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Step by Step: Anamorph

May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ellen Wolff

Visual effects can be crucial in depicting a story's key idea, and IFC Films' Anamorph is a case in point. Even the title of this thriller refers to the effect of anamorphosis, a painterly technique that produces an image that seems distorted when viewed straight on, but which appears correct when seen from an oblique POV. Director Henry Miller plays with this idea in Anamorph to show how a detective (played by Willem Dafoe) comes to understand clues that a serial killer has embedded within works of art. To visualize these “aha!” moments on film, Miller called upon multi-Oscar-winning visual-effects supervisor Richard Edlund and Los Angeles-based Whodoo EFX, led by supervisor Helena Packer Burnson.

“The techniques for various crime scenes were based on different artists,” Edlund says, noting that one of the most difficult effects shots involved a painting on a floor that was done in the style of artist Francis Bacon. The message in the painting only becomes clear when it is seen aligned with a large tattoo on the back of a female victim lying on the painted floor. When Dafoe's character lies down next to the victim and views this crime scene from an extreme angle, he sees the images aligned.

“The top half of a word is painted on the floor and the bottom half is on the woman's tattoo. When they come together, they form the word ‘dead,’” Packer Burnson says.

The initial plan of Production Designer Jackson DiGovia was to get as much of this effect in-camera as possible. But the tattoo decal placed on the back of actress Clea DuVall didn't really sync up with the painting on the floor to clearly convey the duality of the images. That meant that the Whodoo EFX crew would have to rotoscope out the actress' tattoo decal and replace it with a digital one that would align correctly with the painted floor.

Complicating the process was that the camera was moving — pulling out from the victim's body until the moment of exact alignment was revealed. “Originally it was designed to be a lock-off shot,” Packer Burnson says. But Edlund felt that the impact of the revelation would be greater if all of a sudden the audience saw the two parts of the anamorphic image slide into place.

“We had the idea of making the word ‘dead’ line up,” Edlund says. “That would give us something graphic for the viewer's eye to go to. That would have to be created in post, so what we wound up shooting on set was just like a good previz — a rather expensive previz.”

To design a tattoo that would work effectively as part of this dual-image effect, Packer Burnson consulted a tattoo expert on Los Angeles' famed Venice Beach. “When the actress is standing upright, the anamorphic image on her back and shoulders looks compressed,” Packer Burnson says. “It's abstract; you can't really make out what it is at first. It just looks gothic. When she's stretched over and her shoulders are open wide, you see the tattoo come into correct perspective, revealing part of the word ‘dead.’ So we had to work like an anamorphic artist — we had to design it to look good when it was compressed and when it was stretched.”

Packer Burnson created the digital tattoo in Adobe Photoshop, and she used Autodesk Flame to rotoscope out the original tattoo decal on the actress' back. “We made a whole new back texture, and then we formed the tattoo onto that so it would move in 3D along with her muscles and skin, and look alive,” she says.

Whodoo created a 3D virtual stand-in of the actress' back using Autodesk Maya and tracked the camera movement with Pixel Farm's PFTrack software, and the team composited using Flame again.

“Having this shot pay off dramatically was integral to the plot of Anamorph,” Packer Burnson says. “It propels the storyline. The director reveals things from certain angles constantly throughout the movie, building up to this point.” She says that the perception of this effect actually embodies the tag line used to describe the film itself: “It all depends on where you stand.”

CREDIT ROLL

Director: Henry Miller

DP: Fred Murphy

Production Designer: Jackson DiGovia

Senior Visual Effects Supervisor: Richard Edlund

For Whodoo EFX

Visual Effects Supervisor: Helena Packer Burnson

Visual Effects Producer: Sarah M. Paul

Compositors: Janice Lee, Marla Carter Barrett, Eric Gregory Bruno, Joe Morrison

3D Artists: Harry Paakkonen, Fabio Zapata

© 2009 Penton Media, Inc.