Imaginative effects in Imagine That

For Imagine That, director Karey Kirkpatrick called on Hammerhead Productions to provide 140 invisible effects shots to help tell the story of a troubled financial executive (Eddie Murphy) who turns to his daughter’s imaginary world for some much needed guidance.

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Hammerhead’s first task involved fixing negative damage for a scene featuring Eddie Murphy dancing in an outdoor plaza. “When the production got the film back, they realized that it had been exposed to x-rays somewhere along the way,” said Hammerhead visual effects supervisor Jamie Dixon.

“The damage showed up as a bright blue line waving across the frame,” noted Dixon. “By measuring the timing of the ‘swing’ and taking into account the direction the film is wound on spools, we discovered that the film was damaged before it was shot.”

In order to fix the negative, Hammerhead scanned the offending frames two perfs off so they could see the section of negative between the frames. “We used this to track a matte within which we either offset undamaged sections of the frame or used temporal median filters to reduce the grain or both,” said Dixon. The process took three months of painstaking detailed hand work with the help of custom software developed at Hammerhead.

A more traditional visual effects approach was adopted to provide some classic Denver mountain views for a scene Dixon describes as a ‘location reminder’. “To accomplish this, we shot the scene and paid attention to minimizing the times that actors would be against the sky which would have required rotoscoping. Then we created a ‘fantasy’ version of the mountains pieced together from a collection of photos, and tracked and composited them in to the shot.”

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Before shot
09Jun/imagine/mountains_final
Final shot

Hammerhead’s reference for the famous Denver Rockies came from an unlikely source. “When asking the director for a description of what the mountains should look like,” recalled Dixon, “he simply said, ‘make them look like the license plates.'”

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Before shot
09Jun/imagine/tree_pullback_final
Final shot

For a final scene in which Eddie Murphy’s daughter in the film lets go of her imaginary characters, production shot at Huntington Gardens in California during late winter. Hammerhead was tasked with augmenting a tree blown by a gust of wind, signifying that the characters have left. “The tree was between leaf cycles and the filmmakers asked to make it more beautiful,” said Dixon. “We shot a number of passes of ‘perfect’ silk leaves, roughly matched to the moves from the plates and composited them over the live action.” Hammerhead also added in some sky replacements and other touch-ups to compliment the scene.

Other invisible effects completed by the visual effects studio involved extensive monitor comps in which images were added to TV monitors, computer screens or cell phone screens. Dixon stated, “Doing this type of work in post allows the filmmakers to adjust perfectly to what they desire for the moment.”

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Before shot
09Jun/imagine/tree_tiltup_final
Final shot

Hammerhead used Shake for its 2D effects on the film. Some minor filling in of leaves for the tree scene involved 3D work. For tracking, artists relied on both custom software and SynthEyes.

Although the film deals with the imaginary world of a young girl, all of Hammerhead’s effects work had to remain convincingly realistic. “Obviously, the look and feel were meant to be totally natural,” said Dixon. “None of the moments were intended to stray from reality, although they may have displayed a bit better than a perfect version of that.”

09Jun/imagine/mountains_wide_before
Before shot
09Jun/imagine/mountains_wide_final
Final shot