Computer Graphics World

March / April 2016

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m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 6 c g w 4 5 Did the VFX demands change from the pilot to the series? Hutcheson: In any series, the pilot is always going to be heavier, and certainly the shots Zoic did in the pilot were challenging. There were a lot of them, and I know they did them in a short amount of time. There were some episodes that were somewhat lighter, just because of the subject matter, and then there were others where we had to build full-3D environments and set extensions. It varied, but definite- ly, the pilot was heavier. Baksinski: We did stuff on the pilot that I wouldn't necessarily try on the regular series. It was much more. When he's walking through New York — the movie theater — nothing in those shots is real except for the actors, a few cars, and the newsstand. Everything was replaced, and it wasn't greenscreen. At the time we shot the pilot, we were shooting at night in Seattle, with 40 mph winds. That [span] the guy walked across is longer than a football field, so it would have been impossible to put up that much green at night. It would have bounced all over the place because things were wet and rainy. On the pilot, we made the choice to never use greenscreen. The DP had particular lighting set up that he wanted to use and a very particular look, and the director was the same way. We were working for RSA, which is Ridley Scott, and these people are all coming from the same bloodline as something like Blade Runner. It's dark and wet and gritty — that type of look. You have a hard time getting that type of look in a very controlled greenscreen environment. When you see the New York stuff, that is literally shot in a rainy, industrial parking lot, and we then roto'd everything and built the environments. Was anything shot on a stage? Baksinski: Very little is actually a stage. Most of our stage [work] was interiors. For example, when the Japanese ambassador and the Germans are talking inside the embassy – that stuff is a stage. The apartment interiors were stages, but exteriors of the apartment – when you see him dragged out – that was all alleyways. Hutcheson: When they got to series, they rebuilt some of those loca- tions to the best of their abilities, like the alleyway. They rebuilt it on a stage, and we would set-extend the end of it. The apartment was on a stage. They had to re-create what they had shot in the pilot on a stage here in Vancouver. What was the production and post schedule? Hutcheson: It was an extremely tight schedule. We started shooting in March (2015) and had to have all 10 episodes completed by the middle of October. It was a really tight turnaround. We had about three weeks per episode for VFX aer the director cut. I understand the pilot and series were shot with Red cameras? Hutcheson: For the series, they shot 6 k. The visual effects were finished at 2k, and they were up-res'd, just because there wasn't enough time to send files around at that size and within our time schedule. But the rest of the series was finished in 4 k. Which Zoic locations contributed to the VFX? Hutcheson: LA did the pilot. Zoic Vancouver did a good chunk of the work here, along with a couple other vendors. [Editor's note: Those included Artifex Studios, Atmosphere VFX, Psyop, CG Factory, and CVD VFX]. What VFX tools did Zoic use for this series? Baksinski: It was pretty standard. We use Maya for most of our modeling, lighting, texturing, and animation. We use a package called Phoenix for dynamics. For example, when you're looking at the airport sequence and the jet engines are having their liquid nitrogen pouring out — that's [from] Phoenix. That's an interesting reference too, because we were on set that day and [Director David Semel] was like, 'Do you remember The Right Stuff'? There is a sequence in Before Aer THE AMAZON SERIES THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE REQUIRED VISUAL EFFECTS TO ALTER THE LOOK OF AMERICA IN THE 1960S. Baksinski Hutcheson

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