Second Year Summer: Feature Film VFX
I was a part of the team that did the VFX for the Silver Screen Dreams Cafe
I was contacted by Alex Bucknall to work with him on the VFX for this film, We later brought on Ryan Atkinson to create a small VFX team I was initially in charge of working on the right side window and the front of the café however as our short deadline began creeping up on us I joined Ryan on working on the left side windows as well as completing the clean up for lost of shots
Front of the Cafe:
I first used Photoshop to clean plate the front of the café removing the church signs, I was provided windows to use in the shot I comped them with some manual shadow under the ledges to help make them appear more 3D and embedded into the scene.
I then used footage provided for the park area to the right grading it to match the base footage
Finally I modelled an ally in maya and textured it in substance painter quickly rendered out a high quality image then graded and colour matched inside of nuke I also made sure the rest of the team had access to the model in case they needed it
Right Wall Shot:
This shot I was provided footage for the background, I used a keylight setup to remove the green screen.
For the background I first tracked the shot using the CameraTracker node then I put the footage on a card, added some window grime then graded the footage to match the plate taking the exposure into consideration when composing the image, I also added some window glow to help sell the illusion of light.
I then modelled and textured a quick shelf to the window to help make the widow look better as in other shots without it the background seemed too flat.
Left Window Shot:
Similar to the right window I used a keylight setup to key the greenscreen, however we needed to remove the torn wallpaper in the background I tracked two sets of roto paint as the camera moved following tips I learnt from my multi cam projection experiments however applying them in 2D
This shot was far simpler as I didn't have to learn many new things though the tracking was an interesting challenge due to its unconventional angle
Clean up:
I also did a bunch of clean plating shots removing place names or changing them to match the film, as well as removing a greenscreen they decided against. for most of the shots I used rotopaint and a tracker if needed however for the shot with the glass I made sure to add the reflections back in behind the name when you look really close you can spot it however at a normal viewing point it is pretty much un noticeable
Skills Learnt/Developed:
3D Tracking
Cleanplating
Producing a Large Project​
Project Management
Final Thoughts:
This project though not showing the glamourous sparkly effects taught me how to manage a large project and quickly produce effects under pressure. Over the course of 2 months and 1 week we produced 266 shots and I personally worked on 119 of them.
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Through development we rand into a wide array of roadblocks in this projects development, we had issues with file organisation from the clients side causing some shots that were back to back having slightly different views out of the window for example, To prevent this from happening next time I would push for the client to organise each shot into folders group by scene so one person does all the effect for each batch reducing the mistakes. Furthermore I would recommend that the client imports the shots into the films timeline as we work, in this project we did the VFX for all 266 shots and were signed off however the client didn't check that the shots flowed during development leading to a stressful few days of last minute edits.
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I am incredibly thankful to the Silver Screen Dreams Café team for letting me gain valuable experience and my team from Futureworks
We also worked with other students from De Montford University however Alex was in charge of talking with the director and other studios.
Evan Goddard