Voodoo Macbeth is a student feature film produced at USC during the spring and fall semesters of 2019. The film is based on the story of William Shakespeare’s plagued production of Macbeth at the New York Lafayette theater in 1936. I was brought on board to help out with general clean-up and equipment removal, but there were a few involved shots I got to work on as well.

We used the Warner Brothers lot as the backdrop for most of the exterior scenes. I collaborated with the film’s art department to composite their shopfront signs onto the blank signs at the lot.

The film revolves around the Lafayette Theater, which has a very distinct design and marquee. The marquee on set did not match historical photos of the theater precisely, so to help make it closer to the real thing, I replaced the middle chunk with a 3D sign I modeled and rendered. I had to render a version for both day and night.

The most challenging scene in this film by far was the opening night crowd, mainly because we only had about thirty extras dressed in period-accurate clothing. For the immediate foreground, we shot three plates for the first six rows, then I had to rotoscope all that in order to fill everything behind. The far-away crowd is made up of the same people- only they were shot on a greenscreen so I had about sixty total agents to work with.

I also was able to use those agents to fill in some empty seats for an earlier scene in the film.

That opening night crowd was by far the most intense rotoscope job I’ve ever done by far. Hopefully next time I will have more greenscreen!