Rotoscoping & Cleanup

Here is how this works in practice. Rotoscoping and cleanup form the invisible foundation of every VFX-heavy Italian production. We set up this prep work through the same Rome and Milan facilities — EDI Effetti Digitali Italiani, Frame By Frame, Direct2Brain, Chromatica, MAD, Proxima, Studio Asterix and Post Atomic in Rome, plus Mercurio in Milan — that handle finishing on Italian features and streaming originals.

Here is the short of it. The work covers frame-by-frame masking around actors and props, wire and rig removal for stunt and harness work shot at Cinecittà or on Italian locations from the Dolomites down to Sicily, marker and tracking-dot paintouts, lens-flare cleanup, set-dressing removal, and the artifact cleanup that prepares plates for downstream compositing. Recent Italian productions including Diavoli, Romulus, Suburra, Gomorra, ZeroZeroZero, Pinocchio (Garrone), The Hand of God, My Brilliant Friend and M.

Here is the breakdown. Il figlio del secolo have run big roto and prep volumes through Italian houses on both feature and episodic schedules. This means our partner facilities scale comfortably from single hero shots through to several hundred shots across an episodic season, with capacity flex through ftrack and Shotgrid pipelines that integrate roto teams across multiple facilities when the volume demands it.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. Toolchain sits firmly on Silhouette, Foundry's Nuke and Mocha Pro, with shot routing tied to each tool's strengths — Silhouette for detailed shape work on character mattes, Nuke when roto needs to flow straight into compositing in the same site, and Mocha for planar-tracking-helped roto on architectural and set elements that suit Italy's classic location work in Rome, Florence, Venice and beyond.

Here is how the picture comes together. Motion blur is matched in direction and intensity to the source plate, hair and fur are handled through core mattes with feathered edges and multi-channel keying help, and semi-transparent elements such as fabric, glass and water receive the hand work needed to preserve natural edge detail without halos or chatter. Our supervisors manage shot turnover from the offline edit, structure QC passes against published Italian and global VFX standards, and align roto delivery against the compositing schedule so downstream comp teams never wait on prep.

Here is what we have to work with. Capacity scales from small bursts to several thousand frames a week depending on site size and shot tangle. Productions on qualifying Italian budgets pair this work with the MiC 40% Italian Cinema Plan rebate, with the prep team's hours feeding directly into the rebate records, CCNL Cinema Audiovisivo crewing reports and ENPALS submissions where relevant.