: The Aeronauts

Dec 9, 2019

This film The Aeronauts holds a special place in my heart. A conclusion to a personal journey started years before (around 2008/2009) as staff supervisor at Curious Pictures in NYC. We were working with Danny DeVito on a film project (untitled). The script was a man on a boat in the middle of the ocean. We would utilize our (modest) stage and shoot the whole film green/blue screen and replace the BG in CG. Meaning full CG ocean and sky….for 60-80min of talking heads.

At the time I didn’t feel confident we could pull this off with out current technology or television expertise. We had accomplished a handful of 911 film shots in the past…but they were painful productions where we lost money. We didn’t have a color-mangement workflow or monitors for viewing the higher bitdepth images. We didn’t have a lens distortion or match moving pipeline. We didn’t have a degrain or regrain pipeline. We didn’t believe we had the infrastructure or systems back end to handle the data or throughput over the network for 16/32bit film data. We didn’t have editing suits capable of handling the 90+min of film rushes and b roll. We didn’t have the render farm to handle the either the photographic sea / sky rendering or the 2D rendering…. And all of this was going to be accomplished in vanilla Maya and After Effects…..

Long story short, it seemed like a disaster which was going to bankrupt us, and I recommended we scale up dramatically or think about producing the film, but subcontract the work. I was made to feel bad for not thinking “Big Enough”…..and that really stuck with me during my career. I began to notice how I focus my energies consistently small day to day pipeline and workflow issues. Production hiccups that effect people and personal relationships rather than large infrastructure projects or trying to get that “next big gig which will change everything”.

Fast forward to 2018 Framestore asked me if I would be interested in being a comp supervisor on The Aeronauts . The project in a sense was exactly like the Danny DeVito film I’d backed away from all those years ago. Conversely, I’d been at Framestore for about 6 years and was confident in our techniques, workflows, technology and infrastructure. I knew we had all the tools and techniques that we’d need to accomplish what the VFX supervisors and director wanted for the film! So we assembled the A-Team. Many of the same folks who worked on Gravity and Bladerunner 2049 and got to work!

Every film has the thing that makes it unique to work on, and in the case of The Aeronauts, it was the volume of work.

Typically while planning a studio film project we break the show into segments of scenes and shots. With these groupings then create teams of artists to follow the images to completion. For The Aeronauts, we ran into a problem pretty quickly. The volume of work being turned over was immense. The shot counts for the sequences were pretty standard, 50-150 shots per sequence…but as bidding commenced the artist days were astronomical comparatively.

Turned out it was the nature of the film which led to very long shot lengths. The first several turnovers averaged about 1600 frames per shot, which is substantial for VFX. When we extrapolated out, the VFX work on the film was going to sum up to be around 65min of digital set extensions (which is a lot of work)!

So, the studio broke the show up into two half’s and added a second comp supervisor to help produce the work:

Thai Son Doan

To combate the ‘shot problem’, we broke the film down into [screen seconds + artist days] rather than shot count. With these groupings we could create teams of managable sizes and realistic expecations for the studio and clients.

Vauxhall Park Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Thai Son Doan

Sequence Lead: …

This sequence was a large build. Mostly due to the amount of set / sky extension and roto/prep work needed to be completed. It was literally thousands of days of artist time to roto and paint the scans.

VFX work:

CG Balloon
CG Crowds
Multi Plate Stitches
CG Bleachers
DMP/CG Sky
London Set Extension(s)
Dirtying up London (adding soot)
CG Dog
CG Clouds
Full CG London City Build

Gallery:

Observatory Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Anthony Luigi Santoro

Sequence Lead: …

VFX work:

Sky / BG Replacement
DMP / CG London
CG Balloon

Gallery:

Storm Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Anthony Luigi Santoro

Sequence Lead: …

This was the main sequence which I supervised (artist day wise). Besides the BG replacement from set which usually required full rotoscope of people and baskets and ropes…etc. It was requested that we add fog and rain inside the basket. This meant hair-level rotoscoping of the actors in the basket and a full depth estimation workflow to add rain and fog. Took about 6 months to build the workflows and complete these shots.

