In the sneak peek at the end-of-the-world movie 2012, there's a part that shows the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel cracking right through Michaelangelo's well-known fresco painting depicting a man reaching out to a bearded Godlike figure. The splitting ceiling special effect is just a few seconds long and seems convincing, but the cinematic magic loses it's charm the closer you look.If you notice in the two frozen frames, the cracks were obviously laid over the footage or still picture using graphics software. Notice how in the second picture below, that a small portion of the blue outline at the middle-bottom part has been "accidentally" erased when the advancing cracks were being added. Look carefully by comparing the two screen caps and you'll see it. The erasure can actually be seen moving along with the crack in the trailer.
Computer-generated cracking effects are funny in how they are sometimes laid over a scene carelessly with little regard for lighting and how the surrounding visual elements are affected. More often that not, they are simply colored stark black, when in fact, they wouldn't really look that way in reality. Because of the quick editing, mistakes in such graphic effects like those used in the 2012 movie are not obvious. In fact, a lot of the effects you will see in this movie are superb, in spite of the reported budget cut on the movie.
See the 2012 solar eclipse special effects mistake here.
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1 comment:
The blue outline of the painting was not erased. If you look carefully, the plaster is buckling up like a bubble, causing the fresco to distort as the surface rises. It's an incredibly realistic effect. The painting was no doubt surface mapped to a 3D model, which then was broken and cracked in 3D using programmed algorithms. The cracks were not simply painted on in Photoshop or something.
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