Tag Archives: television

Announcements

Strike Back has airing dates

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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

Announcements, Video

2010 VFX Reel

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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
Video

Tunnelling a television!

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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.

Video

Taxi Wire Removal – The Fattest Man in Britain

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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
Announcements, Video

BBC 4 Electric Dreams

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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/
Announcements, Video

Waking The Dead continues…

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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]

Announcements, Awards

iScience wins RTS Award!

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original_television_programme_for_use_in_schools_winners_small

BBC iScience, which had already won the award for most interesting project I’d worked on, won the 2009 Royal Television Society Award for a television program for use in schools. I didn’t know this was up for an award so it’s a pleasant surprise! Here’s what RTS had to say:

“…a well-produced entry which stimulates, challenges and moves students to engage in both hard and soft science in a way that would definitely add value to the classroom experience.”

Presumably this Prof. Tanya Byron saying this as she hosted the night.

Congratulations to all involved at Illumina Digital!

For a look at clips of the show, click here. I did all the cel-shaded animations, DNA mutations and anything involving little molecules flying about, colliding, causing pollution and so on.

I remember many of the science programs at school being old OU recordings on wonky VHS tape, played via ageing Ferguson Videostars. iScience trumps these on many levels, so the award is a well deserved accolade. I actually did all 3 sciences at school in GCSE and still learnt things producing work for this show.

The RTS have a list of all winners on their official site.