Nike Hyperdunks:Commercial mmercia ommerciaDigital Domain- Clean Up & Compositing

In the begining of June, Mark was once again approached by Digital Domain executive producer, Michael Crapser for a seamingly impossible job. "We've had 7 artists working 5 weeks now, and still do not have anything we can show"

Mark explained"This is a Win Win Situation for me""If I totally crash and burn on this project it means I am as good as 7 of the world's top compositors. However, if I manage to pull this off..."

Presented with this challenge, Mark was determined to finish this job alone.

THE PROBLEM: Plates where shot featuring Kobe Brian playing the children’s game "Cats in the Cradle". At the end on the spot Kobe magically forms the strings into the exact same pattern featured on the sides of his new "Hyperdunks" sneakers. To do this the director shot elastic cord which Kobe just plays with. The initial plan was to supplement the actual cords with 3D cords only at the end of the spot to make the pattern. However, when Nike saw the plates they felt the elastic cords where too thick and did not look right. Therefore, it was determined that the strings had to be painted out of the entire spot and completely replaced with the 3D strings. Complicating the problem was that Kobe’s hands where constantly in front of the camera so anything less than a perfect paint would result in popping and would be extremely visible. This was bad enough, but Nike placed the straw that broke the camels back. Initially the spot was to be created only for the internet on Nike.com. This allowed for many small imperfections to be unseen by the viewers eye. But Nike decided to air the spot in HD during the Olympics Opening Ceremonies.

Mark determined that the previous seven artists failed because they relied on the technology they had available to fix the problem for they. All forms of sparks, programs and 3d trackers brought the artist about 80% of the way but always failed to process perfect results. Mark decided to put on his ipod, got comfortable and just began to paint each frame, as perfectly as possible, frame by frame by hand. "We just have to put in the hours and do it right until it's done. Whatever that takes" Mark they took certain frames and tracked them by hand over patches. This technique of painting and patching eventually resulted in an actual clean plate.

The next challenge came when the 3D came in. All of the string which would need to move through various spatial planes were actually rendered all in only one layer. In addition the 3D did not match the geometry of the hand. Mark had to go and break out each string into different layers, paint out strings that did not match and paint new strings in to make the 3D strings interact perfect with Kobe's hands.

Final frame count 769

Total hours in flame 186

Cigarettes smoked to relieve stress 83

Results PRICELESS