The last part of Post Production pipelines is Compositing. As the name suggests, Compositing means to combine all shooting plates (2D source footages), alpha mattes, tracking camera data, 3D render passes, CGI elements, matte paintings, VFX stock footages and any other elements to finish the shot. The main goal is to blend all things together in a manner that it looks like that all the elements are shot at a single point of time, in a same lighting condition and with a same camera.(Latest VFX webinar compositing for visual effects by Ilm & Escape 2020).
The component parts of the composite: CGI, Matting Multiple, Exposure, Blue or Green Screen, Physical Compositing, Front or Rear Projection. In fact, the birth of compositing can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century with the works of Georges Méliès, one of the best movie directors of all time. Georges Méliès was a master of compositing techniques and quite literally pioneered the term “movie magic.”, He use multiple exposure technique, background projection (it’s simply when the background content of a scene is projected onto a screen (or plates) to give the impression of one picture). For example, driving scene and another compositing technique was matting (is the process of taking multiple elements of a film print and combining them – one at a time – onto a duplicate strip of film). Many of these camera tricks are easy to replicate on digital video. (McGregor, L. 2017).
The purpose of compositing is to visually depict things outside the box. Compositing is often best suited for building worlds that would otherwise be impossible to create in a practical fashion. Charmaine from ILM explains how the team used compositing to build an otherworldly feel in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. “We want to put people in a world that doesn’t exist and make it relatable for them.” - Charmaine, Senior Compositor at ILM (Latest VFX webinar compositing for visual effects by Ilm & Escape,2020).
Ultimately, compositing proves to be the perfect strategy for achieving movie magic (Heckmann et al., 2020).
References
Heckmann, C., Chris Heckmann Chris Heckmann graduated from Emmanuel College with a Bachelor of Art and Chris Heckmann graduated from Emmanuel College with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing (2020) VFX compositing techniques explained, Studio Binder. Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-compositing-definition/ (Accessed: October 30, 2022).
Latest VFX webinar compositing for visual effects by Ilm & Escape (2020) The Virtual Assist. Available at: https://thevirtualassist.net/latest-vfx-webinar-compositing-for-visual-effects-ilm/ (Accessed: November 2, 2022).
McGregor, L. (2017) Invisible VFX: The Art of Compositing, The Beat: A Blog by Premium Beat. Available at: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/the-art-of-composing-in-vfx/%C2%A0 (Accessed: November 2, 2022).
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