The vfx wizards at Weta Digital in New Zealand relied heavily on Autodesk’s Discreet Lustre system to digitally color grade Universal Pictures’ King Kong, which opens worldwide today. Since lighting and color were identified early on as key aspects of the film, the Autodesk solution ended up influencing the entire creative process, according to Weta.
Commenting on Lustre, King Kong‘s senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri notes, ‘We used it to grade at the front end, before the computer-generated elements were added, and also at the very end of our pipeline to grade the final images. As the elements came in, the Lustre system helped us work out the look for complex environments like Skull Island and 1933 New York.”
Weta Digital installed five Discreet Lustre systems, giving the artists ample room to explore numerous options for the film’s look. Since director Peter Jackson and his fellow filmmakers knew they had control and flexibility in the digital grading post-production phase, they had more freedom during filming. For example, there was no waiting for the ‘magic hour’ since lighting for scenes shot at various times of day could later be corrected to achieve the desired effect.
“Establishing the right look and feel for King Kong was an essential part of the storytelling,’ says supervising digital colorist Dave Cole. ‘We achieved this with the Discreet Lustre system. This extremely powerful tool made it possible for the film to appear realistic, yet stylized.’
Autodesk today launched a micro-site for its contributions to King Kong. The page can be accessed at www.autodesk.com.
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