Youthenizing Effects

Somehow youthenizing effects (German "Verjüngungs Effekt") seems to be a hot thing in the industry actually. Today I just had a little side conversation with director Holger Haase about it. A month ago I discussed it with Novafilm for an upcoming project and last fall Matthias Glasner asked me about it for his upcoming movie "This is love".

Basically it's so simple. It's best done in the direction of youthenizing people. You need to roto parts of the face very rough and softly. Take it and blur these parts softly. Keep main details of the face like eyes, mouth, nose. Check it in motion and perhaps you're done. I know, rotoscoping sounds hard for filmmakers (especially for a producer, who needs to pay the artists doing it), but what I am speaking about is really, really rough, soft and fast roto.

We did a bunch of shots for Marcus O. Rosenmüller in "Das Geheimnis des Königssees". The book had a part 30 years ago, where our cast had to be much much younger. We did it exactly as described before (without trapping into the technical issues written down here ;). Unfortunately I can't show pictures or videos here, because we have signed a clear NDA with RTL. So if you're really interested in that work, feel free to contact me or visit us at the fx.center inside the Studio Babelsberg.

Funnily even LolaFX - specialized in digital makeup and doing amazing work for "Benjamin Button" - does it this way, as I read it on Zap's Mental Ray Blog:

"What was truly interesting about the Lola de-aging process is how manual it is. Its as far from "push a button and the computer does the work" that it can possibly be. Quite the opposite, it's nearly a matter of pulling every pixel manually from one place to another, the computer just helps with doing it over multiple frames, but even that requires TLC to look nice. I applaud the work here."

So what do filmmakers need to concern about? First as said before youthenizing is easier than aging (this can be done with a physical mask far more faster and cheaper in my opinion). On the technical side it's simply a degrain of parts of the image. But in this case you adjust it more harder, so the even the wrinkles will be "degrained" (we even use standard degrain filters to achieve the effect). So, technically the whole trick will be unleashed by the grain. Before we go on, have a view on this picture:
It's a 400% Zoom and Gamma lift to 2.0 of the picture of Kate Blanchett I've used above as cover for this story. It's an original Warner Brothers picture provide on their German Benjamin Button Website. Notice: a gamma 2 very brightens the picture and at normal gamma you probably don't notice anything wrong with the picture on the big screen in cinema. So this is just for this discussion. Here's the picture with "pixel pusher eyes"... ;)So... THIS was the thing, which disturbed me so much in cinema.. ;) just kidding guys, great work on it - really! :D .

For own comparison, here's a full face version at 500% zoom and gamma of 2.0. Click on the picture to open it in full resolution.
Grain matching will be tricky for a while, especially for pictures shot digitally (e.g. Sony F35 or RED One). Because film grain is an analog phenomena. It's even "between" the pixels. So, to make it more easy: film knows no pixels or raster. Film grain doesn't care about pixels.

Digital noise is different. Digital film cameras are working with checker raster like patterns (even if it's HD, 2K, 4K, bayer pattern or not - it remains a pixel raster). Lifting the gain produces noise. This is basically happens, if you drive the sensitivity of your chip up. The difference is, it hits exactly each pixel, without "swapping" to the surrounding ones.

So why is it important for filmmakers? Going digital means a new characteristic for the grain / noise. In postproduction there are no presets for it yet (no one I know). This makes digital noise matching a tricky task, simply because it's new and there are no standard tools or presets. But it should be no big deal with a proven grain extraction workflow. We are using a very simple but effective and production proven one at exozet actually. We basically use standard grey cards as a reference. So if you're not sure, having shot grey cards are always a welcome at postproduction.

Doctor's Diary Previz

Just had a preproduction meeting Holger Haase and Michael Schreitel for a greenscreen parachute jump. We will reuse the panorama technique, we've used before for "Eine gute Mutter", directed by Matthias Glasner with Sonja Rom behind the camera.

Our part of the storyline will be the "new start" in the life of our hero actress. To underline her personal rebirth, she drops herself out of a plane with a parachute, not knowing how to control or steer it. It will be the season opener "Doctor's Diary". A comedy series produced by Polyphon for RTL.

The basic idea behind that VFX shot is to put her into a greenscreen studio with heavy wind machines (Michael Bouterweck will provide them). The background will be replaced with our CGI images, got from photos and rendered through our pano pipeline. So it's basically very simple. Some 3D tracking and keying challenges, but nothing special on the technical side.

The more challenging task will be shooting the correct camera movements. As we noticed before you can do the best key, the best track, but it won't work, cause your camera movement is simply not part of the shot. Have a look at the opening sequence of "License to kill" to get an idea what I'm talking about (don't get me wrong, loved that movie, nice effect work these days, but the sequence in the plane over the ground simply looks like rear projection today).



So, we got it into previz and what you see here above is my very new favourite tool, just finished programming it yesterday. What we did, was to connect a standard VJ deck (thank you so much Falk from the Prototypen Crew for that short favour) with Softimage and prepared all the data we got for the shooting. With this setup Martin could directly move his Panther Foxycrane trough the greenscreen studio in correct measurements. Interactive and in realtime! Best is, we could even switch between studio setup and CGI environment (what you actually see in the video) and capture recorded moves (no keyframing, simply realtime animations) out to Final Cut Pro. Within two hours we could see, which angles will work, which optics we will need (don't need that whole set anymore), how big the screen must be and what the rig needs to be able to do, to get our actress into the right position. In the back Holger could do a first edit of the sequence and determine exactly, what he does need more and which shots won't work at the end. So previz alone is already very cool, but doing it interactively and realtime with the DOP and the director is a true benefit (both in terms of creative work and budget). We simply loved it and are looking forward for tomorrow (when I'll collect all the data and make floor plans out of it). Shooting will be by the end of this week.

"Nur ein Sommer" Premiere

Went to the premiere of "Nur ein Sommer", which was shoot back in 2006 in the wonderful landscape of the swiss alps. It was directed by Tamara Staudt. Michael Hammon was behind the camera. So for me it's two and a half years back now and the edit changed a lot after vfx was finished. And in the end I really enjoyed that movie and loved the smart dialogues with all the little Swiss-German stereotypes. I really laughed as she decrypted the handwritten telegram in the night. Nice idea Tamara!

The VFX part was pretty invisible (so it was good). Did a lot of small matte paintings, greenscreen composites (as they used the elevator up to the mountain). It was also one of the first uses of our "Aurora" weather extension workflow, we developed over the years and projects. I will never forget the discussion with Michael Hammon about how a nearby lightning hit looks like. Funnily enough they we're shooting in 2000 metres height, as a real lightning went down just 200 metres beside them. So after that real life experience we exactly knew, how it looks like. You can see the result in your repertory cinema next door.