‘Visual Effects? WHAT Visual Effects!?’ is the highest praise you can achieve when working as part of the post-production team on a series such as Studio Lambert’s BBC one Primetime Drama - The Nest. Visual Effects aren’t all about sub-cutaneous robotics, Ghostbuster skies and Dr Egghead’s drones! In a project like the Nest and…well almost every other drama ever, the Visual Effects departments spend vast amounts of time removing, rather than adding. As budgets and schedules dwindle, so our presence becomes more and more inevitable. ‘Sort it out in Post’ being a mantra that provides lifeblood to little departments like ours at Arteus in Glasgow.
We like to think we can offer movie quality high end paint-outs/set extensions/sky replacements etc etc and, thanks to the very serious expansion of Adobe After Effects’ capabilities over preceding years (Advanced Mocha tracking, Element 3d, Lockdown, Camera Track and Re-build) as well the numerous talents within the Arteus VFX staff team, we can provide this service with a turnaround and cost which seems to leave clients delighted. None more so than Studio Lambert in this instance.
It’s a surprising delight working on paint-outs…the idea that there is a very solid solution, defined by what SHOULDN’T be there, feels surprisingly creative. There is an almost…dare I say it…beautiful combination of technique and creative eye. You can just TELL when you’ve achieved a successful paint out, there is a right and a wrong and that is an unusual feeling in creative work. If you can still see the sound engineer in the drone shot below, we’ve done it wrong…
…in principal this seems like a simple cloning job but of course this is a long slow drone shot which throws up a whole set of unique challenges. In the end, using After Effects’ Camera Tracker, we replaced the entire pavement and roto’d the black car back on top.
And who knew this beautiful house has solar panels…..and a dirty sea wall…..and a shed…
Paint outs are really satisfying, but the opposite is also always required. In Episode 3, practical prosthetics were used to create a Caesarean Section operation. Not surprisingly, there were limits to the amount of realism that could be created on-set so we had to use a very subtle touch to help enhance the look and feel of the prosthetics. It’s amazing how a little blood can go a long way. Once again After Effects is a more than capable tool when used correctly, tracking and pinning drips and splashes of blood using Mocha Planar Tracker…
On a big day we are asked to go full VFX set-extension. In episode 2 we were asked to ‘add a sign to the wall’. On looking at the shot we realised we were actually being asked to ‘re-create the exterior of the Barrowland Ballroom’..no mean feat as anyone familiar with the place will attest. In many worlds, this would be a full Maya job, but in the real world we can now achieve great things within After Effects using Element 3d and Cinema 4d. The advantage of this is quite simple: render time. When we were given notes as to the amount of grime on the building or the way the shadows look, we could turn around a re-version in an afternoon, delivering the full res render the same day. That’s a game-changer when working up against tight schedules like this…
This is just a taster of the work we did on this amazing series. In fact, there were over 100 visual effect shots…from removing crew reflections to changing mobile phone colours to adding teardrops to faces and making a prosthetic baby’s skin flush and fingers wiggle!
As part of the full post-production outfit at Arteus, we have developed a super-dynamic workflow. Keeping the chain of communication and supply fluid between Glasgow and the offline in London is complex and for our small Visual Effects team, being part of this bigger all-encompassing structure ultimately makes for a much smoother and thus LESS STRESSFUL experience for programme-makers.
In a case of beautiful timing, the country went into lockdown while we were still working on Episode 4 and 5. Again, being part of Arteus’s team means we have (in-house) technical gurus who, overnight, had the entire company working from home, securely viewing, editing and grading our work - not missing a beat!