X MEN Nightcrawler

[JSFILMZ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOMdddg11A
How do you guys think they accomplished this effect? Especially at 0:50 where the camera is pushing in. Do you thinkg nightcrawler was CGI for that shot? Or was he greenscreened in. I kno t easy to do this when the camera is on a tripod but what if its moving? I checked the bts but nada.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Motion tracking is pretty straightforward these days. If they were smart about it they likely used an encoder tripod head and dolly to just positional indicators so that a clean plate could be shot without the actor as well.

Back in the day this stuff was a real pain. The ending of Die Hard had a wide shot from outside the building with a tilt down from the still-burning roof to the vehicles and people on the street below. The shot was done by a handheld camera on a cherry picker crane that was booming down. They later decided to enhance the burning practical effect with some matted in elements, and the only way to track the movement was to project the image onto a large wall frame by frame and manually mark tracking references using pencils and rulers. Must have been mind-numbing, but today it can all be automated in a fairly standard tracking/compositing program.

 

[nyvz]

There are a number of possible approaches. But yeah probably shot on steadicam with stuntmen and wires and added nightcrawler in post in some of the shots where he disappears. It's pretty easy to add 3D elements to a shot with a moving camera if you run the shot/plate through camera tracking software to add that camera movement to your 3D scene. It's also possible they used motion control which would allow them to easily use more practical elements and not have to do much 3D character work for nightcrawler and just composite several different takes together of him coming from different directions and only have to do any 2d/3d work for the blue cloud effect.

 

[Michael Carter]

Motion control has come a lonnnnnng way. Watch an episode of "Orphan Black". The actress says when the show airs, she can never remember which parts are her and which are the stand-in. They do an amazing job on that show.