HD For Indies

That's just f'ing sweet.


-Andrew
 

Great find. What an amazing piece of work.
 

What fun! Oh, for 4 days off to play like that...
 

Amazing how they were able to put their egos aside and just work on a project like that.

(seriously).
 

I wonder how long it took fro them to complete the post work?
 

Don't get lured into thinking this is just easy 'Go out, shoot, come home, make a few cut's, done' kind of stuff. This is the Beeb!! Timewatch is one of the most renowned and carefully produced history programmes on earth. To me it looks more like a 4 week storyboard, 4 day shoot, 4 week Post job. Martijn
 

samuel - that is THE magic question.

A lot of indie work is premised on having more time than money - and that ONLY works if you have the skills to do it as well - otherwise we're talking money, which most of us don't have.

I haven't analyzed the whole thing for how long it would take, but Martijn probably isn't too far off.

-mike
 

notice the almost complete absence of hand held? Hand held vfx shots need a lot more work.

So if you are doing an indie vfx extravaganza keep your shots locked off. In fact a lot of big 90's vfx films did the same thing, then later on because they were working with large film scans they would pan around the frame in 2D to simulate a hand held or slight camera move. This only work if you are simulating a somewhat long lens though unless you keep the movements small.
 

I think I read on another forum that someone saw a "making of" type tying for this and the post time was 6wks.
 

Saw this on broadcast and have to say it's a really nice job, great to see how it was put together.

HOWEVER

I understand that this has relevance for Indie filmmakers who might want to create something similar, but I would add to Martijn's comments the fact that they had both time AND money - the BBC may be tight, but believe me this programme cost a fair deal more than most "low-budget" films.
 

awesome. a ton hear indies can pull from. but this is far from independent itself. id have to agree with the 2 weeks prep 6 weeks post estimate. but i bet they could do it again in 1/3rd the time. it looks like they shot with P2's. can anyone confirm this?
 

2/3rds is what i intended to say. perhaps they could get down to a 1/3rd the 3rd time around.
 

Was that an HVX that shot with?
 

No, it was a Z1.
 

Hmm. 3D would probably be 1-2 man weeks, and the comp is probably 4 man weeks. Depends on the number of shots though, but those comps look like they really haven't had more than 3-5 days spent on them, probably less. Very little look dev too.

The 3D asset build looks pretty light -- some basic sand traps and some boats, none of it close to camera and with easy single source lighting.

The grade is pretty forgiving - crush the blacks, tint the whole thing and the buzzy matte lines disappear.

... and the comps look 80% finished. (The explosions and smoke are throwing it for me)

But its damn impressive and the great thing for Indies is that none of what you see is actually hard from a vfx perspective.
 

Having a look at it again -- there's more shots than I can remember - so probably 8 man weeks for comp.