For immediate release - February 2011, London, UK.
London's award-winning visual effects house, Framestore, chooses
SGO Mistika for PHILIPS' stunning stereo 3D film The Foundling
"Mistika gave Framestore the
full Stereo toolset to see through the project from start to
finish...I was able to rely solely on the Mistika to cater for
all the VFX and Mastering needs of The Foundling."
Tim Keene, Executive Producer, Commercials, Framestore
London, UK, 9th February 2011
– SGO's Mistika was used at every stage of Framestore's post
production pipeline for the stunning stereoscopic 3D post
production of The Foundling, produced for PHILIPS. Mistika was
used for conforming, creating seamless workflows, stereo 3D
graphics, titles and visual effects. The film was designed to
demonstrate the PHILIPS 21:9 Cinema 3D TV for the brand's
“Parallel Lines” competition, directed by Barney Cokeliss for
RSA Films. The PHILIPS Parallel Lines campaign invites directors
to put forward their own unique visions of a set six-line
dialogue to illustrate that: "There are millions of ways to tell
a story. There's only one way to watch one."
Framestore's Executive Producer, Commercials, Tim Keene states:
"Mistika gave Framestore the full Stereo toolset to see
through the project from start to finish. Originally I had set
aside other 3D stereo VFX resources to assist the post
production, but soon realised that I was able to rely solely on
the Mistika to cater for all the VFX and Mastering needs of The
Foundling."
Framestore's brief was to create a subtle and immersive 3D
experience, in the style of their previous work for Avatar.
Framestore, leading UK authority on stereoscopic 3D and renown
for using innovative technology to create high-end images for
every platform, chose Mistika for this high profile project.
Initially, Mistika conformed the film from DPX files into two
full resolution streams for the left and right eye. Its unique
stereoscopic alignment tools were then used to quickly align the
left and right cameras. The speedy process was impressively
achieved using Mistika's in-built optical recognition software
to remove any vertical misalignments caused during the shooting
process.
David Cox, Mistika Visual Effects Artist & Colourist was
responsible for the entire stereo 3D post effects, using
Mistika, where he explains: “Colour grading was initially
carried out in a dedicated grading suite at The Framestore in
order to allow the director to continue a relationship with a
particular colourist. Mistika was able to create a seamless
workflow to enable this. It presented left and right streams of
corrected DPX files to the external grading system, flipping and
flopping shots where necessary to make the external grading as
simple as possible. While the grading was in process, I was able
to continue to work on the ungraded material knowing that when
the grading was complete, I could simply swap the ungraded DPX
files for graded ones and all my work would simply be attached
to the graded images. This worked perfectly, as did Mistika's
own colour grading ability to match shots that were later
changed and to provide a final “once-over” in 3D.“
Mistika was also used to create all the 3D graphic and visual
effects sections in the film. Graphics included forming titles
which dissipated in a smoke-effects fashion, created by using
Mistika's “feedback” effect to create a procedural animation to
the internally generated type. There was also a “time passing
“sequence which was created using many traditional circus
posters and these where composed in stereo 3D using Mistika's
stereo 3D compositing space, which allowed accurate positioning,
while viewing the result at the same time in stereo 3D.
There were also many subtle and outstanding visual effects,
which were deliberately intended to be invisible to the
audience. One example was the scene of the mother's face at the
start of the film. It was felt that she looked too old in that
scene, as she needed to look older later on in the film, and the
comparison was not so clear. Mistika's painting tools came to
the rescue and were used to “airbrush” a younger look to her
face, with the animated result tracked in stereo 3D onto the
stereoscopic base shot.
Other visual effects shots that had great impact in the film,
included adding a stereo 3D coconut into a “coconut shy” shot,
so that the coconut flew directly at the audience for a classic,
surprise “stereo 3D moment” making viewers react suddenly. The
closing scene of the circus caravan train moving away were
actually tripled in length using combined multiple passes in
Mistika to elongate the entourage. Finally, there were a number
of small tweaks that were required to perfect certain shots in
the project, such as removing distant buildings and adjusting
elements for better composition and clarity using Mistika.
David Cox adds: “Mistika proved to be the perfect post
production tool for this project as it needed to handle all of
the natural stereoscopic issues, plus be able to make edit
changes, colour grade and provide graphics and visual effects to
the final film. It did all of this extremely quickly, allowing
the maximum creative time to be spent perfecting the film.”
The Foundling depicts the life of a unicorn baby abandoned at a
circus by his mother. The unicorn boy grows up in the circus'
freak show, much to the amusement of spectators. The unicorn's
mother returns to see her son and he chases her through the
circus in 3D.
The film is available to view at PHILIPS in 2D and in-store in
3D as a way of demonstrating PHILIPS' new 3D TVs.
http://www.cinema.philips.com/gb_en/
Credits
AGENCY DDB London
AGENCY PRODUCER Lucinder Kerr
PRODUCTION COMPANY RSA Films
DIRECTOR Barney Cokeliss
PRODUCERS Jason Kemp, Carla Poole
VFX Framestore
FRAMESTORE'S EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, COMMERCIALS – Tim Keene
COLOURIST Dave Ludlam
MISTIKA VISUAL EFFECTS ARTIST & COLOURIST David Cox
POST PRODUCTION SYSTEM SGO Mistika
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About Framestore |
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www.framestore-cfc.com
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About SGO |
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About Mistika Live Mistika Live, SGO’s latest innovative development, extends Mistika's industry-leading stereoscopic 3D post production tools into the production environment. The ultimate viewing station in a stereo 3D shoot environment, the application is a specialised Mistika hardware and software configuration which is also available as part of the toolset in Mistika. SGO is a leading European developer of high-end solutions for the post production and broadcast industries and has been distributing and providing system integration and developing solutions for the film and media industries since 1993. Mistika, SGO's high-end post production system offers a complete solution and industry-leading performance for post production across all genres from advertising, film and TV productions. Customers include Park Road Post Production, BSkyB, Framestore, Preditors, On Sight, BTV, ATM, Mighty Horn, Videomedia, Molinare Madrid, Infinia, El Colorado, Thomson Technicolor Madrid, Real Madrid Televisión, PICTORION das werk GmbH and OPTIX Digital Pictures. www.sgo.es
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