CLOUD ATLAS: Angela Barson – VFX Supervisor – BlueBolt

Posted by Vincent Frei in Cloud Atlas, VFX Supervisor on Feb 14, 2013 / "The Art of VFX"



How did BlueBolt got involved on this show?
We were approached by Stephane Ceretti, who we have known for years, after Dan Glass watched THE IRON LADY and wanted to know who had done the prosthetic VFX work.

How was the collaboration with The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer?
We worked with Stephane Ceretti, not directly with any of the directors.

What have you done on this show?
We worked on several different characters fixing prosthetic problems, but also changing the features of some characters like their eyes and brows.

How did you approach your work on this show?
A look was developed and approved for each character on a hero shot before the bulk of the shots were done.

Can you tell us in details how you enhanced the makeup work?
Each character required their own approach depending on the scope of the work.

The most complex character would be the hotel manager, played by Tom Hanks. He required some extensive work to get him to look natural as an older man. Originally the plates that we were given had the character with a bald cap and some visible glue joins around the temples, nose, mouth and neck. The challenge was to remove these issues while introducing sun spots and freckles for skin texture.

Due to the nature of the way his head moved we required his head to be roto animated. With this animated model we were able to project on to it painted textures of his new skin. This was then composited and finessed with the main plate.

Which softwares did you used to made the makeup fixes?
The work was predominately done using Nuke.

What was the most extreme fixes you have to do?
The Archivist, played by James D’Arcy, needed a lot of work on his protruding forehead and deep set eyes, as well as changing his eyes and reshaping his eyebrows to look more Asian. We needed to rebuild his eyes in order to bring them out from the shadows of the forehead. There were quite a few shots in this sequence so maintaining the continuity was one of the biggest challenges.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
With this type of work it’s always about the attention to detail. You tend to be working on areas like the eyes or mouth that are the focus of the shot, so the work has to be perfect. A lot of attention is paid to the subtleties of the skin grade and texture. We also had to continuously check the shots in sequence to make sure the consistency never drifted.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
No.

How long have you worked on this film?
We worked on CLOUD ATLAS for around 3 months.

How many shots have you done?
We completed over 70 shots, working on 7 different characters – The Archivist, Mephi, Ankor Apise, Seer Rhee, Rufus Sixsmith, the Concierge and the Hotel Manager.

What was the size of your team?
We had around 6 artists working on the shots.

What is your next project?
We are currently working on LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, the Nelson Mandela biopic which is directed by Justin Chadwick and produced by David Thompson and Anant Singh. BELLE directed by Amma Asante and Produced by Damien Jones, and PEAKY BLINDERS, a 6 part TV series for Tiger Aspect / BBC 2.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

- BlueBolt: Dedicated page about CLOUD ATLAS on BlueBolt website.


Source : The Art of VFX

By the people and for the people: the VFX of Lincoln

Originally posted by Ian Failes in FXGUIDE on February 12, 2013

Having created incredible, but invisible, visual effects for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, Framestore returned for Lincoln, the director’s take on the President’s efforts to have the Thirteenth Amendment passed by the United States House of Representatives. We sat down in London with visual effects supervisor Ben Morris and CG supervisor Mark Wilson to discuss some key shots from the film.

Abe’s dream

Framestore contributed several concepts to Lincoln’s dream sequence, the origins of which were the President’s actual diary entries. “Lincoln was very clear about what he saw,” says Ben Morris. “He described being on the deck of an ironclad boat – the USS Monitor – moving at incredible speed heading towards a coastline that he can never reach – it keeps eluding him. It’s a metaphor ultimately for the Thirteenth Amendment and his second term.”

Original greenscreen plate.

CG elements added.

Final comp with vignette.




Lincoln actor Daniel Day-Lewis was filmed, literally on the last day of shooting, in front of a greenscreen on a 25 foot boat deck, with a fan employed to provide some sense of movement. Framestore would then use the plate to carry out a number of tests and iterations before arriving at a suitable look. “The most difficult aspect of that shot design was trying to develop a photographic ‘look’ to apply to the clean plates,” recalls Morris. “It had to have a sense of dreaminess, but also convey speed in the relative darkness of night.”

To help create a sense of speed, artists developed both a moving starfield (something Spielberg initially dubbed the ‘star gate’, according to Morris) and various water passes that reference the glass-like surface described in Lincoln’s diary. “You then get the problem of how do you convey great speed if the water surface is flat like a mirror, because you don’t see any structure on the surface,” adds Mark Wilson. “In the end we did lots of CG water sims, refracting the plate through them, layering up lots of effects. They were all pulled together in Nuke and mixed with live action elements. Steven wanted the feeling of it being filmed through water, not necessarily being underwater, but almost like developing a picture.”

