Can gopro vfx films succeed?
A Gopro film points the way to a new standard of low-budget VFX work, but at what cost? Ian Dean meets the Hardcore Henry team…
The big issue The use of Gopro set the tone for Hardcore Henry but it was difficult for the team to work with
The one-shot, low-budget, 90-minute action movie filmed on a Gopro, Hardcore Henry is pushing back on the expectations of independent filmmaking. “It’s always great to work on something unique. Especially something like this: an independent film that no one sees coming,“says Don Libby, CG supervisor at Zero VFX, who worked on digital stitching and CG effects for the film’s stunts. “I see it as a groundbreaking piece that I’m very proud to have supervised and been a part of for Zero,” agrees Zero’s VFX supervisor Dan Cayer. Legion VFX’S producer Christopher Sinnott adds: “You see something like that and immediately start to question the monstrous hill in front of you to take it to final. Despite its hardships, Hardcore Henry was great. There was an energy not just behind the footage, but behind the entire team.”
Key to Hardcore Henry was the use of Gopros to film the action, but the headmounted cameras threw up problems with resolution and lens distortion.
“Our techniques of accounting for lens distortion were no different than normal, but the solutions were more extreme,” explains Dan. “Since the footage had to be flattened out, or undistorted before working on it, there was a lot of prep to track the plates and create the 3D renders, and to devise a solution for the plate-stitching required to make the illusion of one seamless take throughout the entire chase. At HD resolution, all of the distorting and un-distorting is something we had to be very careful with in order to maintain the highest quality possible.” “Gopro footage sucks,” says VFX Legion’s Christopher Sinnott. “That being said, it gives wonderful contrast to good VFX work because it feels so raw and real” It’s a problem encountered by VFX Legion too, who worked on 70 shots that encompassed plate stitching, burn marks, CG blimps, blood, lots and lots of blood, muzzle flashes and ricochets. “The lens distortion and low image fidelity means that everything takes three to four times longer to do. The show was shot at 48fps and at 4K. Simply pulling the plates from the source material took weeks to figure out how to match what editorial was doing,” says VFX Legion’s James Hattin, cofounder and creative director.
Everyone involved says the workload was worthwhile to help create something so groundbreaking and independent. Aside from a key chase sequence in which Zero tore apart a van with a minigun and added CG smoke, fire, blood and destruction using a Maya, V-ray, Fumefx and Nuke pipleline, Don points to the ‘blending’ as a standout technique: “The blends are the most impressive to me. The first time you watch this sequence you
I see it as a groundbreaking piece that I’m very proud to have supervised Dan Cayer, VFX supervisor, Zero VFX