VFX DIARY – PART 3: POST-PRODUCTION
3D World’s VFX Diary series continues with visual effects supervisor Stephan Fleet, who outlines the post-production process
This issue Stephan Fleet outlines what happens at the post-production stage of a show
W e’ve seen in parts 1 and 2 of 3D
World’s VFX Diary series how visual effects goes through the pre-production and shooting stages. Now, visual effects supervisor Stephan Fleet brings us into postproduction, which is where the grunt work on actual visual effects shots takes place.
It’s here where plates are ingested, asset builds and shot production continues, and where scenes are finessed with compositing and final grading. Fleet provides specific examples from his experiences on the television shows Under the Dome and
Daredevil to reveal what really happens in ‘post’.
Going into post-production
It might seem obvious, at first, what takes place in post-production. You have your liveaction photography and now you need to add the necessary effects. But how do things ‘move’ into post-production in the first place? Fleet says that, in the case of episodic television, post needs to fit in with what can be a complicated production schedule.
Sometimes, there can be around 22 episodes required to be finished per season of television. There is generally prep time of eight days, and then shooting for eight days. Four days are typically given to an editor’s cut, and another four days for a director’s cut (after which the director usually leaves the project), followed by a minimum of four days for a producer’s or writer/showrunner cut. Finally, there might be a few days for studio or network edits.
“Once the picture is ‘locked’,” says Fleet, “it then goes into VFX, sound design, scoring and colour grading, and it all
culminates in the final ‘mix’, which is a sound event, but also where all the puzzle pieces are put together and everything is seen on a big screen, so it’s the theoretical end of the chain before a master is handed over to the network for air.”
“As you can see,” continues Fleet, “post takes a lot more time than prep or production. The first six to eight episodes get more time in their producer/studio/ network cuts as episodes are shot and footage starts to come in. Then things get tighter and tighter as the season goes, until the last episode, where it could literally be a week or two out from shoot to air.”
For example, on season two of Timeless, for which Stephan Fleet was the visual effects supervisor, the production began
shooting two months before the
first episode aired. Once the show began airing, Fleet’s team had to deliver one episode per week.
Things are changing, however, in the new era of episodic streaming production. “With my current project, The Boys,” relates Fleet, “we filmed from April through October – it was supposed to be September – and now we are working in editorial and VFX all that way through February 2019. Our schedule was ever-changing during production, and we don’t have hard air dates to hit. Studios don’t want you working forever, because time is money, but it’s the wild west out here, new rules are being drawn up on every streaming show I do. At a certain point, everything just comes at you at once, no matter what!”
Working With Vendors
A key role for any overall visual effects supervisor during post-production is interacting with VFX vendors. This can simply involve visiting their offices for one-on-one meetings and shot reviews, but these days, due to the global nature of visual effects production, this now regularly takes place in virtual space.
Some of the tools of the trade in communicating with vendors virtually are Skype, Zoom and the popular review tool, cinesync from Cospective. Fleet, who also tends to have his own production team consisting of a VFX producer, VFX co-ordinator and VFX editor, relies on Autodesk’s Shotgun software to organise and manage shots.
“I also make sure I have a large, colourcalibrated monitor in my office for all reviews,” notes Fleet. “RV is my review platform of choice, just for its flexibility in zooming in on things, marking things up, and colour space manipulation. And something that is cool that some people may not know is that if you sign up to use Shotgun on your show, you also get the use of RV for free, since its recent acquisition by Autodesk.”
putting shots together
If pre-production and shooting are planned well, then post can be a smooth ride to a finished shot. However, in shot production, many factors can crop up that may produce obstacles, but then also better shots. For the pilot of CBS show Under the Dome, Fleet oversaw a sequence involving a fruit and produce truck smashing into the invisible dome that suddenly appears, causing the vehicle to be destroyed. It was a shot that would need to be heavily manipulated in post-production.
“I remember the sequence vividly because it was supposed to be practical,” recalls Fleet. “But things happen on set and, well, I remember about 50 people, including the director, Niels Arden Oplev, all turning to me, at that instant, saying, ‘You’re going to fix this, right?’ I casually, calmly texted my company – I worked at Encore at the time – something like, ‘911, red alert, red alert!’”
The challenge for Fleet was that he had to remain on set in Wilmington, North Carolina while Encore began working on the shots. Later, the show’s post-production team would email to say that the shot needed to ‘look a lot better – fast.’
“What it really came down to was money,” says Fleet. “Since the original plan for that sequence was ‘minimal VFX,’ there was this idea that we were going to do as little as possible to ‘make it work.’ I learned an important lesson. When things are going to take time, or I feel like things need to go that extra mile to kick ass, and are going to cost more money – I need to speak up. Right away. Not only that, I need to remind everyone, like a broken record.”
After that email and a few tense phone calls, Fleet got in his car in Wilmington, drove to the airport, bought a ticket to Los Angeles right there, and flew home. “Six hours later I was at Encore meeting with my bosses and my CG supervisor. We went over
the shot and I explained what I thought it really should be, money and time aside. It was a massive undertaking, and we decided, in good faith, to take it on.
“I then went to post, met with Amblin – the production company – and the post producers. We ‘spotted’ it and I explained what we needed to do and how much time it would take. Nobody was happy with the time aspect – but I pushed on anyway.
“It took about a month longer to nail the sequence, squeezing every bit of time and resource we had. Encore ended up making a digital model of the truck and erasing and replacing it in every shot. I remember my last day spotting in post, one of the producers turned to me and said, ‘We like the fact that you didn’t stop or give up until you got it right.’ That was important to me.”
casting in post
While working on season two of the Netflix series Daredevil at Zoic Studios, Fleet also encountered several shots that would be shaped to completion in post-production. One shot, in particular, was an exterior of a building that several ninjas were climbing via ropes. “We had a plate of a building,” says Fleet, “but we only had some strange, closeup – not locked-off – plates of one ninja guy to use for the climb. No rope, by the way.”
To solve the shot – i.e. add in more ninjas on ropes – Fleet says he had to resort to casting, in this case, casting the right VFX artist. “We had a compositor named Nick Daniels at Zoic at the time. He was some kind of NUKE prodigy. Not only did he project the building and clone this ninja guy several times over to get accurate scale and shadows, he actually wrote Python code for the ropes, using null pointers to adjust the tension of the ropes above and below the ninjas climbing the wall. The result was a realistic rope simulation of sorts, where it was taught above the ninja and dangling and loose below the ninja. It looked very real.”
Indeed, Fleet suggests that so much of VFX supervision, including right in the final post-production stages, is in the casting. “It’s about finding the right person or the right company to do the job,” he says. “It’s not that companies and people are good or bad, it’s that you’re just looking for that perfect fit.