BlueBolt delivered 138 VFX pictures to assist recreate the 1930’s pre-war period in Focus Options’ Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, Julian Fellowes’ cinematic conclusion to 14 years of drama, romance and intrigue with its iconic characters. The Bluebolt group was led by VFX supervisor Henry Badgett working alongside CG supervisor Dave Cook dinner and 2D supervisor Graham Day.
The ultimate Downton movie follows Woman Mary (Michelle Dockery) as she makes her means via London’s excessive society whereas Lord and Woman Grantham (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern) oversee the Yorkshire Nation Property.
Working intently with DP Ben Smithard, BSC, and director Simon Curtis, BlueBolt recreated a buzzing 1930’s Piccadilly Circus for the opening sequence, constructing a full CG surroundings and incorporating CG automobiles and crowd with live-action components, in addition to combining the 2 filming places of Mortlake Studios automotive park and Richmond Theatre for a seamless transition because the digicam strikes into the theatre and proper via to the stage.
“There have been all kinds of challenges concerned with this sequence,” explains Badgett. “Mainly combining the 2 filming places. Earlier than taking pictures we needed to techviz the digicam positions to make sure a easy transition from the bluescreen set to the Richmond Theatre location. The shot has a wipe designed into it when a person runs for the bus in entrance of digicam, but it surely doesn’t cowl the entire body, so the remaining road was momentarily totally CG with the foreground crowd components tracked in.
“On the day of filming on the bluescreen set we solely had a four-hour window between sundown and wrap, and it was pouring with rain with no enchancment forecast,” he continues. “We needed to simply go forward and movie within the rain. We considered it as a free wet-down, which we might have accomplished anyway for the reflections of the Piccadilly lights stand-ins.
It then turned out within the edit that the quantity of live-action automobiles within the shot nonetheless regarded comparatively quiet for Piccadilly Circus, so Bluebolt added extra CG automobiles in between current ones, which was a significant unanticipated problem for the group.
“The lighting of the bluescreen set was in all probability the one factor that did essentially the most heavy lifting creatively,” explains Badgett. “It gave us actually stable reflections on the moist floor for us to match with Piccadilly adverts, however in a really forgiving means that we might add to as properly.”
The Bluebolt group have been additionally challenged with recreating components of Royal Ascot Raceday. It was filmed at Rippon Racecourse and included a CG grandstand and surrounding stands in addition to seamless 2D and 3D crowd replications.
“For the Ascot crowd, we had a number of cameras taking pictures every setup on the similar time,” says Badgett. “Our VFX crew on-set helped coordinate these passes — sticking to the final rule of getting the hero cross include the group nearest the digicam, after which doing crowd rep till the group was sufficiently small to get away with utilizing CG crowd for the lots within the distance. DP Smithard was very useful and affected person and gave us some wonderful materials to work with.
“We would have liked to make sure the group felt pure and alive – and including parasols actually helped,” he continues. “And though we had been informed that the ladies at the moment wouldn’t elevate their arms over their heads when cheering the horses on, we ignored that for the deepest background to get a bit extra motion.”
Past Piccadilly, BlueBolt additionally enhanced a number of Thirties London environments together with a matte portray of the view over the Mall in direction of Buckingham Palace, enhancing a troublesome location for the foyer of an condo block, including views of South Kensington from the home windows and trendy clear up in London places.
The studio referred to as on instruments that included Maya, Nuke, Houdini, Golaem Crowd, Photoshop and Substance Painter.
