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Segement Title: Kung Fu Hustle

Plot Summary

Chinese townspeople with secret Kung Fu powers fight an Axe Gang, and the Beast, and hilarity ensues.

The Effect

The scene is two of the characters are moving faster than everything else in the scene, ala Road Runner, on a dirt road, and then one of them has to slide under a truck while still running really fast. The other character jumps over the bus and turns in midair in slow motion. They kick up fake dust as they are running, and seem to float on the ground.

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How We Think it Was Done

List possible ways you think the effect was done.

Initially we thought they just added bluring to the legs. They were filmed running in front of green/blue screen, and then composited into the scene.
For him going under a truck they could have interpolated between him running standing up to him laying down and moving his legs.

Another way the scene might have been done would be to composite multiple plates of them running and overlay them, similar to the Agents Movement in the Matrix but with their legs instead of their torso and arms.

How It Was Actually Done

It was actually done by the people wearing blue stockings in front of a blue screen. Then they composited a road runner effect over their legs, by using Cg leg models and then applying motion blur to the models. The knives sticking in the guy however are actual props. Though when he uses the knive as a rear view mirror we imagine they used a Cg model.
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When the guy is running under the truck, they put him on a rotating disc and had some people in blue suits turn the disc, and used a fan to blow wind on him so it looks like he is still going fast.
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Alternate Ways of Doing the Effect

Describe ways that the effect could have been better/more simply done using current technology.

They could have composited the person running on multiple takes and blured these together the effect would have looked more believable. This could have possibly taken less time if they had put the person in a harness so that their waist would not move, just the legs so they would only need one take with the arm motion and then could have just used the leg motion on the other takes.

For the running under the truck, like suggested eariler they could have taken advantage of better interpolation methods for motion and just taken a video of him running upright, and one of him "running" while laying on his side and used an interpolation effect to make it look like he turned sideways while still running.

How This Applies to Our Project

We might do a similar cartoon effect, but we're still not decided on exactly what we want to do.