Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/297945
18 Post • April 2014 www.postmagazine.com rooftops and church steeples. A cherry picker took me up in the middle of a bridge over the Thames to get the perfect shot of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. And I was 45 feet in the air at dawn over Trafalgar Square." Johnson's vast library of stills was used to create photographic matte paintings that were projected onto 3D geometry. Grayson's resonator, which generates wireless electricity, went through a lot of creative R&D. "We started with steampunk- esque Tesla coils, but Carnival's aesthetic kept wanting it to be more subtle so as not to distract from the dialogue and action," says Johnson. "This wasn't Frankenstein's lab." Grayson's demonstration of the technol- ogy elicited "countless discussions" among the creatives. Hundreds of spectators were shown holding clear light bulbs in their hands, illuminated by the wireless power of the resonator. "Because the producers wanted to see the filaments in the bulbs, it was important that they be regular incandescent bulbs," Johnson explains. "So they ran electri- cal lines to every bulb and did the effect in camera. Although it took us a great deal of time and labor to paint out the electrical lines to 300 extras holding bulbs in a ball- room, it was still less expensive than hiding wires in clothing and sets. And the lights are so close to people's faces that they're part of the lighting for the scene and create a warm glow captured by the camera." Stargate was also responsible for some organic VFX. When Dracula is infused with Van Helsing's serum to allow him to stay out in the sunlight, his CG veins appear engorged as the serum flows through his body. But the treatment doesn't work exactly as hoped and Dracula's skin begins to redden and burn after more than a few minutes of exposure to the sun. "The make up department started the process on Jonathan, and we stepped in when his skin blackens, chars and smokes," says Johnson. "We had hundreds of photos of Jonathan to work with. We used [Autodesk] Maya and [NewTek] LightWave [3D] to get the look in 3D, and integrated it with his moving body with [Imagineer Sys- tems'] Mocha and [Adobe] After Effects. Later, when Dracula feeds and heals, we filmed Jonathan with make up and without, and transitioned between the two to create a sense of the skin growing back as he heals." Johnson admits it was "a bit of a challenge to be in Budapest and supervise artists in LA," but lots of video conferencing with Stargate VFX producer Tyler Foell and remote access to the artists' work-in-progress helped to close the geographical gap. In the end, Dracula is not really a VFX show, Johnson says. "It's more love story than supernatural thriller." Mr. Selfridge London-based DNeg TV, the tele- vision division of Double Negative Visual Effects (www.dneg.com), com- pleted VFX for Season 2 of Mr. Self- ridge, a co-production of ITV Studios and Masterpiece, which is currently being broadcast in the US on Sunday nights on PBS's Masterpiece. The second season of the popular show, about the retail empire of the American- born founder of London's Selfridge's depart- ment store, takes place in 1914. DNeg TV was charged with recreating the exterior of the store and updating the look of Oxford Street, which had changed dramatically since Season 1, set five years earlier. "The exterior is like another character in the show," says Hayden Jones, VFX supervi- sor and one of the founders of DNeg TV with Jonathan Privett and Louise Hussey. "It's such an iconic building that we knew it had to look correct; viewers would know instant- ly if it wasn't right." Exterior shots typically show "the tapestry of life" on Oxford Street, with "people walk- ing down the street, chatting as they go into the store, workers preparing for a royal visit by rolling out the red carpet. All sorts of action takes place outside." A small section of the exterior was built as a set on Chatham Docks, says Jones. "It's one-story high and covers three windows and one set of double doors. We built the other four floors and the other half of the building. Everything beyond the greenscreens on set is all digital — cars, horse-drawn buses, carriages, people, street lamps, build- ings," Jones says. "It's an amazing challenge." In the interest of "matching CG down to the millimeter" of the exterior set, DNeg TV did a LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) scan of the set to facilitate an accurate digital recreation. "It allowed us to make sure the set extension model fits perfectly to the set," Jones explains. "It can't be a millimeter off." The exterior of Selfridge's features "so many vertical uprights that it's very unforgiv- ing to do match moves," he notes. "One of the joys of working here is our fantastic R&D department, so a lot of our tracking tools are bespoke. They produce excellent results on shots that normally would be extremely dif- ficult to track." DNeg TV had to recreate different day parts for Oxford Street, too. "Now [World War I] is upon us and they've dimmed down lights for blackouts." In one shot, "the DP left all the lenses wide open for a short depth of field, giving a nice textural feel to the out of focus areas of the image," says Jones. "We had to match that, even to the model and the optical quality of the lenses. It's a subtle Stargate's Kent Johnson: The LA studio's work ranges for the series Dracula. Much of DNeg TV's work on Mr. Selfridge involves the street where the store is located. VFX for TV