Commando Kill

Premise

CK is a black ops super warrior run amok. His self determined mission is to bring down technical civilization by crashing key elements of infrastructure. He’s forever skulking around power stations and military installations, tossing precise sabots with economy and cool detachment. In this scene he is leaving a little too late – the catastrophe is already well underway. He laconically descends a cargo lift and exits stage right as the smoke thickens.

Patrick’s been thinking about CK for years. In April of 2009 the coincident availability of a Penske box truck with hydraulic rear lift and a brand new Vixia HF-S100 camera sent him and his brothers into a pre-dawn production fugue.  When the smoke cleared (literally) he had several takes of CK, one of which was pretty good. Unfortunately he used the less than optimal default settings of the camera so the file is both slightly overexposed and resolution deficient. He later assembled some foley for the shot.

The original Penske box truck shot before roto

The resulting sketch was the starting point for the current iteration. The main issue was removing the box truck background and fixing the obviously plastic gun. An appropriately industrial background had to either be made or found. Finally some ambient mayhem (smoke, explosions) would be needed.

As director Patrick had pretty clear ideas about what should be in the scene. Both Jonathan and I acted as motion graphic artists. Jonathan handled most of the roto on CK and designed the smoke while I tackled the tracking and repair of the gun. I also shot some industrial backgrounds, researched and designed a chinese/english “no smoking” sign and finished the compositing.

For the background Patrick had ambitions of building something in 3D based on a parking structure he’d seen visiting Brad Kinnan at MSU. When we decided to finish CK as a team, I promoted the idea of finding a suitable live action background that could be quickly adapted. The background would have to have nearly horizontal light to match the dawn shot on the box truck and have an industrial feel that would make sense with an elevator. We searched the internet for nearby locations in Michigan. Someone suggested the cargo area on the S.S. City of Milwaukee which is berthed in Manistee. I drove down a few days before Halloween and guided by volunteers , passed through the haunted ship maze and into the vast open interior. After grabbing several shots, I took an impromptu tour of the engine room before hopping back in the van and returning to Bear Lake.

An alternate location I’d been thinking about was Ron Brown and Sons Concrete, located on Us31 just past the turn off for the dorm. The timing was perfect – the sun was nearly level with the treetops, splashing the tall tanks and towers of the concrete plant with golden light. I pulled in and found Kurt working under a truck. I asked him if I could take some video of the tanks. He was amiable and gave me the phone number for Greg or Lisa so I could get releases later. After I’d been there for about 20 minutes he came out and asked if I was from the EPA. I explained my mission in greater detail and we talked for a bit. I thanked him and headed out with a camera full of potential.

Ron Brown and Sons Cement tanks showing sluice. Most of the original sky was removed with
sky key and masks so that plumes of smoke could pass behind, someday.

The shot of the red and white tanks could have been anything – storage for rocket fuel, coolant, chemical processing – except for the concrete stained sluice at the bottom of the white tank. That needed to be obscured somehow, CK should be blowing up something more exotic than a concrete plant, maybe a missile base? We discussed putting a rocket and launch gantry in the far background, but decided against adding yet another element.

I tried sliding CK to the left so that he’d obscure the tanks, but that meant he’d be exiting the original frame in the middle of the composited shot – and we’d need a lot of smoke to obscure that abrupt edge. Perhaps a billboard could cover the sluice.

Patrick had imagined CK at a Korean or Arabian location, and wanted signage to illustrate. We agreed on Chinese and I started looking for examples of industrial Chinese signage. I found a “no smoking” sign in both English and Chinese characters and realized that this would not only solve the sluice problem, it also suggested a flammable hazardous environment… and since CK was puffing a cigar, gave us a visual joke.

The image I found was pretty low resolution and I also wondered, did those characters really mean “no smoking” in Chinese? Always verify! I could have emailed some Mandarin speaking friends, but I needed to find vector files for the characters anyway. I found a translation site and a site that helped identify characters by the character strokes. Through trial and error I got exact matches to each of the characters that I could copy and paste into AE as vector text. It translates to, “not allowed inhale smoke”, but I also like “forbid suck in soot”.

不准 not allow, forbid, prohibit
吸 inhale, suck in, absorb, attract
煙 smoke, soot; opium; tobacco, cigarettes

forbid suck in soot!

With the sluice obscured by signage, I still wanted to move CK slightly left to get him off dead center. CK and the elevator platform were separated into distinct elements so that the elevator could remain in it’s original position. A little smoke was still needed to hide the edge of his exit and also to obscure the gun, because the gun would have had to be hand tracked after the elevator bottomed out.

CK approaches the edge of his live action frame. I rounded the edge to blur it better with the smoke.
Note the lack of gun enhancements here, the smoke also helps provide a shortcut.

Patrick had wanted smoke and possibly fire to be part of the scene, and had experimented with burning cinders in early takes. We discussed whether we’d use 2D fractal effects, buy a fancy particle plugin like Particulate or learn the current unstable release of Blender with it’s implementation of true 3D particles. Blender will have the most compelling possibilities once there’s a stable release with reliable results. For this shot we chose AE’s internal fractals and varied the layers’ rotation, opacity and position over time.

We changed our minds about some choices. We had flipped the horizontal axis of the live action to match the movement of the smoke. This was visually disconcerting to me, and I worried that it might create complications later. I had also added lots of smoke to hide CKs edge and Jonathan opined that it was too much, so I cut back on the final version until there was just enough.

Future changes could include adding “crush hazard” signage to the bottom of the elevator platform. Other hazard signage in various stages of decay could be added to the tanks too, maybe indicating the chemical or gas they contain. The possibility of putting a rocket and gantry in the far back is still intriguing and certainly a large plume of slow moving smoke behind the tanks would be fantastic. Patrick would like to have more glowing cinders on CK’s clothing and hair. There’s also the possibility of shooting the live action again – phew!

Lastly, here’s a list of all the things we let slide. CK’s cigar smoke disappears at the brim of his hat – that’s the border of the roto.  The tanks are not completely masked and bits of the original sky are still visible. The rifle still has it’s crossman BB gun logo on the stock and a casting seam just above. With all the work that goes into a project, knowing what enhancements are trivial and when to stop is key. Having the confidence to allow some things to slide is progress, I think.