The Soloist

Directed by Joe Wright, the BAFTA winning director of Atonement, The Soloist is about the relationship between LA journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jnr) and a mentally disturbed but musically gifted vagrant Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) who he finds living on skid row.

When Steve takes Nathaniel to see a rehearsal by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall we travel inside Nathaniel's head and see Beethoven's music transformed into ever changing patterns of light & colour, suggesting the character has the condition known as Synaesthesia - seeing music as colour.

Joe wanted it to be as bold & colourful as possible and for the shapes and edits to be a perfect match for the music. Double Negative's VFX Supervisor John Moffat shot a variety of coloured lights, crystals and glass in a dark tent to use for the piece. The original intention was to create a rough assembly from these elements that would then be supplemented by additional CG sprites but as the raw elements worked so well on their own it became clear that it should be left as a pure edited piece with no added VFX.