The purpose of this particular exercise was to apply our recent shooting, lighting, green screen experience (three seasons) and learn the uses and possibilities of wirework for visual effects. Following the shooting , Shake would be used as the compositing software during the tuition with Ian Murphy .
As usual we got together to think of an idea to fit the project, which we decided would be a commercial advertisement short.
Fly by Foy - Final Shot
Fly by foy - Concept
Another ordinary roadside, different yet typical day, regular paper clip people following their uncertain and relentless pursuits. A child engrossed
with a handheld game system interferes with his experiment on the morning and sends a businessman flying into the air. The astonished man is
thrust above the street by an invisible force. His mother confiscates the game and they cross the road leaving the man suspended indefinitely. The
world is indifferent ...
Pre-production/planning
The first step was a visit to the Fly by Foy facilities at Borehamwood , where we discussed about the design of various flying sequences and the use of computer controlled systems and got a better idea of the possibilities within the studio space . We decided we would need two days on set : one to set up the lighting and the other to shoot the flying actor.
We had a storyboard and shot list prepared as soon as we had decided on the sequence order. Since we had three concurrent projects and very limited time we had to make the decision to lock off the camera to reduce the tracking demands .
Fly by Foy Storyboard
01.
Busy street - Traffic and people ( daytime ) 02.
Mother and kid in the pavement waiting for the
greenlight to cross the road
Kid is playing a game.
03.
Medium shot of the kid playing the game 04. Camera over the kid shoulder
05. Due to the kid´s game a man goes up in the sky 06. Kid reaction " Cool !!! "
07.
Man in the air going up out of control
08. Green light
09. Mother takes game from the kid 10. At that moment the man stands still suspended
in the air .
11. Later. Nightime 12. Camera from above the lawyer showing the empty
Close up of the manr still suspended in the air saying street.
" hello ?? Anybody ?? "
Wirework / Greenscreen
Due to the booking of the fly rig studio we were impelled to shoot upside down in the desert with the greenscreen studio first without the plates to match, but we felt confident we could work with the footage and get a decent result!
Setting up the Lights Testing the wires
The studio space was small with approximately a 25ft green screen. In front of the screen was the lifting winch controlled by a console. We had two DOP’s Keidrych Wasley and Morgan Peline which spent the pre-light day setting up lots of lights for the green screen. On the shooting day we asked to switch off most of the green screen lights, which they had craned up in high positions. Sorry! The result was a dull flat green that really improved our keying work later since we were shooting Digi Beta (we have been spoilt with HD) so…Less Spill! Rapid Clean Mattes! (*Picture of my teeth smiling here please*)
Digibeta Camera
Fly by Foy automation system
The shooting procedure was reasonably straightforward following the storyboard as reference. We harnessed up George Ioannou who affably allowed us to shoot him being hauled around all day on wires. It was a very hot day in a small studio and we were all sweating without exception, but mostly George!
going up ! An ice cream !!!!
Testing the rig
Fly by Foy studio
Background Plates
We choose a local Beaconsfield shooting location for our plates, this was mainly our budgetary constraint, but the chosen street suited the story well and was very convenient.
Beaconsfield road Fly boy
We choose a local Beaconsfield shooting location for our plates, this was mainly our budgetary constraint, but the chosen street suited the story well and was very convenient. Morgan was our DOP for the day shooting the matching angle stills and perspectives. We finished the day with a couple of night shots. Shot in day mode Doe! Good fun for colour grading practice!
Actor´s ready! Mother and kid
Post Production
After making the EDL we were ready to composite the project. The main techniques here focused on the usual Keying, Roto, Tracking and Colour grading. This was our first major project exclusively using Shake. We were able to complete the project with the guidance of Ian Murphy our Shake saint for two weeks.
