Smallville FX

[thebigtree95]

Smallville: Greater Superpowers From Entity FX
Ellen Wolff speaks with Mat Beck of Entity FX about raising the VFX quotient in the sixth season of Smallville.
ByEllen Wolff
[ Posted on September 20, 2006 ]
http://www.vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=319b255d&atype=articles&id=3008&page= 1

 

[The Caped Knight]

 

[The Caped Knight]

Q: Are most of Clark's "superpower" effects are done with greenscreen elements?

A: Greenscreen and avatar. We scan almost every principal in the show, so we can produce an avatar as needed. We can have a character that's CG, or starts out CG and morphs into a greenscreen character. Or we can track a CG character so that he appears to have a reflection, or casts a shadow on something that wasn't there when he was shot. A lot depends on how artfully an avatar is done, because under certain circumstances I think that you can still see the difference.

Q: How close can the camera get to Clark Kent's avatar and still have it look convincing?

A: Tom Welling (who plays Clark) is a professional, and we can get a lot of good footage of him doing his thing. So we haven't had to have his avatar come right up to camera. How close we can get depends on how fast he's moving. It won't matter if he's going 120 mph!

 

[NHawk19]

Nice topic.

 

[RakuMon]

Interesting point.

Tom Welling (who plays Clark) is a professional, and we can get a lot of good footage of him doing his thing. So we haven’t had to have his avatar come right up to camera. How close we can get depends on how fast he’s moving. It won’t matter if he’s going 120 mph!

I seem to recall watching a movie recently in which the lead character's (while saving an aeronautic vehicle) close up was done entirely in CG.

 

[avidreader]

This sounds like a new scene. I dont recall Clark ever having to catch up to a jet plane before.

For example, in a scene I directed where Clark catches up to a jet plane, we had reflection passes and motion vector passes so that we could do our motion blur in 2D rather than in 3D. It’s a lot less expensive, so we do that all the time.

 

[KalKai]

Hello? Crusade, lol.

 

[Bad Superman]

Cool GIF!!

 

[avidreader]

Hello? Crusade, lol.

But that wasnt Clark it was Kal-el.

 

[Prognosticator]

I've gotta say there are some EERIE similarities b/w SV and SR ...

...Most notably that they both have SFX that romp all over their stories!