Green Screen

When I originally saw the footage of the girl sitting alone, wind blowing through her hair, I instantly imagined her against a nuclear backdrop!

To my mind came the scene from Terminator 2 (1991), where the character, Sarah Connor has a nightmare!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR_midwZ2f0

My intention was to modify the 3D park I had created for another project, but in the end,I thought that would be cheating...

I had a faint idea of how I wanted to do this, and I thought instead of doing the whole background in 3Ds max, I would only do some elements in this program, and the rest would be photos pulled from the world wide web. These would later be manipulated via Photoshop.

I wanted to create a realistic nuclear blast, or attempt one for my scene, so for this I 'googled' a tutorial. This is what I found...

http://www.the123d.com/tutorial/3dsmax3/explode01.shtml

...plus some video tutorials:

Part 1/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT4qlFZDumo&feature=fvw

Part 2/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlYCRRTWyo&feature=related

Part 3/4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wNetV01fU&feature=related

Part 4/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPUkI_6yPSk&feature=related

Following these instructions, I 'attempted' my own version of a nuclear blast. Beginning from this...

...I went to this.

Once the animation was complete, I had to put the Nuclear blast against a background.

Searching through some online images, I found a picture of Barcelona. I adjusted it slightly, then imported it into After Effects.

I placed the animation of the blast on top of the city, then importing an image of a rooftop, I brought it into the foreground.

Playing with effects such as matte choker, hue/saturation and masks, I completed the scene.

If I had more time, I would adjust the lighting and masks more, so the shot is more believable.

On that note...I know Nuclear blasts don't have a 'flash' after the 'cloud', but I wanted to end the scene with the city being obliterated!

Again, if I had more time, I would have created a whole city scene in 3Ds Max, then animated the buildings thrown through the air as the force of the blast pushes them away!!!


References
Terminator 2, 1991. Film. Directed by James CAMERON. USA: TriStar Pictures

VANHOENACKER, J., 2002. Animated Nuclear Explosion Tutorial. [online]. The 123d.com. Available at:
http://www.the123d.com/tutorial/3dsmax3/explode01.shtml
[Accessed 16 January 2010].

YOUTUBE., 2008. Mushroom cloud 3ds max tutorial 1/4. [online]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT4qlFZDumo&feature=fvw
[Accessed 16 January 2010].

YOUTUBE., 2008. Mushroom cloud 3ds max tutorial 2/4. [online]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlYCRRTWyo&feature=related
[Accessed 16 January 2010].

YOUTUBE., 2008. Mushroom cloud 3ds max tutorial 3/4. [online]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wNetV01fU&feature=related
[Accessed 16 January 2010].

YOUTUBE., 2008. Mushroom cloud 3ds max tutorial 3/4. [online]. Available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPUkI_6yPSk&feature=related
[Accessed 16 January 2010].

YOUTUBE., 2008. Nuclear Nightmare (Terminator 2). [online]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR_midwZ2f0
[Accessed 16 January 2010].


- Nick