Compositing

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See also compositing (democracy) for the process of combining several motions.
See also Typesetting for the technique of compositing typeset by hand.

In visual effects post-production, compositing refers to creating new images or moving images by combining images from different sources – such as real-world digital video, film, synthetic 3-D imagery, 2-D animations, painted backdrops, digital still photographs, and text.

Compositing techniques, while almost exclusively digital today, can be achieved by many means. On-set in-camera effects have been utilized since the advent of film such as in the 1902 Voyage to the Moon. Optical compositing is the often complex process that requires a optical printer to photographically composite the elements of multiple images onto a single filmstrip. However, since the 1990s, digital techniques have almost completely replaced what was once the only method of post-production compositing.

Compositing is used extensively in modern film and television to achieve effects that otherwise would be impossible or not cost efficient. One common use for compositing is scene or set extension which enables filmmakers to shoot on a relatively small set and create the impression of a significantly different location by adding additional surrounding and foreground imagery. A common tool to help facilitate composites is the bluescreen a backdrop of a uniformly solid color -- usually blue or green -- that is placed behind an actor or object. During compositing, all areas of a frame with that color are removed and replaced, allowing the compositor place the isolated image of the actor or object in front of a separately shot or synthetic background.

In feature film, movies are generally shot on 35mm film. For modern compositing, the film has to be digitized with a film scanner. It is then transferred to a computer where it can be edited. The compositors gather all the separately shot images and, with a compositing platform or software, combine elements of each image to achieve a resultant shot. As a result, a single frame of the finished shot may contain from anywhere between two to many hundreds of images from footage shot months or even years apart.

[edit] Professional Compositing Software

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • T. Porter and T. Duff, "Compositing Digital Images", Proceedings of SIGGRAPH '84, 18 (1984).
  • Ron Brinkmann, The Art and Science of Digital Compositing (ISBN 0-12-133960-2)
  • Steve Wright, Digital Compositing for Film and Video, Second Edition (ISBN 0-240-80760-X)
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