National Geographic’s “Supercoasters”

Finished a series of visual fx shots for the National Geographic Channel’s “Supercoasters,” a documentary by Indigo Films on the possible future of rollercoasters.

In it, we used our digital imagination to speculate a coaster that freefalls from the tallest building in San Francisco, then winds through the city and ends by taking the two arches of the Golden Gate. It was a lot of fun to manipulate fantasy in that familiar landscape and play with these landmarks in this city that I love.

Of course all of this used nothing but high-resolution still photography and my favorite digital technique — camera projection. I’ve assembled a short “making of” clip as well… the segment above is the last few minutes of the documentary, which ends with my sequences of shots.

The fx shots I produced are all the shots of the coaster falling off the Bank of America building (and the helicopter tracking shot showing the BofA building and the skyline) and those of the Golden Gate.

Of course all of these shots look even better in HD. This was my first job finished in full-glory 1080p.

[I hope to add some of the source photography for these shots to the “backlot.” Part of my agreement with Indigo Films to produce these shots was that I’d retain use of their source photography for further use of my own. You never know when you might need to produce an aerial flyover of a city like San Francisco.]