The goal for Adidas Carry was to create the illusion of Kevin Garnett effortlessly bearing a throng of people upon his back. The shoot was broken into two parts. In the first, Garnett was filmed walking around downtown Los Angeles wearing a rig which allowed us to determine his motion relative to the camera. I worked with CG artist James LeBloch to create a pipeline in which we tracked and inverted this motion using Boujou and Maya, and then exported movements to a motion control camera operated by George Hladky of GoMoCo. For the second round of shooting, we filmed stationary rigs with extras and stunt people hanging from them. James and I also created a process by which we could preview the results of this stage shoot composited over the original footage using clips supplied to us by the on-set video assist. The real finesse came from Flame artists animating the foreground plates to match the subtleties of Garnett’s motion.

Above are some stills showing the original photography of Kevin Garnett, followed by the corresponding element from the stage shoot, followed by the final result.

These are some QuickTimes showing me wearing the rig, with an otherwise stationary box composited over top to test the process.