05 / 07Rig & harness removal
Wire Removal
The stunt stays. The rig goes.
Wires, harnesses, safety rigs and crew reflections removed without a trace — through motion blur, hair and fast camera moves.
What Wire Removal does
Wire removal is prep at its most exposed: the rig runs right through the performer, the background is moving, and the audience is staring at exactly that spot. We remove the rig, rebuild what it hid, and track the repair so it stays locked through the move.
You send
Plates with the rig in, any clean plates or reference from set, and a mark-up of what is safe to keep.
We remove
Wires, harness points, pulleys and crew through blur and hair, rebuilding the background from other frames or by hand.
You get
Clean plates at source resolution with difference mattes, ready for keying or straight into comp.
Rig & harness removal
Before / After
Drag to see
the rig go
Three flying wires and a harness, painted out through the figure's head and shoulders, with the backdrop rebuilt behind them.
Wire tracking
Each wire tracked before removal
Background rebuild
Backdrop reconstructed behind the rig
Contact edges
Head and shoulder edges repaired
Difference matte
Only the rig changed
Process
Brief to
final delivery
Five stages, the same five every time. Open a stage to see what it means on a wire removal show.
01
Brief
What the shot has to do, what you are sending, and when it has to be back.
On a Wire Removal show
Rig diagram if the stunt team has one, the wire count, and a frame range for every rig-in shot.
02
Analysis
Plates conformed and QC'd, every shot banded by complexity and given a method before work starts.
On a Wire Removal show
Each wire classified by what it crosses — clean background, moving background, hair, or the performer — and bid by the hardest crossing.
03
Production
One supervisor, one pipeline, daily versions on your review platform.
On a Wire Removal show
Wires tracked, background reconstructed, harness and pulley points painted, edges rebuilt where the wire touched the performer.
04
QC
Checked at full resolution, frame by frame, against the delivery document.
On a Wire Removal show
Looped at full res with a difference matte to catch any repair that swims, boils or leaves a ghost.
05
Final Delivery
Colour-managed, versioned, named to your convention and archived for the life of the show.
On a Wire Removal show
Clean plates in source format, plus difference mattes and any rebuilt clean background as a separate element.
Technical Showcase
How the work
actually gets done
- Technique01
Background reconstruction
The area behind the wire rebuilt from surrounding frames, so grain and light are real rather than painted.
- Technique02
Through-hair removal
Wires crossing hair and motion blur handled in separate passes, so the edge keeps its detail.
- Tools03
Nuke & Mocha
Planar tracks lock the repair to the background; paint and projection finish it in Nuke.
- Quality control04
Difference mattes
Delivered with every shot, so the only thing that changed is the thing you asked us to change.
- Production05
Stunt-day awareness
We will tell you before the shoot which wire colours and rig positions make the removal cheaper.
In the Pipeline
Where Wire Removal
sits
Every discipline hands the next one something. Hover a stage to see what it passes on, and click through to it.
- 01RotoscopyMattes hand compositing a clean edge for light wrap, grade isolation and CG integration.
- 02Paint & PrepA clean, stable plate that lets keying, matchmove and compositing work on the shot instead of on the rig.
- 03Wire RemovalA rig-free plate that keying and compositing can treat as if the stunt was never wired.
- 04CleanupA finished plate: nothing added, nothing left that the frame did not need.
- 05KeyingA clean alpha that lets compositing wrap the new background around the subject without a halo.
- 06MatchmoveA locked camera and undistort maps that let compositing place CG, set extensions and clean-plate projections with confidence.
- 072D CompositingThe finished frame — graded, checked and delivered as EXR or DPX to spec.
- 08FinalGraded, checked frame by frame, delivered to spec and archived for the life of the show.
Why AronFX
The standard
every frame
leaves under
- 01
Precision
Nothing leaves the building without a supervisor pass at full resolution. We check the frame the way a DI theatre will, not the way a browser player will.
- 02
Consistency
One methodology per sequence, written down before work starts, so the last shot matches the first even when a dozen artists touched them.
- 03
Scalability
Departments sized for volume and staffed to the difficulty of the shot, so a 500-shot show gets a schedule you can hold us to.
- 04
Technical expertise
Nuke-native and ACES colour-managed, with lens distortion, survey alignment and multi-pass integration handled as routine rather than as a special request.
- 05
Production workflow
Plate intake and technical QC within 24 hours, shot-level bidding with complexity banding, and a named supervisor on every show.
- 06
Quality assurance
Frame-by-frame checks against the delivery document, a difference matte with every prep delivery, and final review on a calibrated display at delivery resolution.
- 07
Client collaboration
We work inside your pipeline — ftrack, Syncsketch, Aspera, your naming convention, your delivery document. You should never have to learn ours.
Next Project
Have a VFX
project in mind?
Send us a cut, a plate or a shot count. You will hear back from the supervisor who would run your show, with a breakdown, a schedule and a number.