GONE WEST WHAT COULD’VE BEEN

EDIT VFX

'“What Could’ve Been” is a song about looking back on how events could have taken place differently. The director loved the idea of filling the different spaces with mirrors that opened the ability to composite different images that reflect back to the viewer.

The challenges for compositing in new images were beginning to grow larger as the process began to unfold. Because the camera is moving in 3D space, you have to make sure the image you are compositing is animated correctly by matching any perspective changes, camera moving up, down, left, right, backwards and forwards. For the most part, compositing in a new image (like a painting on a wall to become a different painting on a wall) is relatively straight forward and not too complicated, but because a mirror is essentially a “window” that shows the reflective image in it’s own 3D environment, the level of perfection increases greatly.

Changing a painting on a wall is simply taking a flat image and tracking it onto a flat object. Simple. In this project, you now have a 3D space within a 3D space that accounts for so much more complication of making sure it is reacting appropriately to how the camera is moving. If the motion tracking and compositing is off in the slightest, the viewers eye will pick up on something not feeling quite right. Because of this, special care is taken to animate everything on a frame-by-frame basis to accurately depict correct placement. Some composites were so detailed, it took an entire day to animate a 2 second shot! Wow!

So proud of the results and the challenge it gave.

Visual Compositing

BEFORE AFTER