You think you’re hot ? Well check out the flame work on this Sprite spot where the talent is literally on fire. Its all thanks to some cool — you guessed it — flame work by vfx supervisor and artist Rohit Misra.
Burning the budget is one thing – burning actual money is another. So when it came time to set fire to both cast and cash for Sprite Ice, Director Antony Redman of Velocity films Singapore turned to Rohit Misra. Misra served as vfx supervisor and as flame artist to literally burn money (and a few haircuts). Redman, ex Aussie and former agency CD from Hong Kong, had aimed to shot the project in just one day. Ironically it rained.
Misra has been a flame artist since 1995. He also uses Fire and has trained on c-reality/da Vinci 2k, although he started in 3d with 3D studio & Lightwave. But for this script a live action solution was his first choice in pre-production. The shoot itself took place in May of 2005 in “a real slum like location in Jakarta, fulla flies and excrement ha ha but that’s what the script called for!” explains Misra.
movielink(flameSprite/SpriteIce45.mov,View the completed spot)
The post on the spot was completed over 12 days “at a leisurely pace the first 7 days ‘cos it was the first job at this newly opened post house and we love the director!!!!” Misra jokes. He had asked the director to shoot the fire elements on a mannequin on black, so they basically shot it at night. The crew matched the APPROX camera angles with the cinelog cam system. All of fire sequences were shot at 48fps and 72 fps and the camera was locked off. All of the mannequins were wrapped in black cloth except one which Misra interestingly asked the production to shoot on glass. While most of the flames were generic, specific flame rigs were asked for by Misra to match the dog and another for the characters flaming arms, which were shot on glass. Misra explains the use of glass: “I used them for the ones I tracked onto the characters arms, ‘cos fire on glass on black is perfect, you get no nasty edges and you get a nice reflection which looks cool on the side of their arms, it is cheating of course, but it looks like a few licks of fire are draping over”
movielink(flameSprite/SPRITE_sc014.mov, Click here for the “Passing the can” shot – break down, layer by layer quicktime)
In Flame Misra keyed the flames using two layers for EVERY fire segment, and there were an average of 5 segments per human. “The first layer was comped with screen or simple add in action, for the second one I used the same source fire but did a crisp TIGHT HLS key of the mids, so basically layer 2 of that segment was like a filler to add more body and depth to the additive fire”, he explains. Each flame segment was then composited with extended bicubics layers. All the shots were done directly in action as the flame was not the newest (An Ocatne 1 MXE – but it was running 9.0.3).
According to Misra, they “had a LOT of shots of flames to choose from..the only brief the director gave me was it should look good…our minds can never relate to it cos its not something we see everyday so I had less restrictions…the only shot where it was a pain to comp and choose was where he pulls out the money and passes it to the vendor.” In this shot and in others roto shapes were used to provide contact lighting on the actors bodies “…its also on the packs, and the vendors cart and various other areas..even a slight glowish one on the ground – which is lost by the 16:9 letterbox!” he jokes further.
The only 3D in the spot was the ice which was made in Maya. This shot was one of only 2 shots with used Flame’s 3D tracker ( the fire to the afro show also used the 3D tracker ). The rest used ” the AMAZING flame tracker!!!!!”, says Misra. “We shot with live heat haze in all the shots [ I added much more in flame later] but the flame tracker never let me down.” Misra even used the tracker to control the vertice tracking in the warper” to bung on a frosty texture main characters face as he changes from fire to ice”.
Misra is currently in Jakarta, where is decribes the post scene as small, but with “excellent scripts, good creatives in agencies, nice budgets but CRAZY deadlines”. Looking around the region “outta manila/HK,Malaysia/Singapore and Indonesia,” he judges that “Indonesia has THE best scripts..but the LEAST time for post”.
The one shot that blew the client away was when the vendor pulls out the Sprite can and passes it, Misra painted the fire over the can to make it look like the actor moved the can through the fire. At the end of the day the spot has been hugely successful creative and professionally.
movielink(flameSprite/SPRITE_sc022.mov, Click here for The ice chest shot ‘making of’)
movielink(flameSprite/SPRITE_sc016.mov, View the window shot breakdown), which is one of the most complex shots.