This recruiting video for the US Air Force was my first project at Digital Domain. This is a clip of the entire video, shot as a first person POV, in which various roles in the Air force are portrayed in a mission to take out a terrorist hideout located somewhere in some God forsaken desert. I was brought in to do matte paintings from photographic source for a ridiculously epic camera move which starts at ground level and rises to high orbit. I used the photos shot on location to determine the exact coordinates using Google maps, and then extended the landscape using actual satellite imagery from the shoot location. This wasn’t entirely crucial to the success of the shot, but it was pretty cool to accomplish anyways.

Juan Gomez and Dave Liu, my leads at DD, helped me integrate my multiple matte paintings and textures (up to 24k resolution) into nested camera projections that covered different parts of the camera move. I also created displacements from USGS elevation maps.  I designed and modeled the ‘terrorist’ bunker, which had way more detail than you get to appreciate. This project was really a great learning experience and I got to work alongside some talented people, including my friend and former student Yarin.