360 DEGREE CROWD PLATES
When the production team for Creed II reached out in need of 360 degree live action crowd plates for the extensive boxing action in the film, we set to work designing a custom array that would guarantee success under some of the most extreme limitations we’d experienced.
The script included multiple boxing matches that occur in multiple locations around the world. The plan was to shoot the actors on a green screen stage in Philadelphia with a small amount of background performers surrounding the ring. The first 2 to 3 rows of audience were captured on stage with the remainder of the crowd filmed as 360 degree environment plates captured at actual championship boxing matches in Los Angeles, New York, and Cardiff UK.
“You’ll only have 2 minutes to get into the ring, shoot the plates and get out. That’s it, 120 seconds and you have to be gone.”
The extreme challenge was fitting the needs of a plate capture shoot into the already jam packed schedule that is a Championship Boxing event. HBO, Showtime, and Skye Sports were very gracious in allowing the film to make use of their crowds (over 78,000 people for the Cardiff event) but the realities of their broadcast schedule meant that we had less than 120 seconds of time to capture all of the plates in each location. This 2 minute window included the time we were allotted to enter and exit the ring with all of our gear.
We knew that the only way to meet this strict requirement was to keep the gear as light as possible to keep the number of crew in the ring as small as possible. We decided to focus on weight and image quality. Thankfully Panasonic had just released the Lumix GH5S 10bit 4k DSLR with the Dual ISO technology that they made famous in the Varicam. The form factor was familiar to us from our extensive use of the GH4 for our driving array. The Micro 4:3 format also allowed us to use the extremely fast Voigtlander 10.5mm T0.95 wide angle lens to capture exceptionally clean footage in the dark venue. We needed to keep the ring lights off to prevent flaring the array, so the dim crowd lighting was the only source of illumination.
In addition to the eight 4k perimeter cameras, we also included a 9th camera on the top of the array shooting through the venerable Entanya MFT250 extreme fisheye lens. This lens when pointed straight up, affords an uninterrupted 360 degree horizontal field of view and a 250 degree vertical field of view.
The array needed to be light enough to be positioned by two crew members inside the ring, with two additional support crew remaining outside the ropes. We also needed the ability to quickly raise it 12 feet in the air to be able to shoot above the ropes in every direction. We built the array itself out of rigid but lightweight plastics and the rigging was achieved with a lighting style combo stand. After many rehearsals prior to the beginning of the boxing match, we were able to shave our setup and strike time to fewer than 35 seconds combined, allowing for almost a minute and a half of plate capture time.
These plates, when combined with a full LIDAR scan of the arenas resulted in extremely believable composites including many shots that pan 360 degrees around the action. The work by Crystal Dowd (VFX Supervisor), Zero VFX, Mr. X, and Crafty Apes was simply stunning.
Even though we have been fortunate enough to contribute to over 2000 productions, we are still excited to see our work on the big screen. It never gets old to sit in a darkened theater and enjoy a good story well told. When we finally had a chance to see Creed II in a theater, we were pleased to see it at the same time as another film we were proud to have shot driving plates for, Bohemian Rhapsody.
