Week 11: FreddieW - Old School vs. New School

I could post almost any one of his videos. FreddieW is synonymous with youtube VFX. His videos have an excellent sense of humour and he frequently works with small time stars. High quality productions, the use of excellent VFX and a behind the scenes of most of his videos, mean that he is in many ways someone to aspire to as well as surpass.

This video and its behind the scenes show a lovely integration with live action footage and 3D effects, as well as the challenges associated with this.

Of particular note was the difficulty of shooting in public places. One is often asked to move on and apparently the team spent many hours running around the city being told to move out of places and not film. Of course as a video producer, Freddie was obligated to do as they asked.

Another was the usual difficulty of putting 3D footage into live scenes. One has to shoot multiple takes and hope that one of them works out well for the digital footage to be put on top, and any scenes with it in them need to be shot with that in mind. This becomes more problematic when the camera is interacting and zooming with an invisible object in 3D space. Especially rotating. It's time consuming to match 3D footage to camera rotation if you want to do it accurately.

The actual 3D models themselves, though well animated and excellently rendered, were hardly examples of difficult 3D modelling projects. Though certainly the number becomes a question of time.

This particular video also shows an excellent example of framing, where the Lara cosplayer was in a little box that made her look like she was in a spaceship, when in reality is was a duct pipe lookalike as revealed in the behind the scenes. The lighting and close scene compositing made all the difference.