Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1522701
Fred Pienkos: Less is more. Stefan Bredereck: Then we kept moving forward with the se- quence bit by bit. Certain effects within the shot were approved, while others still got tweaks and adjustments. All in all, it was a very smooth production and we had way fewer issues than we thought we would. We even did a full body match movement for Guillermo the sec- ond time the flamethrower hits, so we could singe his sweater. The whole shot sequence is just layer aer layer. One of our compositors who did the end composite begged us to not add anything more. The Fusion node tree was the largest single node stack we had ever seen—but Fusion handled it. Fred Pienkos: That node tree was bigger than a 4K monitor could show when zoomed out entirely. I think another way that Fusion really helped us was at the end of the day when we had this very long, complicated sequence with a bunch of people working on it. With comedy being the most import- ant part, there was an editorial change at the end of the shot where they wanted to re-time Guillermo's reaction to the bat and the deliv- ery of his final line. So we had to cut a little time out of that section. When your elements are organized in the way that they were for us in Fusion, that became a much simpler client request. If it wasn't as organized as it was, that would have been a difficult note to get— to remove 32 frames from the middle of the sequence and make it seamlessly play without a jump in the camera move or the actor's position. It became just another compositing task for the shot. Were there any other challenging or memorable visual effects sequences that really stood out to you in the past season? Fred Pienkos: We did several bat transformations, and we worked on the sequence when the vampires were in the cages. It's all fun. We had a scene where we had to do some blood com- ing out of Kristen's knee [Kristen Schaal as The Guide], and those are always funny because the actors are just hilarious on their own. And then we get to add some more to the scene, which makes it a lot of fun. What do you enjoy most about working on the series? Fred Pienkos: It's the fact that we can see the same shots over and over again for a period of weeks, and we still laugh during dailies. It just doesn't seem to get old. Every time we see it, we can see the hu- mor and we can see what we're working on. And I think that's what's best for me. Sometimes if you're seeing something over and over again, you start to lose focus or you start to lose the details because you've seen it so many times. That's not the case with this show. Stefan Bredereck: I mean, the show is so popular that I expect half of our team to dress up as the characters for Halloween. Even John [Gross], our boss, is practicing one of the vampires' accents because he's just a big fan. From the boss to the intern, everybody enjoys it. That's really cool. Oen we work on serious shows. We've worked on NCIS, Evil, Class of '09, Y: The Last Man (also with Steve Pugh as show VFX supervisor)—those are all really serious, heavy kind of shows where we do either very gruesome stuff or big explosions. This has a different sensibility. There are little Easter eggs. We even got to de- sign this pizza parlor sign, for example. What was the name, again? Fred Pienkos: Staten Pie-Land. Stefan Bredereck: That kind of stuff. It's on frame in the show for maybe like two or three seconds, but people can find it. With this client, it feels like you're really part of the team and you're contrib- uting in such a way that you're just happy to share that with your friends and your family. Especially when I mention that we work on this show. If people know it, they're instantly like, 'Oh, my God!' and start asking questions. Almost every episode throws an interesting challenge our way, which keeps things exciting. The client really gets that this is some- thing special they've come up with. They give us enough time, a proper budget, and a clear vision to bring it to life. It's really great working with clients who understand the process and are commit- ted like that.