Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/491542
www.postmagazine.com 23 POST APRIL 2015 "Most shows like to pull DPX frames," explains Powell of the VFX process. "We like to pull Apple ProRes 4444. We get the full camera master out of the Alexa and we deliver 4444 ProRes. It really simplifies the whole workflow because when a cut changes, we have the camera master, and don't have to re-order DPX frames. For me, it's a great workflow thing. We get an EDL from Avid and go into Premiere to generate our VFX cuts." That Premiere project is then brought into After Effects. "It's a very smooth workflow," he continues. At press time, the entire first season of 13 episodes had been delivered. The BLP team worked on anywhere from six to eight episodes at once, ultimately deliv- ering 1,920x1,080 HD content at 23.976. PENNY DREADFUL Bringing to television some of literature's creepiest characters — including Dorian Grey, Dr. Frankenstein and his creature, a feast of vampires, and a black spider with a key role — is creator John Logan's Showtime drama/horror series, Penny Dreadful. With Season 2 set to premiere next month, the show, which takes place in Victorian-era London, stars Eva Green, Timothy Dalton and Josh Hartnett as the mysterious Vanessa Ives, explorer Sir Mal- colm Murray and American gunslinger Ethan Chandler (respectively), who come together to face off against a variety of supernatural threats. With visual effects support from Toronto's Mr. X (via post vendor Take 5 Productions, also Toronto based), James Cooper, VFX supervisor on the series, says there's quite a bit of environmental work, such as set exten- sions, green screens and matte paintings, required to turn Dublin, where the show is shot, into Victorian London. "One of the big scenes for us was when Frankenstein introduced Proteus to the outside world and we created the environment for the Thames River and the embankment," says Cooper. "That scene was shot at a Dublin castle, but really all we used out of that was the archway into the interior courtyard for the entrance into the embankment, the cobblestones that existed, and a little bit of the environment on the right-hand side. Otherwise, our artists created the entirety of the Thames River. We used just a small piece of an embankment wall with a couple of dolphin lamps and then we modeled the rest of that — the Thames, the boats and the river traffic. St. Paul's in the distance was a project- ed matte painting. Houdini was used for all water and sail simulations, ropes and lines on the boats, and smoke, but everything else was modeled in Maya and matte paintings were a bit of [The Foundry's] Modo and Photoshop for texture creations." Other environments for the show included the Mariner's Inn, which was actually "just a concrete pier extending into the ocean with a bit of broken pier dressing and a barge," says Cooper. "The rest of the dilapidated Inn and the entirety of the river Thames, its traffic and envi- ronment of the north bank, were created digitally." The British Museum, too, was shot at Dublin Castle. According to Coo- per, "the only real elements in the shot are the front gate and the foreground people. The museum itself and the people closest to it are all digital creations while mid- ground people were meticulously tracked in green-screen elements." For Season 1 of the series, the produc- tion team shot on Arri Alexa Plus camer- as at HD resolution, but Cooper says they will be moving to 2K for Season 2. Once in post, Cooper says the team worked with DPX files, where they modeled in Autodesk's Maya, and textured using Adobe Photoshop, The Foundry's Mari and Maya. The scenes were animated and lit in Maya, rendered in Chaos V-Ray VFX FOR TV Mr. X's visual effects are key to recreating Victo- rian-era London and the Thames River (above), and a CG black spider (below) for Showtime's Penny Dreadful.