Shot 3 -

The third establishing shot was graded darker, a rotoscope for the moving car on the opposite carpark was added in the centre, then a render of the citadel was merged, transformed, tracked and graded.

Shot 2 -

Shot two is the next establishing shot, and similarly to the first shot, a single frame was taken, edited in photoshop, placed over the top of the original footage to leave room in the centre for live footage. The 3D Citadel was animated with a shatter effect, then merged into the shot with a grade and a blur to finalise.

Shot 1 -

 Shot 1 is the main establishing shot of the camera panning down to show the city below. In this shot a single frame was taken, edited in photoshop, and then match-moved. The Citadel was then placed in the background, graded and blurred.

3D Vent

The 3D Vent for the corridor shots were created with inspiration from vents in the Half-Life video game, as well as in research:

Untextured

 

 Textured:

Wireframe:

Final Warehouse Filming

The last area of filming was the ammended shot plan for the dolly and wire shots.
Different views consisting of close-ups and medium shots were used to keep the camera focused on the character and the wire box instead of the door.


The shots below are from the final selection, and were graded.

New Stairs Filming

Re-filming was done at the first location of the stairs, this time using a tripod so implementing matte paintings would be much simpler, the downside would be rotoscoping the character entirely for the shot length, and editing the bright parts to be dark:

3D Citadel & Headcrab

A 3D Citadel was found online at "Turbosquid" so that 3D renders could be used as accurate representations of the citadel, and was used later for a shattering effect in one of the establishing shots:

A 3D Headcrab was created in Maya, and then further sculpted and painted in Mudbox, later being rigged for the last VFX shot: