The whole idea was to freeze the moment and let the engineer walk in
and explain the technical aspects of the car. The directors Armi and
Kinski from HSI/Culver City didn’t want a total frozen moment. We’ve
all seen those completely frozen moments before and wanted to do
something different with a super-slowed down moment, which meant using
a photosonic camera that could shoot 2000 fps.
We’re used to seeing photosonic shots in extreme close-ups, like
strawberries falling into cream. You need to use a tremendous amount of
light for the exposure while film is running so quickly through the
camera. We had to figure out what was possible with these setups, which
were so big— a tour bus, a truck tire exploding next to a car, an
exterior gas station— and how to capture those things in the highest
frame rate possible and then slow them down even more digitally in
post. We also had to figure out how to capture all of the elements and
integrate them so that everything looked like one take and everything
was slowed down at the same time.
We worked with different techniques and different cameras for each of
the elements. For the shots of the tire exploding we used a camera at
almost 2000 fps on a bright sunny day to capture the explosion, which
was altered tremendously in post. We actually ended up compositing [in
Autodesk Inferno] different takes of the explosion with different takes
of the car and different takes of the truck, all with different
lighting depending on the time of day. Of course, we needed to
compensate for this when we combined them.
At the same time, the second unit used the high-speed HD camera Cine
SpeedCam [by Weinberger] to capture elements, like debris, mist and
background elements that later on got composited. We were very mindful
of what the HD camera could do because it still has limitations and can
potentially give you an inferior look to film.
The production company also brought on a video assist team that
developed a system that showed us instantly what the photosonic camera
captured. As soon as the director shouted "cut," we could see 2000 fps
playback, clean on the monitor at video quality. They attached an
alternate lens to the camera that fed their hard drive that captured
the frame rate of the camera while rolling. That was very useful.
Most of the shots of the engineer were not shot on greenscreen. We were
very careful to concentrate on the ones that needed it for post and
production reasons. We came up with techniques that combined the plates
in a way that we didn’t need greenscreen.
We did some rotoscoping [with Combustion] but mostly it was careful planning.
For the debris we used mainly live-action. There was one shot that was
impossible to shoot— the one under the truck wheels while the explosion
was happening and all the debris and smoke was suspended— that was CG.
In "Jiggle" we created a CG gasoline drop. We used Maya for all the CG.
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