 |
| sent from: London, UK. destination: Bombay, India |
It was late in the evening, on the train home. I had a postcard to write, but my mind was on work, on something I hadn’t fully figured out yet, an issue arising from an unusual problem in our current project; namely long, unbroken shots. In a typical film you can rely on each cut being on average about 100-125 frames long, about four or five seconds, which is the vfx ‘unit’ by which we judge the scope and scale of a film. On this film the average hovers more at several thousand frames, about a minute or two. We’ve had to split the shots into more manageable chunks and then re-combine them later, and therefore break open one of the most basic elements of the visual effects workflow. I needed to work out the re-merging bit (or more specifically, blending between the bits we wanted to join), so I drew, erased, re-drew until I had it more or less clear, then I realised this would make an excellent postcard.