Unless you’re a graphic designer, 3D animator, or visual effects artist who has been living under a (moon) rock, you already know that Blackmagic Design’s Fusion Studio is the Milky Way Galaxy’s most advanced compositing software out there in the universe. Capable of delivering the most seamless editing techniques and awe-inspiring visual effects on both indie films and major movie blockbusters, the Fusion Studio is fast, user-friendly, and filled with an impressive toolset of tons of special features. It’s no surprise then that 20th Century Fox contacted Richard Baker, the Senior Stereo Supervisor and Fusion Studio guru at Prime Focus World, to stereo convert the trailer to the blockbuster film, The Martian.
Utilizing both the award-winning View-D conversion pipeline and Blackmagic Design’s Fusion Studio, Baker was given the (Mars) mission of not only delivering awesome stereo to the movie’s 15-minute featured trailer, but also converting 200+ shots into 3D for The Martian. Although Baker and his creative team had already demonstrated their expertise with the Fusion Studio when they successfully delivered the 3D conversion work for the Sci-Fi movie, Gravity, they were faced with the challenge of ensuring what they created highlighted not only Matt Damon’s character’s utter loneliness, but also succinctly matched the rest of the film’s stereo.
Since the team on the set had established the native 3D look while they were shooting the film, when Baker and his crew from PFW got the shots they had to convert (like the cool aerial shots from a helicopter that were taken of the Mars-scape landscape that couldn’t be captured with a native stereo rig), they had to create 3D with a more linear fall off to give the shots an impressive amount of 3D depth, and they had to reference for the stereo so that they could ensure the conversion matched the already-established look of the film. They manipulated the depth to make Damon’s character look and feel very minuscule in a massive world on Mars. They successfully conveyed the director’s message: Damon’s character was on his own on the Mars.
Similar to what they did on the movie Gravity, Baker and his team of artists had the challenge of converting the wardrobe’s shiny, reflective space suit helmets that were hard to get any depth from. To solve the problem, they used actual 3D face and helmet geometry provided by production and then matchmoved and tracked the scans to the character on the plate. Next, they produced a depth map that was able to be combined with the previously-created rotoscoping, and then on through to the View-D pipeline for stereo.
A 21st century Sci-Fi movie about space, and loneliness, and vastness demands the use of top-notch, artist-friendly software to make the scenarios believable and to capture the essence of the astronaut’s plight alone on Mars. Fusion Studio brings Mars to life seamlessly, realistically, and beautifully.
