Our team created a 1.20 minute long, fully CG, opening sequence for Disney’s adaptation of the Holiday classic, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.
For this grand opening sequence, we merged the Walt Disney Pictures logo with an animated Christmas postcard showing a bird’s eye view of 19th Century Victorian London. Using archives as reference, and Geo Terrain Data as a base, we created a point cloud scene in order to build an exact replica of London and key landmarks. The landscape enfolds over a wide range of terrain and environments, from an iced-over Thames River with skaters, to Christmas markets, traditional paved and brick streets, snowball fights, Santa Claus parades and carollers.
We designed the FX snow in stereo to make the audience feel the snowflakes coming towards them. As the camera comes closer to the buildings, a series of different rooms are visible, created with props and crowds in order to deliver more detail and realism. We lit and comped the shot using deep methodology for holdouts, depth of field, grading and stereo. From the owl in flight to horse-driven carriages, our artists created more than 1200 props and buildings and over 2600 crowd to bring to life the 2700-frames shot, which we delivered in stereo, pushing the limits to the extremes of both our technologies and our artists.
Client
DIRECTORS
Lasse Hallström
Joe Johnston
PRODUCTION STUDIO
The Mark Gordon Company
DISTRIBUTOR
Walt Disney Pictures
OVERALL VFX SUPERVISOR
Max Wood (MPC)
OVERALL VFX PRODUCER
Marc Weigert
Rodeo FX Crew
VFX SUPERVISOR
Martin Lipmann
VFX PRODUCER
Mélanie La Rue
CG SUPERVISOR
Alexandre Ménard
COMPOSITING SUPERVISOR
Brandon Blevins
ANIMATION SUPERVISOR
Alexandre Ronco