Looking at the rushes we decided the lift of the winch was far too slow and very controlled to the contrary of a man upward thrust. Therefore we used hand animation to accomplish weight velocity and motion. Keying compared to the three seasons project was straightforward until we reached the common issues of motion blur and Digi Beta scan line edges. Also , there was plenty of grading work for both night and day plates due to dramatic changes in light on the shooting day from blazing sun to over cast shadows! It was interesting working with Digi Beta on this project at least to learn the tricks and traps to dig out clean stable mattes.
Here a small breakdown of the work required for each shot (action order) :
Pedro ( initial shot -going up )
In this shot i had to composite the flying businessman into the street scene as seamless as possible. Using Shake i started by building a keyer combining Primatte and CFC keylight. For a perfect edge blending i used the edge detect filter with the background on top of the actor just for the edges. After this, the businessman plate needed to be color corrected to match the street lighting. Using a luma key i selected and defocus some strong studio highlights from his head. This helped the scene to look more realistic.
Because in the backgroung plate there is a car passing i created and hand animated a group of masks to give the impression that the actor is behing the car. Also i´ve used a subtle warp to recreate the magnify glass effect when the car passes by.
Screen replacement ( tracking ) Masking the actor behind the car
As mentioned above we felt the lift of the winch very slow and predictable - To avoid this i manually animated his jump trying to make it faster but at same time believable. Finally i tracked a "Super Mario" video game into the game screen - this was a very time consuming job since the game device was constantly changing perspective and receiving strong reflections.
Sambo ( going up - medium shot )
This shot turned out to be more complicate than expected.
I had to convert into video colour space RGB-YUV to get a decent key.
After which, the edge of the matte had to be harder and chewed back with a little bit of blur.
The background had to be brought back into the foreground edges to blend them together.
The foreground clip had to be resized and animated independently to give the actor's fly a more smooth movement and to match his ending position.
Crossing the road greenscreen footage
Also the suitcase footage clipped out of frame and need to be matched with the background.
I had to create two different roto-shapes, one for his hands because the strong blur did not allow proper keying and a separate mask for his head due to the strong green spill.
Rodrigo ( suspended in the air )
I used the CFC keyligh to obtain a matte for this shot. Because the plates were shot with a Digibeta the mattes had a rather hard edge. I extracted an edge from the matte, increased its width and used as a matte to composite a subtle edge from the background over the foregound for a better edge blending between the plates. Some harsh highlights caused by the studio lighting were reduced or erased using a luma key.
Final composite Final composite - detail
I slowed down the actor from the moment he is supposed to stop using Shake 4’s Optical Flow image processing. I then animated him to give the impression produced by inertia when an object stops. The motion blur produced by this animation helped to further enhance the blending from the two plates.
Wilson ( final shot - nightime )
This is the final shot at night where the businessman remains forgotten and dejected. The first task was to get a reasonable key I converted into video colour space RGB->YUV followed by two Keylight nodes one for the edges the other as a hold out for the body.
George close up Final shot
Having shot on Digi Beta we all experienced the annoying unclean edge that accompanied the mattes to counter this I applied the difference on two blurs on the matte (giving a slivered edge outline) as a mask and applied a sliver of the background over the foreground blending the edges. I then worked on the background plates and graded a blue night using colour lookup. Finally I matched foreground to background using the lookups again. Shot done!
Conclusion
This was an excellent opportunity to really explore the depth Shake avails to craft efficient workflows and to practice some tricky matte surgery and grading! The result is a quirky commercial effect.
Credits
DIRECTOR : VFX CLASS ( Pedro Pinto, Rodrigo Fernandes, Sambo Gansser , Wilson Stockman )
PRODUCER : Sarah Hayward and VFX class
VFX SUPERVISOR: Ian Murphy
SFX SUPERVISOR: Fly by Foy
POST PRODUCTION: VFX CLASS ( Pedro Pinto, Rodrigo Fernandes, Sambo Gansser , Wilson Stockman )
LIGHTING: Jonathan Harvey
DOP: Keidrych Wasley and Morgan Peline
ACTORS : George Ioannou ( businessman ); Allan ( boy) and Sharon Loyd ( Mother )
