Painting out a Passenger

How trick digital Made Burt reynolds sit next to himself in a scene From smokey and the Bandit For the last Movie star

1. Original frame

The frame from the original 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit features actress Sally Field riding next to actor Burt Reynolds. Ultimately, the present-day Reynolds, playing ageing movie star Vic Edwards, would be composited by Trick Digital to sit next to his younger self.

2. Roto

“We used Fusion Studio to rotoscope Sally out of the shot,” explains Trick’s Adam Clark. “However, since her hair was blowing in the wind and she’s moving across the car in the shot, we ended up having to completely replace the background. This meant using Fusion Studio to rotoscope Burt’s Bandit character out of the shot and then rotoscoping him back in, along with Vic.”

3. Final

“We used Fusion Studio’s rotoscope and keying tools to do this frame-by-frame,” explains Clark. “We also used some of its paint features in order to make the background consistent, replacing signs and removing repetitious images that were looped.”