Tag Archives: UK

2017 Showreel

After many years of work I’ve finally built up enough new shots to replace much of my old reel. It served me well, bringing in many projects, and indeed some of the better shots still remain, but now with spangly new work alongside!

My contribution to each shot is shown briefly in the bottom left of the screen, with a much more detailed explanation written shot by shot in the PDF breakdown.

In the past few years I’ve been fortunate enough to work on some very interesting projects that have been subject to watertight NDAs. Now that they’ve been broadcast and the dust has settled, it’s a real bonus for me to finally be able to share some of these with you.

The MARS series and Teletubbies were two such projects. MARS was seven months of my time and if I recall correctly, Teletubbies was significantly longer. This left two large projects missing from my reel and consequently any updates to it felt kinda pointless as I’d only be adding one or two shots and labelling it a new reel. The thing with working in TV or film is not all shots that I work on are actually showreel-worthy. Many are similar to each other or shots I’ve made previously, or they may be created using other people’s systems, to the point that putting them in a reel of my own work feels disingenuous.

This reel has been a long time coming, so I hope you enjoy it!

Britain’s Most Extreme Weather and How The Universe Works

This past few months I’ve been beavering away at Lola Post on 2 series of shows, creating VFX of a weathery, Earth-scale nature for Britains’ Most Extreme Weather, and shots of all scales for series 3 of How The Universe Works.

Ordinarily I’d put together blog posts before a show goes to air, but in the case of Britain’s Most Extreme Weather it slipped from my mind as soon as I rocked back onto How The Universe Works. Much of my weathery input was particle systems and strands, either using existing setups from previous shows or creating new ones as appropriate. A particular favourite of mine was a system showing the movement of air around cyclones and anticyclones; A strand system that rotates particles around many points, allowing them to move fluidly from one direction to another as if air, all wrapped around a lovely spherical Earth.

How The Universe Works is a series I’ve been on for many many months now. I first started on it in November I think. The first episode, all about our Sun, is to be shown on 10th July on Science in the USA.
For that show I took Lola’s existing Sun cutaway setup, introducing a more boiling lava-like feel through judicious use of animated fractals and grads.
Overall I’ve worked on 8 episodes with a handful of shots in each show. After all that dedication to spheres in space I am now supervising the VFX on one of the last shows for this series!

More geeky details and videos for both shows to come!

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.