"Sin City" Production Info in Post
 

FYI - The newest Post Magazine has a article on "Sin City" with some interesting production details. Here's a link to the online version of the article:

http://www.postmagazine.com/post/art....jsp?id=156354

Eric, the background you used, was it CG or a real location?
if it was real, what plugins did you use to get that look?
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Peter,
The tracking was done in PFHoe which is a cheaper version of PFTrack. It only does SD. I just downsized the footage to SD for the tracking. The Green Screen was set up at a 90* angle so it had 2 sides. With the corner there was enough tracking data. I did quite a bit of tweeking in C4D. I probibly spent 10 hours just on getting the camera perfect. Keep in mind thats 10 hours AFTER the track. I'm sure using PFTrack with full HD res would help out a lot.
http://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/

The Key is actually pretty good even in color, I didn't even do any spill supression because there was no need. B&W helped kill any problems :)

Derrell,
You just gave me the best compliment I could imagine! The fact it could be taken for a real set means quite a bit to me. To answer your question: Everything but Patrick(the actor) was CG. The entire set, the rain, etc was all CG. It was created using Cinema 4D. Watch the making of video to see what I mean.


For those interested here is a look at one of my shake trees for this project:
http://www.12in12.com/sincity/shaketreesincity.jpg



Thanks for all your comments,
Eric James
http://www.expertmagic.com

Man, I wish I could afford Shake.

:(

Eric, looks great and I think Rodriguez would be proud considering you were using a $3,000 and not $100,000 cam to achieve this. Were you shooting cineframe 30 or did you de-interlace in post?

Eric, thanks for the reply.
the only thing i might of changed would be the rain effect.
i use after effects and have 3 or 4 different type of rain effects to choose from. but thats just me. you really did a great job.
now that you are getting this down so good, you ever think of doing some kind of short parody of sin city? i think a comedy spoof would have people rolling in the iles.
keep up the good work, look forward to seeing more.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

p.s. even when i play back the sd version at 1920x1080, it looks great.

Bryan,
I use a version that is on loan from a friend, I can't afford shake either. Although I'm starting to save asap for shake 4. Hopefully it will be my christmas present to myself :)

Sean,
Yup I think the FX-1 is an amazing camera....If you have enough light. For this stuff you MUST have enough light or you can't pull a key.
This was shot at 60i and it must be or it wouldn't work. If you shoot at CF30 your losing so much detail it's very difficult to pull a key. I actaully never deinterlaced. Because it was shot in 1080i, once I bring it down to 720p there is no need to deinterlace. I do have a 1080i version that I output back to the FX-1 that is still interlaced.

Darrell,
I'm actually asking all of my buddies to write up idea for a short that involves VFX work. I told them to go crazy for the story, nothing is impossible. That way I end up with quite the challange. I don't know if I will end up going with a sin city style again or not. Most likely not.

If any of you guys have any ideas, I'm open to try just about anything.

Thanks,
Eric James
http://www.expertmagic.com/

Ok, I wish I had a friend that had Shake to loan me. :(



;)

Pheeeno - nominal!!! Kicks complete ass. What did you use to downconvert from 1080i to 720p? Where did you shoot the background??

Wow.

Just looked at Shake, is that how you made the background?

Sorry I'm being such a fanboy, it's the best footage I've ever seen from this cam.

Hey Michael,
I made all of the 3d scene in cinema 4D R8:
http://www.maxon.de/index_e.html

I just used shake for the compositing, everything else was done in cinema 4D and Final Cut Pro.

Thanks for the kind words :)
Eric James

http://www.expertmagic.com/

Eric James,

Great work!

Michael Pappas

Excellent job! How did you do the rain?

Sorry to ask about the rain. I only thought there was one page when I posted.

Thanks for the kind words Michael. Soon will be test #3 :)