Mill Blog ♥

Tomas Wall takes on every role in a sci-fi brand video

Monday, February 11, 2013

After hearing people throughout his career claim that if they'd directed/produced/written etc. a project they'd have done it "better", Tomas Wall (Nuke Artist) decided to put this common claim to the test and took on a project which he wrote, directed, produced, D.O.P'ed, post produced AND did the VFX for. Here he talks us through the highs and lows of this ambitious and inspirational under-taking…

"Throughout my career I have many times heard others complaining about directors, producers and ideas. "If I was the director I would do a way better job than this" is a common theme. I have also heard lots of people talking about doing their own project, then claiming the reason they don't is that they don't have the time.

I had an idea about making my own thing. I decided to do what other people want to do but don't have time for doing: a personal project. The first thing I did was to call my friends David and Nazanin, who at the time lived in Oslo. They had started a company together with two other friends, Hampus and Marcus: A touch screen gloves brand. You know, those kind of gloves you can use to navigate on your phone, without having to take them off on a cold winter day. The very first thing they were very clear on was that they couldn't pay me a penny. The very first thing I was very clear on was that I didn't want any money, I wanted to do this project as an experiment to myself. I was the writer, director, producer, D.O.P, post-producer and VFX Artist. How much could I do on my own?



We decided my friends would provide me with references that fit in the frame of their brand. The references I got were quite clear - they wanted something modern and futuristic: Matrix, Tron and Harry Potter shots were the major part of the references. Their brand "Tatchies" represented the good side, the new fresh brand with new ideas. All other big fashion brands represented the dark side who fight for people to dress like they want us ordinary people to dress. Inspired by the first chase in The Matrix, when Trinity is being chased by agents and policemen, I created a storyboard. Everyone liked the idea: Tatchies is the hero being chased by other fashion brands, and gets away. We started to do casting among our friends and connections and found four girls and one guy who were perfect for the spot.

I made a deal with my former employer in Stockholm. I could borrow the entire 400sq/m green screen studio, a RED One, all lights I needed, styling area and two full time employers for the shoot. But: only for 4 hours on a Saturday. I got a crash course in how to operate a RED for an hour by the camera supervisor at the studio. Two friends of mine did the styling of the actors in one hour while the rest of us prepared the studio. Since we only had the studio for 4 hours I decided that we could only go for one light set up on set, and then match the light to the CG created backgrounds in post. We all worked like crazy and finished on time!

After the shoot I flew back to London and started working as a Nuke Lead Compositor for The Mill. During the following weekends in October 2011 I edited the spot. I had realized by now how much work a 1 minute green screen spot actually is. At the same time I had work way above my ears at The Mill and had to pause my personal project. Over time I wanted to do more CG than I had initially planned to do. I got in touch with a CG Artist, Daniel, in Stockholm who was really hooked on the idea. Luckily, he was also prepared to do it for free.



In the middle of all this I got sent over to The Mill New York, to work on some of the Super Bowl commercials. In New York I continued to work on my project. I even bought a new computer so I could work from home. Also, one thing was missing: we hadn't had time to shoot the evil boss back in Sweden. So 5 months after the shoot in Stockholm, I borrowed all the equipment I could from The Mill New York and shot the last scene, the evil boss. I did it in the reception on the sixth floor one night after work!

By mid summer I was still missing a few backplates for some of the shots. I decided to do it the old fashion way: I was on holiday for a weekend in Sweden and took my Canon 7D with me. I went out with my girlfriend to parking garages around Stockholm and took snapshots of all the missing plates. I later stitched these together and modified them in Nuke to match the CG plates I had already had been given by Daniel. By now I also had a few almost fully or nearly fully CG shots rendered for me. In a few shots I imported the models from Maya straight in to Nuke and then projected shaders my self. About 30 percent of the spot uses shading rendered from Maya, the rest are projected shaders all done in Nuke.



One week before delivery I still had loads of work to do. I even had to redo two shots from scratch since they were lost from a formatted hard drive. All the final grading had to be done in Nuke. I used 7 days of time I had in lieu and worked 08:00 - 24:00, for 7 days straight, in my kitchen on my PC. Still starting from scratch to finalizing each comp, in one day. When I felt a comp was almost done, I played it to myself two times. If I couldn't see any clear mistakes no non-VFX-person would either, and I signed it off as done.

During the last week I had a friend in Sweden working on the sound design. He ended up composing a song for me, plus doing the sound effects and foley. During the last weekend I flew over to Sweden for a final check of the sound. Another friend of mine who runs a sound studio, Cutting Room, mastered the final track for me only 3 hours before deadline. Me and my friends had booked White Room, a night club in Stockholm, where we had a kick off party for the brand video on a big screen for our friends and colleagues in the business.

& What is the conclusion of this project?
Don't do everything yourself if you want everything to be perfect. Do it to see what you're capable of doing. Push your own limits in areas of a production where you normally don't work."

// Thanks Tomas for this fascinating guest blog. To view the film in full, you can do so here and a 2 minute behind the scenes film here.