Frantic Films Uses RealViz's ReTimer to Make Time Stand Still in "Swordfish".

San Francisco, CA (July 31, 2001--REALVIZ, a leading developer ofimage-processing software announced today that ReTimer was used by thedigital artists at Frantic Films to build the incredible openingsequence for Warner Bros' "Swordfish".

Swordfish is the latest film from producers Joel Silver and JonathanKrane, directed by Dominic Sena, starring John Travolta, Halle Berryand Hugh Jackman. The 42-second frozen-time sequence opening theaction-thriller has been wowing audiences worldwide since itstheatrical release in June of 2001.

Swordfish stars John Travolta as Gabriel Shear, a dangerous spy whotogether with his beautiful partner Ginger, played by Halle Berry isattempting to pull off a high-tech bank heist. Hugh Jackman stars asStanley Johnson, a world-leading hacker enlisted by the pair to helppull off a cyber-crime cracking into an airtight security system.Gabriel and Ginger lure Stanley into their clandestine world, and onceStanley enters their world, he realizes that nothing in the operationis what it seems and he has become a pawn in a plot that's a lot moresinister than a high-tech bank robbery.

Winnipeg, Canada-based Frantic Films worked closely with the film'svisual effects supervisor, Boyd Shermis to build the impressive open.Frantic Films Effects Supervisor Chris Bond, and 2D Lead Artist MikeShand went to Los Angeles in the pre-production phase of the film towork on the pre-visualization of the shot. The pre-visualizationincluded an engineered break-down of the shot, including measurements,location of scene objects and placement of cameras to ensure asuccessful shoot. Frantic Films was also selected by the production tocomplete the digital effects in the final version of this sequence.

In the opening sequence, the camera follows a girl as she entersinto an intersection, and explodes. The moment of the explosion isfrozen in time as the camera navigates through the haunting stillnessof over 500 elements of debris, shattered glass, people, police carsand buildings. The exterior shot was created using 134 35mm stillcameras that were timed to go off with the action during the shoot, 45cameras were used for the interior.

Frantic Films' Chris Bond explains: "For all of the exteriorphotography in the shot, we had to slow down 134 frames to 400 framesper second‹and for everything shot inside of the coffee shop, wehad to add in-between frames to convert a 45 frame per second shot to102 frames per second. There were approximately two new frames that hadto be generated between each camera shot; however, because of the waythat the cameras were curved in the scene, some instances required asmany as seven synthetic in-between frames to be created usingReTimer."

Mike Shand worked as the 2D Lead artist on the shot at FranticFilms. "We had to slow down the shot significantly, and do a massiveinterpolation of literally hundreds of frames," he said. "Once eachelement was stabilized and color corrected, we used ReTimer to generatethe in-between frames for most of the full frame elements and some ofthe stunt men. ReTimer was also used for object removal. In one case asingle camera from the array was partially blocked by a city streetlight. To remove it, we took the frame from the camera before it andthe camera after it and retimed them to create a perfect in-betweenthat would replace the original unusable image. Using the sametechnique we were able to replace many dropped or over-exposed framesfrom the camera array."

"ReTimer was also used to generate vector tracked motion blur formany of the elements. This was very useful because the source footagefrom the camera array contained no motion blur as the cameras werestationary. Motion blur in some of the CG particle clouds was alsoachieved this way to cut down on rendering time. This is a crucial shotin the film and we relied heavily on ReTimer to complete itsuccessfully," concluded Shand.

About Frantic Films
Frantic Films is one of Canada's leading producers of creativeanimation and visual effects for film and television. Founded in 1997,Frantic has experienced tremendous growth and critical acclaim.

About REALVIZ
REALVIZ, based in Sophia Antipolis, France, with U.S. headquarters inSan Francisco, CA, is a leader in 2D image processing and 3Dimage-based modeling software for computer graphics professionals infilm, broadcast,gaming and multimedia. For more information, pleasecontact (415) 615-9800 or email realviz.usa@realviz.com.