industry
axisVFX
then we’d have to go back and they’d become
a bespoke shot rather than a generic one.”
in the end, axisVFX had to create roughly
40 bespoke shots out of the 350 shots they
created for the stadium. “We did 1,350 shots
in the film but it could take three or four
days to get the bespoke ones right.”KEEping up wiTh cAMERA AnglES
Aardman set up a virtual reality version of
the stadium which meant directors could
go in and pinpoint which aspects of the
stadium they’d like axisVFX to focus on.
“The directors would hold a camera [and]
turn it round. They’d have a rough key of
their puppet in the foreground and then
they’d say which bit of stadium they’d like,”
explains Jones. “Then we’d take that and
correct it in terms of the verticals, or we’d
correct certain other sections of it and do
a technical pass of what they’d given us in
terms of camera angle. That took a while
because the Vr model didn’t line up. it
wasn’t quite the same model as ours so you
had to line up the bits that made the most
sense to line up, and then you had to checkpercentage of certain props, you just saw
them out all over the place and it all looked
too samey,” Jones explains. “in the end,
we took the visible props down to nearly
nothing. The same thing happened with
clapping – unless they were all clapping, we
just took clapping out unless we needed it
because visually, it sticks out.”
axisVFX also mixed up different levels of
cheering in the audience to try and get the
sense that the whole crowd was working
together. “if they were all cheering, it didn’t
work that they all did exactly the same thing
because they just looked like robots,” Jones
adds. “There was the occasional moment
however, where we actually wanted to
time it so that they all suddenly started
doing something, but we needed it to look
realistic. We’d want them to go from sitting
to cheering, so within that frame range i
wanted to give it a 15-frame-range random
variation so they all start within 15 frames of
each other, so you get a sense that they’re a
proper audience in a natural way rather than
suddenly doing one thing.”
A reasonable amount of crowd reactions
were created through genetic variations,
where the scene would have a cheering
crowd and then the team would use that
cheering crowd for the next five shots. “We
also had what we call transition shots where
they’d go from one reaction to the other, so
composition-wise that it wasn’t causing
an issue, like having a pillar coming out
of somebody’s head. The actual camera-
approval went through me and i would just
look at every single shot and compare it to
the Vr, so that took a while to make sure
they worked.”axisVFX also created the visual effects
for the prologue scene, which kicks off with
a shot in space, before moving around the
moon and into prehistoric earth. The team
researched what earth may have looked like
all that time ago and aimed to position the
plates and the countries in a way that looked
recognisable but different due to the levels of
water. “so Africa had a bit of a chunk taken
out of it and south America was a bit thinner
and then we positioned them on the first
shot you see of the earth, so you feel like
it’s the earth but it feels a lot older,” Jones
explains. “We had a bit of fun choosing
our version of prehistoric earth. Factually,
completely incorrect, but then you have
dinosaurs with humans so we didn’t think it
mattered too much.”“We had to simplify the look of our effeCts to make it
look less real, to fit With the style of the aNimatioN”
Howard Jones, co-founder and VFX supervisor, axisVFX