Hasta La Motion!

Rhythm and crowds: Moneyball

Crowd replication is a staple of the invisible effects category, for almost obvious reasons that the shots are designed to be in the background but still give life to scenes in the film. More than 120 crowd shots feature in Moneyball, which tells the story of baseball club the Oakland A’s, and how its general manager Bill Beane (played by Brad Pitt) turned the team around. Rhythm & Hues devised a procedural technique with real extras and a Houdini pipeline to fill out the Oakland A’s stadium. Here’s the story at fxguide.