Bluescreen Compositing

Introduction

1

I was seven years old when Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews danced with animated penguins in Mary Poppins, and I remember being obsessed with how the movie magic of combining live characters with animation had been accomplished. My father came up with some oversimplified explanation of the movie magic—one that kept me happy for the moment. A few years later, I was fascinated with the special effects in the Star Trek television series, effects that now seem so hokey and even quaint, but which at the time seemed quite amazing. But it was a movie thirteen years later and set in another galaxy that really set my head spinning about special effects. That movie, of course, was Star Wars, and unless you lived through the dismal cinema ...