CGSociety :: Production Focus >> The New World Trade Center

PIRANHA NYC was the production company commissioned by Silverstein Properties to create a short film depicting the construction and completion of The New World Trade Center site. The crew at Piranha wrote, produced, art directed, filmed, and finished all VFX for this inspiring piece marking the ten year anniversary of 9/11. This short film depicts a world moving forward, gathering positive momentum. The film is permanently on show at the marketing center of Tower 7 in the World Trade Center complex.
Gaspard Giroud, working both as director and VFX Supervisor, spoke to CGSociety from New York about the project. “Built using 3ds Max, many shots are either CG or real photography, usually one or the other,” he said. “The footage was shot with the RED camera, especially the aerials where they were tracked solidly, and we placed the completed Tower in there, composited considerable atmospheric layers in After Effects and Nuke.” Giroud acknowledges the difficulty of making the scenes look completely real, as “architecture is almost as hard as the CG human, to make convincingly true.”


“I had worked for Silverstein in the past and they asked me if it was possible to create a new visualization of how this building would be rebuilt,” says Giroud. “Not just step by step, but they wanted to see it from the insider’s point of view. The construction workers, the materials, the people, from the initial plans in 2006, showing it thru til when it is completely finished, some way in the future.”

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