Portal to Doha is a magical cinemagraph created from a combination of videos and still images.
It all started with a dumb pun joke which I came up with in an earlier assignment. That assignment-also a cinemagraph-involved a door leading to an intergalactic portal. The space-like look of the portal reminded me of Doctor Strange and his confrontation with mega villain Dormammu. And because there was a door present as well, I could not miss the opportunity to name my exported file, “Doormammu.”
Fast forward to the big project, I definitely wanted to do something with more to do with Doctor Strange. Eventually, I decided to open up a portal from his New York Sanctum to Doha. Doctor Strange vacationing in Qatar would be pretty sweet but I doubt we will see that in the films so I had to make that happen.
And so began the quest to find the assets. Mr. Strange is all over the internet so it is not difficult to find him but the key was to get an image of his back in order to get an over-the-shoulder perspective of him looking at the portal. Some of the early marketing material for his film had ominous posters with him in his sanctum so I picked one from the higher quality ones available. Next, I needed his sanctum. I couldn’t really think of any other interior setting which looks remotely similar to the Sanctum Sanctorum so I ended up using a piece of concept art from artist Robert F. Castro. For the portal, I initially intended to create one using After Effects but after several failed attempts, I downloaded an ultra high-res 4K asset created by CG Visuals # VFX, and further modified by FilmLearnin. The next major component was finding the assets to build the insides of the portal, which was the hardest part. It’s not easy to find high-quality video assets, especially for Doha. And so, I used a combination of a still image (Doha skyline) and video (Dhow boat + moving water). The last piece in the puzzle was to give more life to the iconic Sanctum window with a nice blue sky (still) and flying birds (video).
I had already tried and tested the placement of the assets in a rough version so it was easy to assemble later on. Working with several video layers in Photoshop, however, was not fun. I had to separate out the layers and work on smaller parts before putting them together. Most of the time went into the Doha skyline. I had to make sure that all three parts: the boat, the skyline, and water had similar lighting before I could use them. In order to maintain authenticity, I wanted a Dhow boat instead of an average boat and the only video I could find of it was a small segment in Genesis Seas’ video shot at around sunset. And so, I searched for assets that could work with the sunset. Next, blending the three together. The bulk of the time went into cleaning the looping video of Doha because it was going to take the center stage in the cinemagraph. While the opacity for the boat may look slightly low, it was the only way to remove the second skyline which was in its source. Once the Doha loop was complete, I could start assembling the rest of the assets.
I used the same placement, more or less, from the rough draft and built upon it. Adjusted the lighting overall in the sanctum and lowered the portal, slightly raised Strange, used the curves to adjust the colors, and finally added a blur effect on him to separate him from the sharp background; directing the attention from him to the portal and his surroundings. The final hurdle was to match the duration of all the video layers with different lengths. Crossfade came in handy but it was a pain to fine tweak and finalize. The window also had a different look initially with moving clouds and a still bird but the end of the loop was more visible in the clouds video so I found assets of the opposite nature. I technically cheated by using a green screen video of birds but in my defense, there were no other video assets for birds shot with a stable camera.
In conclusion, I have an end result which I am satisfied with (to a degree). Some other things I could have tried was replaced the sky with a still image of Manhattan and add a looping video of Spiderman swinging through the city but again, hard to find a realistic looking asset of Spidey without any buildings. I could have tried using videos of him from the PS4 game which even has suits from the MCU films but I was short on time. I could have also added a looping glow effect on Strange to correspond with the moving portal but I removed it after a failed attempt. Maybe I could revisit this project in the future when I have more skills but for now, here is a window (pun intended) into Strange’s life during the lockdown.
Update: I went back to the project shortly after submission and added Tom Holland’s Spidey dangling from the Chrysler building in Manhattan.
The new additions didn’t take that much time at all besides finding the right asset for Spiderman. Since the PS4 game has highly detailed models of many suits, I used a screenshot with the Homecoming suit. Other assets include birds (video) from the original version, Chrysler building (still), and moving clouds (video). I prefer the new version a lot more, especially because of how vibrant it is. Plus, who wouldn’t want their friendly neighborhood Spiderman to swing by their place?
