POST
THE EVOLUTION OF POST PRODUCTION
the more possibilities open up and can be improved upon.” On VFX heavy projects Nviz deploys a real-
time Previs workflow, based around Unreal Engine, using its Arena Virtual Camera technology in order to speed up and streamline the filmmaking process. A development of the Vcam system, the ‘hands-on’ Arena system has been used on a variety of high- profile projects, including The Midnight Sky for Netflix. “The Arena Virtual Camera system is an
innovation in this area of filmmaking,” says Lender. “It enables the Director, DoP, VFX Supervisor and Previs Supervisor to shoot the Previs themselves with a fully customisable virtual camera, which also features the DoP’s chosen camera body and lens list.” The Postvis stage uses assets created in Previz to
Top left: Sky Original Wolfe was posted at The Farm
Top right: SYFY’s Spides was worked on by Baby Giant Hollyberg
help the editor and director during editing. According to Lender, there is a Postvis stage in pretty much all VFX heavy movies. “We usually use our real-time scenes that have been created in Unreal Engine in the Previs process, to place tracked cameras into, and use this method to render our Postvis. It saves time and money and is also highly effective,” he says. Sarah Cauchois, Managing Director, Pre-
production Services at Framestore, says the workflow is constantly being re-written. “Previs continues through shoot, Postvis goes on for three quarters of the post-production schedule, and now with virtual production standards being developed we bring the post-production into pre-production - it’s all tremendously exciting,” she says. “A lot of our clients are becoming increasingly interested in this interactive way of working, but as with all big changes it takes time for the dust to settle, and many people are still adjusting to the new terrain. The landscape is changing rapidly, and we all need to embrace it, but it is very much down to the client’s requests and whether this specific workflow makes sense and is the most efficient for what they are trying to achieve. “For VFX-heavy projects there are a huge variety
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of tools that can be used to support filmmakers and showrunners as they bring their visions to life - there is no ‘one size fits all’ way of working,” she adds. “A lot of our clients have been exploring new workflows for a few years now.” “The increase in the quality and speed of the UE4
realtime engine has greatly increased the quality of both our Previs and Postvis, and is now the backbone of our pipeline,” says Lender. “Camera tracking technology through the use of a tracked iPad is key to our Previs turnaround. While in Postvis, the enhancement of several camera tracking software applications has improved the speed and quality immensely.” Other technology is moving in this direction.
Baby Giant Hollyberg is an American/ German content production studio often given the overall post management role on effect-heavy projects. For SYFY network series Spides, it handled all post production, managing the offline and online edit through DaVinci Resolve Studio from Blackmagic Design, as well as all the VFX compositing for the series. By using Resolve as the edit platform, Baby Giant, based in Potsdam, was able to use the different layers in the timeline to keep track of shots with and without VFX, to ensure its editors understood if it required more work. According to VFX supervisor Nicolas Ostermann, these collaborative features also allowed the grade, worked on in Hamburg by Digital Straik, to be completed simultaneously alongside his team’s tasks. “We were able to hand episodes to grading, even
if there was still work to be done completing VFX shots, then copy the grade over to the final version back at Baby Giant,” says Ostermann. Ostermann also sees the current method of virtual
production as changing the playing field, saying that the director has to be completely sure of what they want during the production. “Nothing can change, because it’s already in the background image,” he says. “With virtual production, that whole term ‘fix it in post’ doesn’t exist anymore.”
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