A World and a Heart Split in Two
Chris Martin writes this deeply personal ballad about the pain of losing a life partner and how it feels as though your world is ripped in two. An emotional mitosis of sorts. Dave Meyers, the director, had some great photographic inspirational reference and concept art which we fleshed out into a story of breakup and loss and finally acceptance. We worked on 22 shots from pre-production through comp. Tippett Studio worked on the sequence featuring the “winding stairs of emotional confusion”, and we picked up the animation as they jump from the stairs.
- Studio
- Client
- Role
- MOD-Creations
- Coldplay & Selena Gomez
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CG Supervisor/lead
Previs
Animation
Lighting
Comp
There was considerable rig removal, roto, and paint work done to prepare the blue screen plates for animation. In some cases footage was animated on planes and turned into animated cards in compositing. There were definitely a few shots that required some creative solutions. Because the final output was greyscale, we could take advantage of colorizing certain elements to help isolate them later on in the process. Above, you can see green atmospheric fog and a red cloud volume we used for one of the shots.
Under the Hood
Keeping it Simple
Until we purchase a world class supercomputer, we have to use simplified geometry to stand in for complex geometry. Graphic cards can only load so many polygons until everything slows to a crawl. This project was the poster child for the Redshift proxy workflow.
