A digital playground in my studio

"Having fun" with the tiresome work of rotoscopy. In this final stage of post-production for "Gloria del Pacifico", chose what scenes needed digital touch-ups and composite work and so far its around 120!!

Started two weeks ago with all the battle scenes digital composites and rotoscopy and its such a pain in the butt for its complexity (CG explosions that match the original ones on camera, bullet trails, sound effects, wire removal, sky replacement, color-grading, etc). My Wacom drawing tablet comes in handy for this fine-detailed job as precision needs to be of a surgical manner.

Also, I'm very happy that technology has progressed quite a bit since starting this film a few years ago as many things I envisioned originally had to be toned down in order to make them "filmable" with the logictics I had. Now, I'm pushing all my savvyness forward with digital compositions and things.

Since April been in this editing process and its now a month so far that I have a sidekick helping with it and things seems to move along faster. With working hours from 10am until midnight, its still a matter of a couple of months from today that the film will be complete. Meetings with sponsors are coming along all these weeks and I'm putting all my brain and emotions into this.

Now back to work.

Morro de Arica digital composite

Mmm....Inspiration....

Editing days -as many in the field would know- are quite time-demanding and concentration-packed. It even gets to a point where I lose track of time and space and without noticing, it is already evening. Pulling aproximately 14 hours non-stop (only to eat and stretch) is rewarding when results start to pay off. Difficult scenes like the Heroes Oath or Bolognesi's Answer are past now and the inmiment ending battle scenes for "Gloria del Pacifico" are closer.

Sometimes, even though it is a post-production job (I'm in the editing stage yet), one day or two I devote to some elaborate digital montage or compositions to know if the things filmed prior-hand will look as planned, like this one here for example.

Chilean Sargeant Major De la Cruz Salvo was ordered by general Baquedano to blast peruvian fortresses far away at the morro with his artillery from a hill afar. The original footage (shot back in December 2011...wow, almost 2 years from now!) was filmed at the top of the Morro Solar facing the sea toward the Chira beach. Waited for the time that would somewhat match the correct time this event happened for real. As you can see from a still capture of the orginal footage, far below theres a long strip of beachland and a flat surface inland and a small strip of hills that enter a bit into the sea. That natural beach curve resembles nicely the real Arica bay and that hill afar is where the actual Morro de Arica would be, so the task was to put behind the actors and far away, the morro, the town-city of Arica, the train station and railroad track near the beach and the Manco Capac monitor ship floating in the bay with natural reflections in the water.

Being a moving shot, the camera rises to reveal more of the city below and see an actor enter the frame obscuring the morro afar. Got myself some pictures of the morro I had taken last year when in Arica from atypical angles I'd need for the film scenes, the rest would need to be taken from pics found online of other mountanius formation and shape them/blend them in Photoshop and import them into my digital video compositor. Some frame-by-frame rotoscopy had to be made in order to separate the actors and soldiers into layers from far away objects. The Manco Capac ship is a picture taken of the miniature I had made some time ago for other scenes near the end. Being a far away object and in the sea, motion was not needed so just a picture would do the job. Only thing was to just match the angle of view and lighting. Far below, the city was made in a 3D program and the peruvian fortresses of Ciudadela and Este were also done with some sand-bag trench pictures together with pics of my cannons and put together afar with the flag and pole. At the top of the morro afar, the big Vavasseur and More's battery together with the big peruvian flag. Motion track the footage, color correct it and apply some digital fog in the background and the shot is ready to rock n' roll!!

The original footage shot at the Morro Solar here back in 2011. Lots to rotoscopy and form the layers.

Layer compositing.

Peruvian flags composited to be placed atop the morro.

Pictures of the cannons made for the film.

3D city of old Arica to be placed below.

Final touches and color correction.

The final shot: screen capture of the final digital composite 2 days later.

 Now....off to sleep and continue editing the film tomorrow. Just a happy moment of a task achieved. :)

Battleship miniature models for naval scenes

Today I dropped by Alejandro Rodriguez's miniature and model workshop. Having talked for a while already and checked his work online, needed to have a close-up look at his detail handling and workmanship. I have to say he is quite good.

I'm planning on doing the Manco Capac monitor and Covadonga battle ships in a bigger size than usual (about meter and a half long or more) with all full details of rust, bolts and deck to be placed digitally over already filmed sea footage. Perhaps the Cochrane too.

Alejandro was quite a joy to talk to, very humble, very friendly and with lots of knowledge about his craft and naval history. He has not only the chops but the "know-how" to do the job. Was telling me how much identified he feels with my passion on this film and understands my efforts.

Have worked with other miniature models before and miniature battleship filming is going to be quite the challenge so this is gonna be an interesting ride.
Have to work closely with the footage I already have of the ocean and place it to perfection digitally over real and digitally computer-generated water. The digital composite needs to look as real as possible.

The little Manco Capac monitor. I'm ordering a human-size one.

A meter and half long is needed.

The Huascar monitor model.

Explosions test

Driving like 6o Km south of Lima and into the desert via a dirt road we headed to a huge empty sandy place far from all the city and civilization. It was kinda cloudy when we left by as we drove there it got sunny. The flies out there were annoying and getting in my car. I wondered where they came from as we were in the middle of nowhere and perhaps its because of some hen farms I see kilometers away. The wind was blowing soft and suddenly hard in just a matter of minutes. Those sudden changes in wind speed were gonna be hard to predict as I wanted a clean slate to test the digital compositing on. Of course, in real life the wind changes dramatically and in a matter of minutes, but for this first test, the calmer the better. This is the first explosion test after the special explosives arrived from overseas. The waiting has paid off for I see that no actual damage is done far from the sides of the explosion. This type of charges work best when having actors around it so I know they wont get hurt. I can then apply special effects to it to make it bigger and more menacing. I need to include more debris in the real explosions though.


This time we just exploded a small charge so I could test the digital compositing here at the studio.
You can see here explained in the video.
This is just the first of some tests to see how much I can pull things off without causing major damage to the actors and extras playing soldiers.

So far....I'm happy with the results.
:)

Here is the video with the actual testing and digital composite afterward: