FEATURE SPECIAL EFFECTS
British VFX facilities are used to winning international awards for film work, but the Visual Effects Society recently rec- ognised Jellyfish for its work on Inside The Human Body and BlueBolt for Game Of Thrones.
‘The main challenge with this shot was showing the sense
of scale’ Angela Barson
Michael Burns examines the facilities’
award-winning work, as well as two recent VFX projects from Lola and Rushes, and finds that what goes into creating visual effects for the small screen can be just as complex as that intended for the cinema.
snowed up, so the CG wall had to transition from the quarry wall to full snow and ice. The top of the ice wall was built as a small sec- tion, which then had to be extended in every direction, so lots of green screen was used. We did a basic, textured build so we could
always get the layout and perspective correct. For each shot, additional digital matte paint- ing work was completed to give it a snowy and icy look, with a lot of additional passes given to the compositor so they could manip- ulate the specular highlights. For the environment north of the wall, we
Game Of Thrones: the
ice wall was a mixture of real elements and VFX
GAME OF THRONES (HBO)
VFX producers Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor and second unit VFX supervisor and BlueBolt VFX supervisor Angela Barson Post house BlueBolt VFX CG set extensions and digital matte painting Software Autodesk Maya and Mudbox; 3Delight renderer; The Foundry’s Mari and Nuke Awards VES 2012 Awards for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Programme and Outstanding Created Environment in a Broadcast Programme
What was your brief? Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor, production designer Production designer Gemma Jackson gave us all the original concepts used to get the first series greenlit. We took these and built as much as we could within the spec of the real sets
28 | Broadcast TECH | March/April 2012
created a number of matte paintings based on photos from Belfast, Italy, Switzerland and Finland. It snowed heavily in Northern Ireland towards the end of the shoot, so a helicopter was quickly arranged for me to go and photo- graph the Magheramorne Mountains and sur- rounding woods from the correct height. The main challenge with this shot was showing the sense of scale. It was a fine bal- ance between adding the atmospheric depth cues and not hiding too much of the wall. We also needed to give it some life, so the trees moved slightly, there were some subtle atmospherics moving across the forest and falling snow was added.
How did you achieve the look you were after? AB As always, it’s about getting the texturing photo-real and the lighting correct for the plate. For each environment, we went out and photographed relevant buildings, walls, forests and rocks so that all of our textures and matte paintings could be based on real materials and environments. The lighting had to match the lighting in the plate, so high dynamic range photos were taken when on set and chrome/ grey balls were shot for any CG shots. When it comes to finessing the shots, it’s
she created. During the shoot, we asked her for guidance on the look and then once into post, producers David Benioff, Dan Weiss and Frank Doelger had a big say in the look.
Break down a key VFX shot Angela Barson The practical base of the ice wall (a 700 ft high, 300 mile long barrier of ice and magic) was a quarry that had been
important to also make sure you are match- ing the subtler details in the plate like lens distortion, noise and grain, and softness. LAT Any shot works if you have live action within it. Scaling down the horses with the height of the wall behind them made the shot convincing. Adding trees near the base of the wall also helped give it scale that was recog- nisable from shot to shot.
www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils
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