Backdrop of the Month: Survival of the Thickest
On a summer day in 2023 I was wondering around New York capturing stock images for our catalog when I happened upon a rare scene in Manhattan, no parking on either side of the street. I can’t overstate how important it is to have no cars in a backing. Cars easily date an image not to mention having the same cars in the same spots episode after episode starts to break the magic. Although you can not always avoid cars, even with custom backings, stock backings with cars are usually only used in one off scenes, if at all, whereas ones without any cars can be used in recurring sets, increasing their value.
I captured this view for our catalog, noted the location (Bleecker at Bowery) in case I ever wanted to return to capture the night version, and then continued on looking for more stock.
Not even a year later, the Production designer of Survival of the Thickest, reached out about usage of that backing for one of the main sets in season 2. By the Friday morning before Memorial Day 2024 we settled on an agreement that included generating a night image from scratch. Although this is certainly feasible, given the amount of lights one would expect in a Manhattan nightscape, it is much easier to re-shoot the backing capturing the matching day and night versions. Likewise, given our proximity to New York, this was not out of our way either. So on the Tuesday after Memorial day I returned to photograph the scene once again.
After arriving in late morning and setting up for the day, I was surprised that none of the three restaurants were open for lunch. Growing up in the restaurant industry, I know making rent usually means being open for at least two of the three meals in a day, especially in Manhattan. So there was a chance all three were no longer in business, which would make my retouching easier. That said, Bowery is a less expensive neighborhood then others, but even if one of them was still open, being the Tuesday after Memorial day, I was not expecting a large crowd. Boy was I wrong on both!
All three restaurants were open, all three were packed to the gills, and all three had outdoor seating. The reason this matters so much is not only can you not have any people in a backing either, there needs to be a perfect alignment between the day and night images otherwise the backing will not back light properly. This meant not only would the trees need to be masked out of the night and blended in from the day, but also the entire street, most of the sidewalk, and portions of the first floors of the three buildings in the center.
Although this may seem daunting, we have been at this for a number of years by now, so we had no issues creating a night image ready for print.
First, the day panorama without any people or other unsightly objects was created. Then an over lapping true night panorama was generated along with a “night from day” conversion utilizing a proprietary process we created in Photoshop. Afterwards, multiple true night panos utilizing a variety of layer blends were position above our “night from day” with the problem areas masked out, a process we use for all of our day|night backings. Although this may seem overly complicated, we do so for an important reason. This process creates a base night image that allows us to convincingly blend in sections from the day much easier then if we only worked with the true night image. At this point, it is just a matter of blending in sections from the day through contrast, luminosity and color adjustments, matching the skies, lighting up a few additional windows, and adding some finishing touches of orange glow throughout.
Insofar as the production timeline, we got project approval on May 24th, 2024 to move forward with generating a night image and printing the backing. I re-photographed the scene, capturing both the day and night, on Tuesday May 28th. By Wednesday June 5t both the day and night files had been created and approved by production for print. On Thursday June 13th the backing was shipped to New York from our facility in the Philadelphia Area.