A further aspect of the dream sequence was that it had to appear photographic, as if recorded using technology from the time. That manifested itself in vignetting, differing frame rates and camera weave – something Framestore looked to practical reference to achieve. “We went so far as to investigate what vaseline would look like when smeared on a lens,” says Morris. “We went into one of our theaters and made an huge rostrum camera – we got a Canon 5D with a clear UV filter on the lens, smeared vaseline all over it, and photographed our cinema screen as we manually advanced the shot frame-by-frame. The resultant footage informed the look of the final comps of the entire sequence.”

Incorporating this look of a being filmed through a vintage lens, the shots were ultimately comped in Nuke. “We’ve got a huge element library and we delved into that too,” notes Morris. “We’d take say a real element and then do a radial twist on it to get a rotational movement. It was a real mish-mash of techniques for the dream sequence.”

Original plate.


CG sky and stars.


Final shot.


Attack on Petersburg
Aboard the Malvern, Lincoln witnesses Petersburg under attack from his forces. Framestore crafted a CG river, banks and the burning city – using both live action elements and digital fire and smoke.

As originally designed, the shot was to be a matte painting. “But Steven got more and more excited about it,” says Wilson. “With a matte painting you tended to get more and more silhouettes but not really the depth and 3D feel of it. When we actually built and rendered the city it felt more photographic.”

CG elements.

Final shot.

The river surface relied on Framestore’s Tessendorf displacement shaders. Destruction of the buildings was realized with Framestore’s in-house version of the Bullet solver called fBounce. Houdini was then used for the fire sims. The shot was rendered in Arnold, and augmented with live action elements like additional smoke and fire. “Actually, some of the explosions in there are elements from War Horse,” notes Morris. “As you bring a shot together like that, we really just kept adding ideas. I think the mixture of CG and real elements give the shot a real, textural feeling”.


The Capital Building
Original plate.

Elements isolated and CG Capital rendered.

Final shot.

Doubling as the Capital Building was the Virginia State Capital in Richmond, often used in films to double as its Washington counterpart. Framestore made a number of alterations to the building for key scenes occurring outside, including Lincoln’s famous second inaugural speech in 1865.

“The production designer Rick Carter always hoped that he could use the front section of this building,” notes Morris. “And he did – we shot a lot of action there in-camera. We were on-hand to assist in wide shots of the Virginia Capital which needed CG extensions.”

To aid in the digital add-ons, Morris visited the Capital Building in Washington to acquire stills photography for photogrammetry reconstruction, since the real building could not easily be scanned. “Historically, LIDAR has played a big part in everyone’s lives,” says Morris, “but we’ve got some new in-house tools that let us actually go and shoot flat or spherical images for photogrammetric scene reconstruction. We used a combination of Photoscan and ImageModeler to reconstruct the Washington Capitol.”

The CG build began with an initial test using a Capital Building stock model to see if it would line up with the Virginia version. When that looked promising, Framestore embarked on a fuller build with the photo reference. “What’s great about the photogrammetry approach is that you can photograph as much as you like with as many close-ups, essentially a load of pictures,” explains Wilson. “Then based on the shots you need, you can process the parts you need rather than going through the LIDAR which requires dense data. But with photogrammetry to actually capture your source material, you’re just clicking away with a camera. It’s very quick and easy to do.”

The final building was rendered in Arnold, with Framestore also contributing crowd replication and extensions for the speech and other scenes at the Capital.

Even more invisible effects
Framestore’s other Lincoln contributions are an array of seamless effects additions, fixes and wizardry. Here’s a rundown of how the studio helped tell Spielberg’s story.

Carriage clean-up – in one shot of a carriage door opening, a member of the lighting crew obscures Hal Holbrook’s face in the reflection of the window. Framestore re-constructed the plate to match a different take of the scene.

In the mirror – A scene of Lincoln’s wife Mary, played by Sally Field, talking with her husband in their bedroom made use of a large mirror. As the shot plays through, the reflection of the camera team was caught in the background, requiring a extensive paint out and scene reconstruction. “It’s through a murky mirror with no keyable elements,” says Morris. “We roto’d Sally Field in the foreground and reflection, taking all the scum off the surface of the mirror and any over Sally’s reflection. We then re-built the room in the reflection behind her, and tracked it back in using a 3D track rather than just a 2D drag through, re-applying new dirt and aging to the surface of the mirror. It’s a classic invisible shot.”

