The Situation
The opening of the movie consisted of a dramatic scene where the Cullen family is hunting for food. The scene starts off with a deer in the forest that darts off through the trees after it realizes its being hunted. Edward Cullen then surprises the deer from behind a tree and takes it down. The scene evolved from the pre-production t o the post-production phase, and as a result needed to be completely fabricated to bring the directors vision to life.
How we thought about it
The focus of this shot was the moment of impact, where Edward hits and takes down the deer. We had footage of a deer jumping over a log into an opening, and we had footage of Edward jumping from behind a tree. We had to marry the two clips to create one consistent and dramatic opening film moment. Our company brainstormed a method for achieving this. We created previs that used morphing techniques to imitate the impact. Although effective, the shot still was missing some 3D deformations. We decided to create a 3D deer, and animate it through and after the moment of impact, and composite it into the shot.
Results
The efforts of our team created a dramatic opening to the movie that fulfilled the directors vision, in effect was to grabbing the audience and thrusting them into the world of the Cullen Family.