Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Joven on March 01, 2000 at 00:18:52:

In Reply to: special effects... posted by RichardH on February 29, 2000 at 22:03:30:

The special effects were vast and plenty and were use to help tell the story. The trick is to know when they are happening. For example, many times unoticed, green screening and using powerful software like Ultimate, with expert lighting you'll never know when things are happening unless you're told by insiders. Reading Cinefex's (Special Effects magazine) "Making of Titanic" issue you'll find the finer details of what were effects and what weren't. As Titanic wasn't showing off it's special effects, there was many great FX and the compositing was superb.

You have Kate and Leo at a the front of the ship, that's a studio prop with green screen behind them. The camera is pre-programed a pass that's centered on Kate and Leo, then it pans away following the Titanic ship prop. Then the CGI artists have to create that part of the ship to every detail to the last nail, and match the perspective, angles, lighting. Then the path of the real camera is fed into the CGI camera(camera animation path) so that the CGI camera flys along the CGI ship and looks back at the ship as it passes by in the vast digital ocean. Then it's off to the compositors who take away the green screen and add in the CGI seamlessly. There could be tons of compositing layers but in the end we just see one long pan shot without us saying "hey that's a cool special effect"