compositing reel

Wondeful! You did a great job !

Hi Garrett,

Please excuse my delay in getting back to you.
I assume you are referring to the HHR. This was for a series of spots called "Spring Event" in 2007 for Chevrolet and my client, Campbell Ewald who had the Chevy account at the time. The producer as Bob Monement, now at Doner, and the Director was Peter Klein of Avalon Films. I was also the VFX Supervisor on this shoot as well as lead artist. About 10 ten cars where done this way. (just wan't to make sure I give credit where it is due)

This was shot on a rotating platform about 20 feet in diameter. Yes, reflections are an issue. in fact, other potential vendors where suggesting shooting over white and hand rotoscoping the mattes. I considered this more work and talked them into shooting green screen. Using spill tools and color correction it was not difficult to remove the green spill in the tool I was using at the time, Quantel Pablo, and I was able to minimize the time spent on matte cutting and refinement. All of the reflections of the car on the floor where hand made and a weak area in my opinion. I am confident an experienced artist could accomplish the same results with other tools like After Effects or Nuke or what have you. The key is the experience, compositing is an art form and requires an artist in the field. Somebody has to sit down and do the work, it is not a cake walk.

With that said, I would not discount the advantages of CGI. Also an art form, but has distinct advantages and has really developed in that last few years. 1.) Car can easily be repurposed for different scenes, animation, angles even environments versus all the work that goes into your one determined shot. 2.) the cost to the client will be the same or less. 3.) if on the following year, the client still loves it but wants the car to reflect the current year trim level and so forth, it is basically change to the model and a re-render, done. again trimming the dollars down and extending the usefulness of the work. Yet, Somebody has to sit down and do the work, it is not a cake walk, but there is no ceiling which is the biggest advantage.

We have an artist who has perfected this and I would be happy to send our Car CGI reel. it is new and Kerry's work blows me away... and I am not easily impressed. I am new to these forums on the Cow and often when I put in links it disallows me from sending messages. You may email me directly for more info, My name is Jon and I work at PELiStudio and that is my email address essentially.

I hope some of this information helps you with your efforts.

cheers,
-Jon