Visual Effects Supervisor: Michael Shelton Production Company: Capitive Audience Productions, LA Studio: Sony Pictures Director: Scott Derrickson Before Captive Audience started the 187 visual effects shots they had to work on for The Exorcism of Emily Rose, they knew they would be doing the complex digital make-ups exclusively on the project and were looking for tracking solutions that didn't really exist at the time. With this in mind Michael Shelton, Visual Effects Supervisor, started looking for a partner to help with the project and found The Pixel Farm. "I felt that Pixel Farm is a company that has vision and is accessible for collaboration. The fact that they offer to work with you and are always available to help shows a belief in their product and an understanding of how things work in the real world." Emily Rose was shot in a very hand held style to add to the frenetic pace of the exorcism scenes which wreaked havoc once it came time to tracking shots. The flexibility and comprehensive toolset of PFTrack allowed the team to quickly find a solution to even the most difficult shots. Starting by plugging in the on-set camera data and then doing an optical flow track because of the amount of motion blur caused by constant whip panning they wound up pasting together several tracking passes to get what we needed. The other issues faced were the fact that there was rarely a clean plate so removing tracking markers would become a more involved process that we didn't have time for. The ability to refine the solution within PFTrack and resolve tracks quickly meant the large number of shots required were completed without the need to spend ages cleaning plates up after the work was completed "Pixel Farm is a very accessible company, which is important when you are trying to push the product in different directions. They have great support which can make or break a project Try getting an Engineer on the phone from a 3D software company!" Shelton added. Captive Audience is best known for Academy Award and Emmy winning make-up effects and for technical achievements (Academy Award 2005-the first ever given for make up) in the field of make up technologies. The digital division was created for The Passion of The Christ to help facilitate the films seamless effects requirements. Building on those technical achievements the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose provided an excellent opportunity to further develop our hybrid approach to achieving full digital make up. Because of our body of work Captive Audience is fortunate to have access to quality projects that continue to drive our development and are currently in heavy R&D on an upcoming film that will employ the widest use of digital make up ever used. They are currently exploring new technologies with The Pixel Farm and looking forward to what is to come. www.captiveauienceproductions.com Words: Martin Southwood