After having successfully completed roto for producer Jonathan Stone and Digital Effects Supervisor Luke McDonald at The Syndicate on two Lincoln spots we got a call from Steve Dellerson at their sister company Cafe FX for some new, difficult and time critical shots on Ironman. After our last experience with both Jonathan and Luke had worked out so well, we were very eager to work with them again and were introduced to producer Magdalena Wolf with whom we established a great working report.

There were a total of 33 shots which got cut down to 16 given the extreme short turn around of the schedule. Of these there were two sequences of shots both containing Pepper Pots' (Gwynneth Paltrow) hair against a bright window environment in which the BG would need to be replaced. One in Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) living room as she spoke with Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb) and the other in Tony Starks office with Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). The 2400 frames of roto and keying required roughly 80+ mandays of work but there was only a two and half week schedule as the compositors needed time to create and compose the new BG's as well.

In both sequences careful attention had to be observer in generating mattes for Pepper's hair given the wispy and translucent nature of it against the bright background. Some shots were only 75 frames long but others were real killers at 334 frames long.

On many of the shots which were just close-up or medium shots of Pepper talking or looking at the computer monitor we were able to get into a good routine and turn around mattes quickly, but on some of the longer shots where Pepper would move and walk across the entire set or walk directly to camera the amount of shape changes in her outline required simple brute force roto and this is where we established a collaboration with Cafe FX Senior Compositor Stephen Wilson to deliver mattes precisely the way he needed them. We would like to give Stephen a special thanks for his attention to detail and a fantastic set of eyeballs. Stephen had alot of experience with hair on "300" and his expertise was invaluable. We also would like to thank Magdalena Wolf for a project well managed and Steve Dellerson for the opportunity to work again Cafe FX's excellent crew it was a wonderful experience and a fun movie!