Cinesite Works Some Of Its Own Magic On Practical Magic

October 23, 1998 HOLLYWOOD

The line between reality and witchcraft is gossamer in PRACTICAL MAGIC where a ghost appears to emanate from the body of one of the characters and seamlessly interacts with the people in that scene. The illusion was orchestrated by Visual Effects Supervisor John Scheele who chose Cinesite to execute these and other visual effects shots for the Warner Bros. film.PRACTICAL MAGIC is based on Alice Hoffman's novel, directed by Griffin Dunne. It features Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters who are bona fide witches. The story is a lighthearted depiction of the trials and tribulations of a family of modern-day witches who live in a small town on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. While it is not a visual effects-intensive film, the story requires realistic depictions of phenomena that required deft digital effects sleight of hand.

"We were there at the storyboarding stage and were able to work with John Scheele from the beginning," says Cinesite Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Riddle. "That led to the creation of more believable and cost-effective visual effects."

In one supernatural sequence, a spirit or ghost (played by newcomer Goran Visnjic) appears to physically emanate from the body of Nicole Kidman's character as other characters observe in perplexity.

"We wanted this presence to look abnormal and ghostly without rehashing the clich»s of previous movie ghosts," says Riddle. "There were a lot of motifs in the production based on antiques and that motivated the ghostly look. We treated the character as a type of old photograph, a Daguerreotype."

Riddle explains that the character portraying the ghost was filmed in front of a green screen on an interior set. The actors [Kidman, Bullock and Aidan Quinn], who interact closely with the ghost, were also filmed in front of the same screen. The separate elements were digitized and composited into a single set of images.

"The characters and ghosts really appear to interact," says Riddle. "They seem to make eye to eye contact, and that was no accident. Since the other principals were photographed with Goran, the scene plays more convincingly than if they had been shot separately. The green screen work and background plate was filmed by (cinematographer) Andrew Dunn (BSC) so there is a consistency in lighting and overall look."

The artifacts associated with aging photographsăshifts in color, surface imperfectionsăwere created by digital artists at Cinesite and applied by means of proprietary motion tracking software. The software allows the cinematographer to use the same camera motion techniques while filming elements of effects shots and live-action photography.

In a similar, but even more complex sequence, the ghost-like character returns, only this time in the form of a cloud of dust.

"We have a character who essentially breaks up into particles as he moves," Riddle says. "We can see his detail but it's changing and moving constantly, which is about the most complex form he could have taken from our standpoint."

The Cinesite team created a CGI model of Goran using Maya 3-D software, which enabled them to map the image of the actor to the model. Riddle says that a combination of RenderMan software and digital artistry was used to color and shade the resulting object.

"For a scene that called for the family of witches to fly over a gathering of townspeople, we had an SGI workstation running Maya on location which we used to create rough 3D animatics," he says. "We shot the animatics right off the computer screen with a digital video camera and showed them to Griffin, Andrew and anyone else who needed to more clearly understand what we were attempting. The video camera cost approximately $2500, and I think it paid for itself in about five minutes."

- Press release from the Cinesite site