A series of VFX shots I did for the short film “The Dark Mountain”. The director wanted to remove the sky and other taller mountains in this shot and replace it with a more dreamlike, mystical backdrop. I created the new sky and mountains using a combination of Photoshop and After Effects. The tracking was achieved using a mix of Mocha Pro and SynthEyes. The roto on this took quite a while as it’s a very detailed, organic shape.
As well as the matte painting work, I also was asked to deal with a particularly difficult VFX fix on one of the shots. The shot was framed too far to the right, so you couldn’t really see the background with the horse on the left (which was important for narrative purposes). We could replace the background completely as we did have a clean plate of just the horse on the hill. However, extending the shot left was complicated by the fact the foreground actor went over the edge of frame, so I had to digitally rebuild and paint in his left side and match the organic natural motion. I was pretty happy I pulled this one off!
Film: The Dark Mountain (2020)
Director: Andrew Richardson
Online, Grade and Sound Mix by Onsight
