The Fabricated World of The Ring

Near the head of the shot, plate photography of real water blendedinto a virtual lighthouse landscape.

There's no shortage of surreal imagery in the DreamWorks releaseThe Ring, but one of the more challenging visual effects scenesdoesn't appear to have effects at all. A key shot from a helicopter,fully a minute long, takes viewers from above a lighthouse on a ruggedshore and across miles of fields. The shot focuses in on a truck that'sdriving toward a farm where important events will unfold, ending whenthe truck arrives at a barn door. Although shooting this may have beentheoretically possible, in reality the production team never found alighthouse near a farm that would allow director Gore Verbinski toestablish an essential connection between the structures. “Thewhole motif of the movie depended on this relationship,” saysvisual effects supervisor Charles Gibson. “This location isalmost like a character.” So Gibson, also the film's second unitdirector, filmed a lighthouse in Oregon and a farm in Washington. MatteWorld Digital, Novato, Calif., fabricated in 3D the landscape thatconnects lighthouse to farm. “A good example of how mattepainting has moved into the digital age,” says Matte World visualeffects supervisor Craig Barron.

“They [Matte World] started with a simple previz,” saysGibson. “Sort of a top-view strategy map so we could figure outwhat our helicopter approach would be.” On arrival at thelocations, the film crew took measurements and placed cones to serve astracking markers along the helicopter's flight paths. The markers wouldhelp Barron's team recreate the camera move to ‘fly’ overthe virtual landscape they would later add. The pilot, maintainingsimilar speeds and altitudes at both locations, carefully followed thepath of the cones. “The helicopter was like a motion-controlplatform,” says Barron.

Finished composite with rescaled lighthouse.

After completing the plate photography of both the head and the tailsections of the shot, Matte World tackled the invented middle section.Using RealViz's MatchMover software, they tracked the camera move tocreate an unbroken POV. They flew this camera over wire-frame models offields and a road with a CG replica of the truck — all createdwith a Windows NT version of 3ds Max. When they presented aprevisualized version of the shot to Gibson, he said, “Great.Bring it to life.”

Barron's next step was to rent a plane and fly around his localNorthern California terrain, photographing real textures to map ontothe wire-frame landscape. This approach allowed the camera to movethrough 3D space instead of remaining a 2D effect. “We usedreal-world textures instead of computer lighting,” Barronexplains. “We rely on digital artists to create the reality of ascene instead of software to render it. There's so much complexity inthe real world that's not yet addressed in 3D programs.”

A CG telephone pole marks the transition from virtual truck andlandscape to real truck and landscape.

There was a particular challenge to the project. “There aremultiple resolutions going on, and as you fly towards something youhave to make sure it doesn't fall apart,” says Barron.“That's a trick that flight simulators use, although hopefullyours is more realistic.”

Matte World populated its landscape with a variety of strategicallyplaced CG trees, poles, and fences. “[That] helped blur the linebetween reality and matte painting,” says Barron. “Theyprovided dimensional perspective versus just texture maps. The contoursof the maps move in perspective, so it looks like we fly over a cliffand reveal something behind it. These are the visual cues that make youthink you're looking at something that was really photographed from ahelicopter as a continuous shot.”

3D fog creates seamless blend in finished composite.

While the camera follows a CG version of the truck for much of theshot, there comes a point where Matte World transitions from the CG tothe real truck that was photographed. “We thought we'd have to dothe transition over a long dissolve,” says Gibson. “ButMatte World came up with the idea of going behind a telephone pole,which was a great switcheroo.” Barron agrees, “That was funto do. We had to match the contrast and details perfectly, so that whenwe did finally transition to the real truck, it didn't lookphony.”

Matte World also created 3D-CG fog that ebbed and flowed throughoutthe scene. “The nice part about doing this virtual landscape inthe middle of the shot is that we had two dramatically differentlighting conditions for the plate photography,” says Gibson,“and the fog helped create a seamless blend.” The 3D foghelped address the perspective issues involved with an aerial POV.“There's so much perspective in a shot like this,” he says.“You have a flat plain and the verticality of trees and poles.The fog has to react and move in perspective — all axes aremoving at once. The camera is panning, you're looking down and you kindof see all three vanishing points, so there's not really a ‘2Dfake’ that's appropriate.”

Another crucial CG element was the replacement of the photographedlighthouse with a rescaled 3D version. Because the lighthouse needed toexist within Matte World's virtual camera move and also within the 3Dfog, Barron felt a CG version would be easier to integrate and positionfor maximum effect. The CG model was wrapped with photographed texturesfrom the actual building. As a result, the only “real”thing in the opening shot was plate photography of actual water. Barronwas happy to avoid creating surf. “It's computationallyexpensive,” he says. “Besides, shooting something real andthen adding to it is preferable to creating everything fromscratch.”

Matte World composited the final shot using Alias/Wavefront'sComposer running on SGIs. “It required a lot of tweaking to makeit look realistic,” says Barron. “But it's very satisfyingto do such a challenging shot where nobody knows you've doneanything.”

Gore Verbinski - Director
Charlie Gibson - Visual Effects Supervisor/Second UnitDirector
David Nowell - Aerial DP
Chris Anderson - Tracking
For Matte World Digital:
Craig Barron - Visual Effects Supervisor
Chris Stoski - Digital Matte Painter
Glenn Cotter - 3D Artist; Tracking
Darren Mortillaro - 3D Artist
Morgan Trotter - 3D Artist
Todd Smith - Compositor
Mike Root - Software Development