January 2014 www.tvbeurope.com


A decade ago VFX for TV formed a cottage industry in relation to feature film effects, but now TV commissioners can base entire shows around CGI characters and environments


boutique company because you’d have to hire that person from the market and they might already be working for companies like us.”


Doctor Who’s high-profile 50th Milk has completed shots for the third series of Sherlock; creature animation for David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive in 4K 3D for Sky Atlantic; and is in pre-production on BBC/Space’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It is also working on the feature Hercules. The facility is synonymous though with Doctor Who, having worked on all seven series since 2004 and just landed series eight with a possible two more to follow. The 129 shots in 3D for the


75-minute special Doctor Who 50th anniversary episode: The Day of the Doctorwas the team’s first


longer do in 3D,” says Cohen. “Instead of 2D matte painting you are exploring the geometry of the scene and lighting it in 3D which is more complicated, technically demanding and more time consuming in terms of set


up and rendering, and it requires more crew.” “You rescale elements in 2D so


you can tell how large an object is. In 3D, though, extreme rescaling doesn’t work so that is one example of a technique that is removed from


TVBEurope 35 The Workflow


your box of tricks. 2D elements will often not work in stereo as they have no depth.” Murray Barber, VFX supervisor,


was tasked with developing a tornado effect which could be controlled easily shot to shot. “The


hardest thing to create is something that’s not been seen before,” he says. “It’s a process of trial and error until we come up with a look that the director likes and it fits into the storyboard.” www.milk-vfx.com


“The ambition with TV will always match that of a feature,” Will Cohen, CEO of Milk VFX


chance to stereo treat a TV drama. “Because we are dealing with four times the amount of data, the time spent compositing and rendering is longer and the cost was probably double the normal spend,” explains Cohen. “We updated CG models or created new assets of the TARDIS, Daleks and spacecraft and matte-painted plates were reworked with a stereo depth.” Milk’s creations included a CG


fly-through of the besieged Gallifreyan city Arcadia and a framed painting that appears to be a two dimensional object but which, when the camera moves around it, is revealed to be a full 3D environment with depth. Milk also created flying fighter machines Dalek Pods, following initial design by the BBC’s art department. Milk refined and animated the model in Maya, textured in Mari and rendered it with Arnold before marrying it in the CG environment, itself a mix of traditional matte painting and 3D geometry. “A lot of the tricks you can get away with in 2D you can no


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