The SpheroCam HDR takes as little as 15 seconds to get light-map information that can be used to create the lighting in a CG scene, and about five minutes to get additional data about reflections in the scene that can be applied to the CG objects to enhance their realism.

Bennett’s camera on the shoot was a Mitchell-Fries that was part of the motion-control rig. The lens was a Zeiss Variable Prime, but he didn’t zoom it. He also shot a lot of digital stills with his Canon D60 so that artists at RhinoFX could study details of the environment.

On all of his jobs, Bennett shoots digital stills with the Canon, color-corrects the images in Adobe Photoshop, and sends them to the colorist at the lab. He admits that it’s a challenge to keep colors consistent because monitors are calibrated differently, but to make his color correction more accurate, he chooses a neutral gray desktop for his laptop computer. “If you color-correct against a blue background like the default Apple desktop, the colors get torqued,” he explains. “But gray is like the neutral walls of a telecine suite. The still photographer Douglas Kirkland turned me on to that technique.”

Once the shoot was over, the artists at RhinoFX took over, and Matin spent his time sitting with three or four animators, each taking on one transition. “We just had to try out possibilities,” says Matin. “Every day, we tried new ideas until something worked, and then we would finalize that.” He says that the agency, Carmichael Lynch, was very cooperative. “Typically we create something, make it look good, and then show it to the agency. But on this project, we had to keep the agency involved from the previsualization to the end so that they could give us approvals at the earliest point possible. We knew we couldn’t risk one change, because it would have had an avalanche effect.”

Matin’s own background is in CG lighting, which he says has made him very picky about how it’s done. He is also well aware of the limitations of CG, and the need for it to be given a definite direction on each job. “CG by itself is cold, sterile,” he says. “But CG based on film elements has a lot more to it.” He stresses that it’s important for CG artists to know and incorporate the aesthetics of cinematography and other visual arts. “The principles I apply are the same ones a cinematographer would use on set. Whenever cinematographers come into RhinoFX, we ask, ‘How would you approach something like this?’”

On “Transformations,” Matin was happy to work with a cinematographer of Bennett’s caliber and experience, but he was also concerned about how Bennett would respond to the CG translation of his work. The cinematographer says he is pleased with the results: “They very accurately used my lighting design to illuminate the objects moving around in the spot — they had to, because it was all evolving toward my real objects!” In the end, he adds, “Transformations” met the expectations raised by an early conversation he had with Matin, who brushed aside the complicated technology they would need to use and explained the spot by comparing it to Transformer toys. “The best spots are essentially simple, but very complex,” says Bennett.