Digital Pictures Strikes a Chord with Delta

Digital Pictures Sydney recently completed work on Delta Goodrem's latest music video, Not me, Not I. Based on a director's treatment by Director, Michael Spiccia, the new music video visually evokes the emotion of lost love.
A combination of sets, locations and visual effects were used to create the fairytale world in which the video is set. Whilst the various elements of the scenery were designed so as not to detract from Delta Goodrem's performance, elements such as the old crumbling house, the overgrown garden and the surreal pond create a strong backdrop.
Digital Pictures assembled a world class team to bring this make-believe location to life including VFX Supervisor, David Booth, Lustre Colourist, Warren Lynch and Lead Compositor, Tim Davies.
According to VFX Supervisor, David Booth, Delta Goodrem's 'Not Me Not I' video clip was an opportunity for Digital Pictures to address the style and technique of grading and compositing in a different way.
The creative process started with Michael James' matte painting elements and Fear of Denim editor, James Littlemore's offline edit and began to unfold as the Digital Pictures team assembled and composited all the scenes. All factors of the grade were adjustable with Digital Pictures' new Lustre colour grading system, the latest tool in its digital grading armoury.
The Lustre grades by using its tracking and isolation tools. This delivered an enormous level of creative flexibility to the director and provided him with the full range and palette required to create the music video's important visual look.
Tim Davies, the Lead Compositor on the project says his team's challenge was to make a fairytale environment look as realistic as possible.
"It was an enjoyable job to work on, creating entire environments from scratch for Delta to fit within," says Davies. "We achieved the end result by combining matte paintings, live action elements and set extensions, together with Deltas' performance, shot against green screen. This was all put together in our HD Inferno. We replaced matte painting clouds with real time-lapse clouds and then twinkling stars and essentially graded her into our environment to look as if it was all shot in camera. The success of the clip was achieved by seamless compositing and pure art direction."
According to Michael Spiccia, "I have a background as a designer so I tend to be quite ambitious with my vision. Often it means that I don't necessarily get the results I envisaged. This was absolutely not the case this time - I got everything I wanted. It was a pleasure to see something you dream of unfold in front of your eyes."
The production's tight timeline could have been a Producer's nightmare but according to Michelle Trembath all of the elements came together seamlessly, so much so the video clip was screened on national television within hours of its completion.
"It's been a pleasure to work with the Digital Pictures' team, I found them to be the most dedicated team I have worked with. Nothing was ever too difficult for them and I can't wait to work with them again," she commented.

Credits

• Release Date: 15th September 2003
• Production Company: Reputable Films Pty Limited
• Director: Michael Spiccia
• Producer: Michelle Trembath
• Fear of Denim: James Littlemore, Michael James, Stephanie Anderson, Kim Greenway, Craig Deeker
• Editor/ 2nd Unit Director: James Littlemore
• Matte Painter: Michael James
• Illustrators: Stephanie Anderson, Kim Greenway
• Technical Supervisor: Craig Deeker
• VFX Supervisor: David Booth
• VFX Producer: Naomi Mitchell
• Lead Compositor: Tim Davies
• Compositors: Chris Leaver, Adam Watson, Soren Dyne
• Colourist/Grading, Lustre: Warren Lynch
• Rushes: Scott Harris
• Re-stripe: Sound Reservoir, Boyd Moore

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