VFX work:

Sky / BG Replacement
CG Balloon
CG FOG
CG Balloon

Gallery:

Vauxhall Park (After Storm)

Compositing Supervisor: Thai Son Doan

Sequence Lead: …

Second smaller Vauxhall park sequence. Sky replacement, structure in the BG…. interestingly we had to wet the wood on the deck of the platform. I really liked how that effect turned out.

VFX work:

CG Balloon
CG Bleachers
DMP/CG Sky
London Set Extension(s)
Wet decking

Gallery:

Sky Sequence (misc)

Compositing Supervisor: Anthony Luigi Santoro

Sequence Lead: …

While Thaison generally handled the sky shots on the film because of the DMP workflow he and the VFS supervisor built, I supervised some shots had a handful of the ‘Full CG’ skies. With exception of the Top of the World sequence, I recall most of the Full CG skies were on my plate…..I usually take on the things which I suspect will end poorly and want to save my teammates the drama. Also there was a lot of fog in this sequence which was my domain.

VFX work:

Sky / BG Replacement
CG Balloon
CG FOG
CG Balloon

Gallery:

Butterfly Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Thai Son Doan

Sequence Lead: …

The BGs in this sequence were something of ledgend. Louis Morin the VFX Supervisor had shot all this amazing footage in South Africa using a helicopter and a RED (Dragon?) Camera Array. Framestore received mountains of plates. 6x camera tile sets all shot at 8k needing to be stitched together to play as moving footage behind the shots. Well. The dataset (Terabytes and terabytes) for every camera array select hammered our network and farm. We all loved the footage and wanted it in the film of course, but it wasn’t part of the initial VFX brief, so Framestore didn’t have the time to build/buy the infrastructure to manage it (could take 6+ months to prep for that volume of data). Thaison worked months and months generating proxies and creating workflows which would allow the rendering of these sky play stitches at ‘low network bandwidth’ points. Ultimately the images speak for them selves. It was just an unexpected challenge.

VFX work:

CG Balloon
CG Butterflies
DMP/CG Sky
Camera Array Sky Tile Set

Gallery:

Jorden College Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Anthony Luigi Santoro

Sequence Lead: …

A short sequence of shots where Amelia visits the male only university. There was set cleanup, moving cabling and rigging and lighting as well as set extentions at the end of the corridoor.

VFX work:

BG Cleanup
Digital Set Extension

Gallery:

Top of the World (Part I)

Compositing Supervisor: Thai Son Doan

Sequence Lead: …

This was the second flagpole sequence Framestore produced. It was imperitive that the fully cg skyscape be both dangerous and breathtaking. I think Thaison and his team accomplished just that. For my contribution, I managed the breath team who spent months lining up breath elements to the shots. Once those were approved we handed them off to the comp team as elements for the shots. We had a fun workflow for the breath using Keen Tool Head Tracker. Originally we wanted to use Eddy fluid simulator but Framestore was not able to get the GPU farm up in time for the film. So Loius the VFX sup invited me out and we shot all the breath on a cold stage over the course of a couple of days. Was fun to be on set for that element shoot.

VFX work:

CG Balloon
DMP/CG Sky
CG Breath

Gallery:

Cemetery Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Anthony Luigi Santoro

Sequence Lead: …

Just two shots where we added snow to a cemetary scene. Takes more work than one might think. But the result was worth it.

VFX work:

CG Snow

Gallery:

Top of the World (Part II)

Compositing Supervisor: Thai Son Doan

Sequence Lead: …

The second and larger half of the Top of the World sequence. The artist days put into this sequence still astounds me. The results speak for themselves. An impressive bit of work from the Comp and Evironment teams on this sequence.

VFX work:

CG Balloon
DMP/CG Sky
CG Breath

Gallery:

Falling Sequence

Compositing Supervisor: Anthony Luigi Santoro

Sequence Lead: …

Last of the Framestore sequences. We were working with our teamates in India. It was the same gag for adding the breath, snow and fog. Full body rotos with hair details. Fully body matchmoves and depth estimation workflow…etc. Simple effect resulting from a sophisicated workflow. I was really pleased how this sequence turned out.

VFX work: