.

Ian Failes at Inverse has a great explanation of how this was achieved. According to VFX supervisor Janelle Croshaw:

Doron Kipper and Jesse James Chisolm (from Digital Domain) spent hours surveying the mirrored staircase. They used tiny pieces of tape on the mirrors to capture the points needed. Lots and lots of panoramas and high dynamic range images (HDRIs) were taken. During the shoot a clean plate was captured with the Technocrane without Margaret and then the Technocrane was cleared out and a clean plate was captured with a handheld cam. Spike and team were super cooperative in clearing the frame for as long as we needed which was very cool considering those mirrors pretty much reflected two whole floors of the Dorothy Chandler theater.

All of the data collected enabled us to build an environment in compositing software Nuke and also achieve a camera track usable for projections (where the live action footage is ‘projected’ onto a CG version of the environment to enable camera movement). The tracking geometry was mirrored to represent the reflections in the mirror and that mirrored geometry was used to muscle through the matchmove. It wasn’t easy and Jim Moorhead, our matchmove artist, put so much care in to this shot. In the end there was a lot of hand painted clean-up and the shot was split amongst two companies and multiple artists. Artist Rob Fitzsimmons became the keeper of the shot, managing the paint patches and ensuring the quality level was kept to the highest standards. His perfectionism and strong eye made the shot as seamless as it is.

This video came to mind for me recently because I just saw John Wick 2, which has an even more impressive sequence that takes place in a room full of mirrors. I’m not sure whether similar techniques were used, but director Chad Stahelski does describe his process briefly in an interview with Movieweb.

The best ads of Super Bowl LI

I found most of last night’s Super Bowl ads to be pretty uninspired. Unlike years past, there were very few moments that will be cultural flashpoints, discussed heavily for the weeks to come.

That said, 84 Lumber, a Pennsylvania building supply company, made what I consider to be the best Super Bowl ad this year — a short film that told the story of a mother trying to immigrate into the U.S. from Mexico. There are a couple of quasi-controversies that sprung up as a result of the ad:

  • They only showed part of the ad because it was deemed too controversial to depict an imagined version of Trump’s border wall (read more).
  • Some viewers were angry because they thought the ad was advocating for illegal immigration (read more).

One overall theme that was obvious: corporate America is rebelling against the government’s position on isolationism and nativism in a big way. They are betting that Trump’s attitude is not only wrong, it’s also unprofitable. We’ll see soon if they’re right.

There were many more examples of this. The Anheuser-Bush ad really got to me, as an immigrant (even though its story is completely fabricated):

And this ad by Coca-Cola is actually from 2016, but took on special resonance last evening:

What were your favorite ads of the night?

The absurdity of voice acting gigs

This short film by Tim Mason is absolutely uproarious. It captures so many of the absurd aspects of voice acting gigs: the mind-numbing repetition, the dubious acting direction, the bored but patient sound guy, the willingness of the voice actor to press on no matter what.

Also, love the juxtaposition between what’s unfolding in the booth and the nonsense outside of it. This incongruity often exists in real life too, albeit not in as extreme a fashion.

What it feels like to not love ‘La La Land’

In this week’s SNL, Aziz Ansari stars in a sketch that captures what it feels like to not adore a film that everyone else is on board with. It can be a lonely, lonely place.

(Bonus points for capturing a lot of the best complaints against La La Land and the somewhat unconvincing rebuttals to them, not to mention the weird tension between people who La La Land lovers and Moonlight lovers)