Pittsburgh, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/19/2013 -- PHYX Incorporated, maker of world-class visual effects software recently announced that its software was used in the production of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, directed by Adam McKay and starring Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Christina Applegate, and Paul Rudd.
Todd A. Marks has supervised the video playback on over 30 feature films including: FLIGHT, The Internship, Team America, Blades of Glory, Constantine, The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, Hall Pass, Abduction, Deep Impact, The Lost World:Jurassic Park, and the upcoming Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
Todd and Jeb Johenning explain: "I had worked with Will Farrell on a few films before this one, but I had never worked with Adam McKay. He was a great director; very appreciative and complementary of all the hard work my team did. We surpassed his expectations many times throughout the project, and he was thrilled".
"For Anchorman 2, a key point in the script was the creation of a 24 hour news channel. This meant that in the movie everywhere a TV monitor was seen, we needed to create unique, believable, original content.
To do this we created dozens of believable International "News Feeds" of on-air newscasters from around the world. Our team created this content by video recording many different actors dressed in vintage 80's wardrobe, placed in front of a green screen background. We placed the GS background indoors and outside for different lighting effects. We then assembled 30 or 40 vintage, standard definition, stock footage of international landmarks to to use as background plates.
To make this look believable, we used PHYX products. PHYX KEYER tools enabled us to create instant composites of our Actors. PHYX CLEANER helped match the look of the standard definition BG with the high definition foreground. This helped us standardize and cleanup the look of the footage so that our final composites looked more believable. Finally, PHYX DEFOCUS gave us the appropriate depth of field to our footage. PHYX simplified a normally tedious job.
We used PHYX on almost every composite to separate the "newscaster" from the "scene" he was reporting on, such as standing in front of the Taj Mahal".
"Green screens are commonplace on film sets so there not much reaction to that technology. What was cool, was being able to place an actor dressing in "period" clothing and drop him in front of a background from around the world, and make it look believable. PHYX made that possible for us within the tight shooting schedule we had".
PHYX plugins are compatible with: Apple Final Cut Pro (7 & X), Apple Motion, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Premiere Pro.
PHYX visual effects software is the industry standard and is used by major corporations including: Apple, the Walt Disney Company, Fox Sports, and Sony Music Entertainment.
To learn more about PHYX and their products, visit the website: http://www.PHYXWARE.com.
The FxFactory installer can be found at: http://fxfactory.com/download/
To schedule a press briefing or request a product review; please contact Andy Tallent at:
PHYX Incorporated
Andy Tallent
(e) andy (at) phyx.biz