VFX HQ: SOLDIER

Banned From The Ranch Entertainment provided 19 effects shots to SOLDIER. For this shot of the spaceship's engines revving up, BFTR was given a single frame of a matte painting-enhanced miniature. BFTR color corrected the plate, created a CG tunnel, zooming fire element, appropriate camera shake, and heat distortion ripples to complete the shot. To see a Quicktime of this shot and the elements that made up the shot, click here.

BFTR also handled three key cockpit shots of the soldiers' departure from the garbage planet's surface. For this shot, BFTR pulled the greenscreens, inserted a background complete with computer generated dust, practically shot miniature dust, and a matte painting background (actually a color-corrected matte painting from Matte World Digital). The three cockpit monitors are BFTR-designed and composited graphics. In addition, each of the three shots contained wild, non-motion control camera moves, which were meticulously tracked.

BFTR designed and composited all of SOLDIER's burn-in computer screens, including this one, where the camera begins fullscreen on the monitor, and pulls back to feature Kurt Russell pointing to a greenscreen-covered monitor, which was later matted out and an appropriate graphic was created and tracked into the shot. To learn more about BFTR's work on the film, go to http://www.bftr.com/Pages/projects/soldier.html.

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