Artifact removal – Although the production filmed in Petersburg to take advantage of its period buildings, certain modern-day artifacts such as powerlines and background elements were unavoidable. In one scene following Lincoln in a carriage, Framestore removed a radio mast and numerous telephone poles and wires, relying on photo reference taken of the surrounding buildings to do the clean-ups, and also added in the Capital dome at the end of the street.

Bloody battle – For muddy battle shots, stuntmen performed the opening scene for hours on end, with Framestore carrying out a bayonet and weapon enhancements and blood removal/additions.

Watch the trailer for Lincoln.



Source : fxguide

PARKER: Wayne Brinton – VFX Supervisor – Modus FX

Originally Posted by Vincent Frei in Parker, VFX Supervisor, in "The Art of VFX" on 12, Feb - 2013

What is your background?
I started as a Compositor in 1998 at GVFX in Toronto. I moved to Hybride in 1999 where I worked as senior compositor on film such as SIN CITY, 300, and the SPY KIDS franchise. Next I went to Mr. X in Montreal working as a Lead Compositor on a number of projects and VFX Supervisor on SOURCE CODE. In November of 2011 I came to Modus as Compositing Supervisor and VFX supervisor.

How did Modus FX got involved on this show?
Lisa Dennis contacted us and asked to bid on the show. Modus had worked with her on SOURCE CODE and a few other projects… After we did, Taylor Hackford and his team requested that I come down to LA and meet with them. They wanted to know who they were going to work with before they signed.

How was your collaboration with director Taylor Hackford?
Working with Taylor was awesome. He is a very established and well-respected director. He has a vision but was always available to listen to any input I might have. He recognized the fact that the reason I was there was to help with the visual effects. It’s my specialty and he used it to the project’s advantage.

What was his approach about the visual effects?
Because these were all invisible effects, he wanted them to be as natural as possible. I let him plan his shots the way he wanted and would work out solutions around the footage. Some shots were already shot and he needed assistance in coming up with a relevant solution.

What have you done on this show?
We did lots of monitor inserts. We also did a lot of wire removals on the balcony fight sequence. The CG knife through the hand was also created by Modus. CG fireworks were also in our workload.

Parker has a fight inside a car. Can you tell us more about your work on this sequence?
This was a simple one… we mainly comped muzzle flashes. We also had to recreate an ear being blown off and the hits to Parker’s chest (blood splatter, wound, etc.).

How did you handle the various screens integration?
Screens were pretty straight forward. We had to generate the graphics including web page design etc. For integration, like most screen shots in the industry, there were no reflection passes so we had to find reverse shots to use as a refection.

During a rough fight, Parker has his hand pierced by a knife. Can you explain to us in details about its creation?
This was a reshoot. I went down to LA to assist Taylor in shooting these. He wanted to use a prosthetic hand and although it was good I knew right away it would never work perfectly. So I suggested that we work with the idea that we would use the prosthetic for the blood and exit but we would also shoot the live hand simulating the action. Back home we matched moved all the plates and ended up creating a CG knife so we could design the action a little better.

How did you manage the tracking challenge for this shot?
This was all match move in the Flame.
There was no way we would ever get anything tracked for the plate or the hand.

Can you explain to us more about your work on the fight on the balcony?
Both actors were suspended over the balcony so needless to say there was a lot of rig removal done. This sequence was already shot so we had no input on how it was done. But really, for something like this. When you have your main actor hanging off a balcony 9 stories up, where the wire is placed is the lest of their worries.

For the fall we had to recreate the last 2 shots in Flame in order to accelerate the fall. The harness made the actor slow down towards the bottom instead of speed up.

Can you tell us more about the CG fireworks on the final burglary?
When they shot this, Taylor had the intention of shooting practical fireworks in New Orleans. When he realized the cost, I suggested we show him something in CG. He loved it. We ended up using a mix of Sim FX and practical elements to achieve the final look. Including a matte painting of the melting speaker.

How did you create the various FX such as blood and smoke?
Actually all the smoke and blood was practical elements.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
The biggest challenge on the project was the knife sequence.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
Surprisingly…nothing. The whole show was a majority of comp shots and we have such an amazing comp team here that I never had any stress.

What do you keep from this experience?
The importance of understanding a director’s knowledge in VFX and finding ways to help them understand our industry and what we can do to help make their film better.

How long have you worked on this film?
5 months.

How many shots have you done?
162 shots.

