When there were 4 . . .

The gentle polymath Roger Woodburn directed this Ikea commercial in 1995.

IKEA - Keith Chegwin

We did a test . . . well Roger did a test on 35mm - he performed a 'fisticuffs' face off/mock fight with himself, shot in 2 passes on blue screen. I glued the two passes, which very quickly told us 2 things, no . . 3 things. Roger was a good choreographer and performer as well as a humbly awesome director, and interaction could happily be achieved on multiple passes. This was 1995 - 'Multiplicity' the movie was produced in 1996.

This commercial illustrates some minor challenges in the early stages of digital post production where the compositing kit was hardware and - at that moment - could only render 4 layers max at one time.

Quantel Harry was almost in the past - that's someone else's story.

The geeks will be saying "hmmm . .  the camera . . moving is not" - which is a fair comment - however 20 layers on a 4 layer (per render) 2D compositing box that renders like a Russian tractor running on crude, with footage that is Ochre Screen that requires retiming and matte cleanup - was enough.

On this occasion Roger sat beside me as I did the work, entertaining the room in his gentle way. He had an A6 pen and tablet with his laptop. He joked that he was a Mini-Me. Far from it - while I was working on the Flat Pack Oasis commercial Roger was CAD designing the camera mount for a forerunner of the DMS 120s camera motor!