Another movie that Rob has worked on, and one that is the subject of this training DVD data disc, is the visually impressive film Priest. In the five-chapter video running 91 minutes in length, Creating Highly Realistic Composites, Rob talks about some of the techniques used to create the look and feel of the elevator scene in Priest. Specifically, the subject that continues to be covered is that when compositing, it is very important to make things 'feel' real, instead of making them necessarily 100% physically accurate.
Topics covered in Creating Highly Realistic Composites include lighting, particles, and atmosphere, as well as the subtleties of parallax and other tips for compositors. He covers some of the color correction techniques that he uses, and goes into some of the additional lighting and glow effects that he uses. As he states in the video, he heavily references Blade Runner and the effects of its time.
Rob does go into some Nuke scripts and demonstrates the reasoning behind some of the techniques he used. Of these, I had a mixed reaction. On one hand, it was nice to see some of the methodologies in the thought process that goes into creating a visually interesting shot like the lift scene, but I also was a bit disappointed to not have a more in-depth look at the Nuke scripts in general. On top of that, it would have been nice to get some files to work with, although I do absolutely understand that the rights to distributing elements of the shot would be hard to come by.
Creating Highly Realistic Composites is an interesting Gnomon DVD, and the quality of the video was outstanding. Rob did a fine job of presenting, and will hold your interest if you have any interest in compositing or the behind the scenes look of Hollywood films.
Please note that Creating Highly Realistic Composites is a DVD data disc that will only play on a computer. It will not play in a standard DVD player.
