Luma Pictures
Luma Pictures is located in the diverse Abbott Kinney district of Venice, CA. We started about 5 years ago with about 10 artists and a plan for a studio that could be completely artist driven that does great work on big projects. Today we are about 50 people and have managed to keep our original philosophy, routinely taking on challenging projects with large shot counts as a primary vendor. We pride ourselves on working smart and having a good time doing it. Our work can be seen on such films as Mel Gibsons Apocalypto, No Country for Old Men, Underworld: Evolution and The Holiday.
http://www.lumapictures.com

The Covenant
Four have the power. One will stop at nothing to possess it! The Covenant is about four young men who belong to a supernatural legacy are forced to battle a fifth power long thought to have died out. Another great force they must contend with is the jealousy and suspicion that threatens to tear them apart. The covenant stars a host of hot up-coming actors such as Steven Strait from Sky High, Taylor Kitsch from Snakes on a Plane and Laura Ramsey from Lords of Dogtown, and was directed by Renny Harlin whos films include Die Hard 2, Driven and Exorcist: The Beginning

Official Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thecovenant/
Theatrical Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_p...s/thecovenant/

Lumas work on The Covenant included the major battle sequences between the two main characters, Caleb's transformation sequence, and the opening sequence of the film as well as a few smaller sequences.

For the opening sequence of the film Luma had to create a digital environment to compliment the blue-screen footage shot for the film including stormy sky, lighthouse and surrounding cliffs and a detailed, high res rock face for the opening shot of the film. For the battle and transformation sequences, Luma was tasked with the design of the effects as well as the execution. In working with the director and the visual effects supervisor on the film Luma refined the look of the effects as a sort of liquid ethereal energy, a departure from more traditional sort of "witchcraft" type of effects. The idea was that these characters could summon this energy from the world around them and channel it into powerful weapons.

To execute the effects Luma created a variety of visual components from churning balls of liquid energy, undulating plasma fields, drifting smoke like contrails, charged particle wakes and shockwave bursts. In creating these, they relied on Maya's particle and fluids tools as well as some quality animation to generate the elements, mental ray to render the various occlusion, refraction and sub surface passes required and sophisticated Shake compositing to integrate them into the scenes. Many of the shots also required digital doubles that would mutate form, shifting from solid to liquid to particles and back again during various scenes.

We put your questions to the senior team at Luma and they were answered by the following people:

Payam Shohadai, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor
Vince Cirelli, Visual Effects Supervisor
Steven Swanson, VFX Producer
Justin Johnson, Digital Effects Supervisor
H Haden Hammond, Sequence Supervisor

Lets jump in and see what they had to say!