Macs and Pixel Magic’s Commotion software helped drive “Driven,” the summer racing flick written by and starring Sylvester Stallone.
According to a promotion for Commotion 4, with three weeks remaining in the post-production schedule, Pixel Magic embarked on 12 “intense” visual effects shots for the film. There wasn’t a lot of time to “create” a needed massive car pileup in Detroit for the film. The sequence required computer generated (CG) cars, smoke, debris, and wreckage. Every background plate for the sequence required massive amounts of rotoscoping, painting, and motion tracking.
Patrick Murphy was the lead artist handling the rotoscoping and paint tasks for “Driven.” He chose to work with Commotion and Macs.
“Having just made the transition to the Mac platform from Quantel and Discreet Logic systems,” Murphy said. “I was nervous that many of the tools required for such an undertaking, would not be available. Furthermore, given the number of shots and the tight schedule, I was very concerned about speed as well as the curve associated with learning Commotion.”
However, the software was quickly mastered. Running Commotion on his Macs, Murphy got the results the film needed. (Thanks to MacCentral reader, Ronald Leppke, for the heads-up on this story.)