Tag Archives: vfx

Richard Hammond’s Journey To The Centre of The Planet

Not so long ago I finished working at Lola on this project, soon to be broadcast on prime time BBC here in the UK. Can’t say a lot about it yet other than it’s CGI heavy and interesting stuff. The name is possibly in progress. Not sure, it’s changed a few times! Here’s a press release and no I didn’t get to meet him.

http://bbc.in/lwdbRu

Human Centipede Sequel Banned In the UK

First things first, I didn’t work on this sequel. Don’t email me requesting to see it or any other such shenannigans! In their opinion, the BBFC consider the sequel to The Human Centipede to be too horrific for UK audiences.
There’s sexual mutilation and all sorts so it’s not a huge surprise. Plenty of you come here solely for news on this film (and the original which I did work on), so here it is!

http://t.co/eyfUbPh

My opinion on the controversy is that occasionally films like this are made and without them we wouldn’t be able to define boundaries, whether they are in the correct place for all viewers or not. Boundaries are there to protect the younger generations. Many friends and colleagues of mine who have seen the original film have either got half way through and decided it’s too disturbing, finished it and decided it’s the grossest film ever, or merely watched the trailer and stopped there. My goddaughter watched the trailer at the age of 12 and couldn’t sleep for a week. Thanks YouTube!

I saw the highlights of an edit with the director before working on the vfx and have to say I would probably choose not to watch it, but then horrors aren’t my favourite type of film. I do enjoy working on horrific content as it’s fairly challenging. I nearly worked on this sequel and recall being told by a colleague, “It’s extremely graphic. Far more so than the first film… erm… *cough*… how are you with penises?” I presume those shots would be challenging for any man to work on.

Eventually, it’s inevitable the ban will be lifted. Prior to that torrent sites will carry the film from its foreign releases. The original film carries quite a cult following and is far more famous now than it ever was on release. Banning this film will actually make it more desirable to many as it instantly becomes the forbidden fruit. I’ll be steering clear of that apple tree myself, but in the meantime, feel free to go scrumping.

Update: What a shocker, the ban is overturned and the film awarded an 18 certificate.
Guardian coverage on the matter.

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?

Ashdown Forest gets a new look

Whenever there’s a break in work and I’m aching to do my own thing I work on a few ideas. One of these that’s taken a step in the direction of starting is to take a piece of footage I shot last year and alter loads of it. It’s a 9 second or so sweep across the Ashdown Forest, not too far from here. What I’m going for is a near-future post-war landscape with much destruction. One of the things to suffer will be a tractor, shown below. I’m a bit off finishing the model let alone the texturing, but it’s nice to let you lovely people see what I am actually doing when not working!

Click for a closer view.

[Edit] Modelling Done now! Will dink it a little then texture:

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

2010 VFX Reel

After what seems like an eternity of promising it’s on its way, the VFX reel has arrived. A fair amount of this is new to the site. Some of the new content relates directly to previous posts on TV shows that have been on in the past year.

The 2010 reel is also available as a quicktime. Right click here and select Save As.

Reel - Click to Watch

Tunnelling a television!

Finally I can say this is practically where I want it to be. There are a couple of niggly bits to do with the background footage which I may tackle if and when I get the spare time to do so, but for now I’m going to say it’s done. Thanks ever so much to those who have given me feedback on this one. I’ve been working on it on and off in my spare time for over a year so it feels like time to move onto something new now and get this into my show reel.

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

Waking The Dead continues…

gemma

Following on from the previous post, this week’s episodes of Waking The Dead on BBC1 focussed on the story of Gemma, a girl raped twice then thrown off a bridge, and somehow surviving with a few broken bones and a shattered pelvis.

I worked on one shot for this, the falling stunt Gemma. A digital stunt double works out cheaper, and safer than a real one.

Being how she is seen at a distance I was able to get away with modifying a pre-existing female model straight out of Poser. I reduced the detail level to something managable, altered the overall shape to match the adjacent shots and set about animating using a slightly modified default rig in Softimage. Once that was cleared as being fine, the hair and clothes were added, the whole lot rendered out and passed on to Sascha for compositing.

[no longer on iplayer]