Tag Archives: tv

Atlantis – End of a World, Birth of a Legend

From September til December-ish I was working on Atlantis. Lola (www.lola-post.com) was creating visual effects for almost the entire thing, 550 shots, so there was plenty for each of us to do. In my case, I was working on falling volcanic rocks and boats, then seas. There’s a lot of sea involved in this show, much of which is actually real, but the rest is created using Aaman Akram’s aaOcean suite of shaders and deformers in Softimage.

All the shots were broken down into different passes, with that being especially essential for the sea shots. Water behaves oddly at sea. It’s hard to tell the scale of a large wave versus a small one without something giving you a visual cue. By creating various mattes and animating the large waves at different speeds to the smaller waves sat on top, we were able to keep the scale in check, adding elements like foam and colour variation depending on the shot composition.

Prior to this, I was involved in the pre-vis stage of the boat shots. Many of them involve particularly dramatic moments and it was necessary to nail exactly how they were going to work before getting bogged down in rendering water at HD. Pre-vis is short for pre-visualisation, whereby each shot is roughed out using rudimentary elements or low detail assets to get a feel for timing, scale, composition and so on. By having this stage, it’s possible to work something into the edited sequence as quickly as possible to see if it actually works. It saves a lot of time and takes some guesswork out.

Atlantis – End of a World, Birth of a Legend will be broadcast in mid March.

For now, here’s a preview on Youtube. There’s a making of and a couple of sequences in there too.

Do We Really Need The Moon?

If like me you did A Level physics, you’ll know the answer to this, but this documentary is worth watching.

For a good few months now I’ve been freelancing for Lola, working on a few things. Although broadcast first, this is the second show I’ve worked on there, with a few underwater shots like this pictured, a fly through the solar system to Jupiter, and a sweep across Saturn.

The water shots are mostly a 2d job run by a Nuke compositer, but in order to create a decent depth to things I tracked each shot, placing 3d geometry into a Softimage scene, then outputting depth passes. Fast Volume Effects output shader was used for the rays of light cast through the surface.

The solar system was a fairly easy task. There’s plenty of data freely accessible from NASA regarding where each planet is in relation to the others, their relative sizes and suchlike, but Jupiter was still cheated nearer for timing purposes. It’s also a little larger than reality for similar effect.

For a few more days, it will be up on iPlayer.

BBC iPlayer – Do We Really Need The Moon?

Strike Back has airing dates

Set your recording equipment up for 9pm on May 5th as that’s when Strike Back is due to begin! Oddly although it’s 6 episodes long, they’re being shown in pairs, so air dates are as follows:

Episodes 1 & 2    Wed 5 May 21.00 Sky1 HD & Sky1
Episodes 3 & 4    Wed 12 May 21.00 Sky1 HD & Sky1
Episodes 5 & 6    Wed 19 May 21.00 Sky1 HD & Sky1

Looking forward to the 19th!!! That’s where a lot of our work went.

I’m gonna get a few people to record this for me in case one or the other reveal themselves to be lame at setting recorders. There are people out there who can’t use Sky Plus let alone set an old VCR.

More details at http://sky1.sky.com/strike-back-about-the-show-the-story

Coming Soon… Chris Ryan’s Strike Back

During the past 5 weeks or so I have been working on some VFX shots for Strike Back, soon appearing on Sky 1 and Sky 1 HD. Trailers and teasers have appeared on TV and inevitably Youtube and pals. Myself, Sascha Fromeyer and Ashley Hampton, have been beavering away on all manner of things.
I’m looking forward to watching this. All of my contributions to this are in Episode 5, so I know what happens in that and the final episode and have no idea what happens at the start!

Strike Back is based on a novel by Chris Ryan, set in the Middle-East and filmed in South Africa. It’s a hostage situation and my God… it’s cool. Watch it.

Taxi Wire Removal – The Fattest Man in Britain

This is a breakdown of a short sequence made for an ITV drama called The Fattest Man in Britain. The taxi has a rig following it that holds the camera in a fixed position above the taxi, looking down on it. Unfortunately this kind of rig needs stabilising and in this case 2 cables were run to the front of the taxi. A slight issue there is that the 2 cables were now visible in 4 separate shots.

I tracked each shot in Syntheyes bringing the 3D data into Softimage. Simple 3D geometry was put in place with camera projected textures, individually airbrushed so that the wire was removed in each. When rendered and comped with mattes, the cables were no longer an issue.

wire_removal

BBC 4 Electric Dreams

electric_dreams

Last night, a new 3 parter started on BBC 4 for which I did the title sequence. It’s a tunnel of disembodied electric items roughly in order of when they came about or at least became popular.  I put this together in a 3d composite in After Effects, made out of many many photographs, timed roughly to the music (Human League. Who could predict that?)  Three versions of the sequence exist. Each is the same bar the ending which is themed for the 70s, 80s, and 90s respectively.

The show itself was interesting stuff. A technology obsessed family has their house converted to a 70s theme with no central heating, one bathroom and nary a modern gadget in sight. As the week goes on they are allowed such luxuries as a freezer in the kitchen, a colour TV (which promptly breaks), and a teasmade (yes that’s spelt correctly). Next week is the 80s, then the 90s the following week.

In my opinion this show works best as a study in family social behaviour rather than a trip down memory lane. The target audience of BBC 4 is old enough to remember all of it. Living in the 90s wasn’t that different technologically speaking to now so I’m interested to see how the family sticks together as they get closer and closer to the current decade.

Check it out on iplayer if you fancy and be sure to have a nose around the supporting website, made by Illumina, the same company I put together the title sequence for.

[no longer on iplayer]

Official website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/electricdreams/

Waking The Dead begins…

flies

Series 8 of Waking The Dead started last night on BBC 1, here in the UK.

Around the 17 minute mark, 2 people go inside a building and get many cg flies thrown in their direction, created by my fair hand, animated one at a time in XSI, composited in After Effects by Sascha Fromeyer of The Green Apple variety.

More to come on this show… Hopefully show reel rights, who knows?

Kenneth Branagh picks up Television BAFTA for Wallander

Last night was the Television BAFTAs, this being the time of year when shares in sequins go through the roof. The Best Drama Series Award went to Wallander, produced by and starring Kenneth Branagh.

So how does this relate to me in the slightest? I did a couple of VFX sequences in that I’ll have you know! All being well, one of them will be in the show reel I am currently piecing together. There was a lot of fog at one point, some of which is 3D fog created in XSI’s ICE engine then composited in After Effects, the aim being to cover up gaps in the smoke machine’s efforts.

Check out the rest of last night’s winners and losers at http://www.bafta.org/awards/television/tv-noms-2009,709,BA.html

BBC iScience was on iPlayer

[Edit again!] iScience clips are now online at BBC – Learning Zone.

[Edit] Now that March 12th has past, iscience is now longer on BBC iplayer.

My work on BBC iScience is on iplayer again now. This particular episode is nanotechnology. (Can I get a woooOOOooo?) Pretty much all of the 3d graphics are my creation, even the ones which seem at first glance to be 2d. They are cel shaded 3d! (Same approach as on Futurama)  They include animations on fusion, uv radiation, cell division and all sorts.