I was hired by Splashlight Studios in NYC as the Technical Director and Visual Effects Supervisor for Ralph Lauren’s virtual runway campaign which premiered at NYC’s Fashion Week and the New York Time. The video was also screened in Times Square on the Jumbotron! I designed and built a chroma key stage as well as a modified chroma key treadmill for the models’ virtual catwalk. We used a motion control camera system to repeat steady camera movements around the models which were then tracked using tracking markers on the studio wall in the background to marry with the virtual background in 3-D space. We recorded the z-space vectors and imported them into Maya to create a rough keyframe for the movement which later had to be hand-refined in Maya. I interfaced with Ralph Lauren’s creative team to ensure we met their branding guide throughout the entire process.

The project required a large VFX team of rotoscoping artists, compositors, 3D asset artists, graphic artists, motion control technicians, camera operators, lighting and grip technicians, and an army of assistants. It was the largest technical project I’ve ever supervised for the film industry and I enjoyed it immensely.