What was the size of your team?
15 artists were involved. Add to this the coordination team which made sure we stayed on schedule and on budget and myself who supervised all the work.

What is your next project?
I’m currently VFX supervisor for a major VFX project I cannot mention at this point. Once it is delivered, I will jump on another project that is coming to Modus in the upcoming weeks. It’s a very exciting period of our growth as bigger and bigger projects are approaching us every year.

What are the four movies that gave you the passion for cinema?
Not all vfx related…
THE NATURAL
THE MATRIX
SEVEN
BREAKFAST CLUB.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

- Modus FX: Dedicated page about PARKER on Modus FX website.

// PARKER – VFX BREAKDOWN – MODUS FX find it here @ Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JbUhq27jiOQ

Source : The Art of VFX Posted by Vincent Frei in Parker.

THE LAST STAND: Stuart Lashley – VFX Supervisor – Prime Focus

Originally Posted by Vincent Frei in The Last Stand, VFX Supervisor in "The Art of VFX" on 31/Jan/2013

How did Prime Focus get involved on this show?

We were initially asked to help out on the exploding henchman shot. Production were in need of a version very quickly for an upcoming preview screening. Once this was turned around we were offered the helicopter sequence and the remaining flare attack shots.

It’s the 1st feature of director Kim Jee-woon for USA. What was his approach about the visual effects?

Kim Jee-woon is the sort of Director who will use VFX only where he feels it’s really needed, favouring in-camera effects wherever possible. He was very specific about what he wanted to see and was particularly precise on timing.

How was your collaboration with the director?

It was a pretty smooth process. Feedback was clear and specific which made our job that much easier. Our direct relationship was with Friend Wells the supervising VFX producer who was great to work with on this project.

What have you done on this movie?

We worked on two of the film’s action sequences. The night time freeway chase that takes place early on in the film and the stand off against Cortez’s henchmen in Sommerton. For the chase sequence we supplied environment composites for the helicopter shots and for the stand off we worked on the sequence of shots in which one attacker is hit by a flare which in turn ignites the bullets and grenades he has on him.

Can you tell us in details about the helicopter chase sequence?

All of the interior and close exterior helicopter shots were filmed in a greenscreen studio. Moving backplates were supplied by production and it was our job to combine these elements as well as adding interactive light, reflections, CG rotor blades, windows and anything else needed to convincingly put us flying at high speed across Arizona.

How were filmed the background elements?

We received aerial plates of the city at night which were used for the shots prior to the actual chase. For the chase itself backplates were shot from a ground vehicle moving at speed. Many of the plates required reprojecting onto CG surfaces so that we could alter the apparent height and movement of the camera to better fit the action.

What was the main challenge for this sequence?

There was nothing especially painful. There was naturally a lot of green reflection to deal with on the exterior shots but this was just a case of doing the additional roto work needed to deal with it rather than it being a problem.

Can you explain to us how you create the bad guy that explodes?

The explosion shot was achieved using a combination of digi double, FX animation and elements. First we removed everything in the plate that needed to explode or react to the explosion. The character, car, flags and shrubs were all painted out. For the fire and smoke of the main explosion we used shot elements from our library. We animated a flying torso and limbs which were textured and lit. Our FX department supplied the smaller body parts, blood, secondary smoke and cloth sims. We used 2D and 2.5D techniques to add a shockwave and some movement to the car, flag and shrubs.

How did you create the various FX elements for these shots?

The FX were all done in Houdini. These comprised of the main exploding blood sim, finer blood spray, mist and splatter, small flying bits of flesh and cloth and smoke coming off of these and the larger body parts. For the shots leading up to the explosion we added the flare and smoke.

Have you created a digi-double for the body?

The digi-double was created and then carved up into the sections we wanted to see blown apart. Although the shot is clearly quite gory, it’s also meant to have a comic element to it. We played around with various combinations of body parts and animation until the director was happy that the shot had just the right impact. Timing was very important.

Have you made some clean-up work for stunt rig or crew members?

There was some minor rig and cable removal needed on the helicopter shots.

Which branches of Prime Focus have worked on this show?

London and Mumbai.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?

Not this time.

What do you keep from this experience?

Being a part of Arnie’s big screen comeback!

How long have you worked on this film?

3 Months.

How many shots have you done?

21.

What was the size of your team?

Around 50 across all departments.

What is your next project?

We’re currently working on WHITE HOUSE DOWN and THE GREAT GATSBY.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

- Prime Focus: Dedicated page about THE LAST STAND on Prime Focus website.

Source : "The Art of VFX"