POST-PRODUCTION
over to Ferstl and Delegal to integrate those effects with the people and objects in the shots. The effects of an explosion or sudden flash of light would then interact with a character’s face, clothing or the environment in general. Again, Ferstl combined traditional colour tools with the most sophisticated new tools within DaVinci Resolve Studio for isolating, shaping and refining every lighting element in each frame to help sell the effect. BENDING TIME The ‘airbending’ phenomenon of the title involves, among other elements, a customised camera-shake effect with some distortion that takes place during firefights as CG fire passes by. Delegal recalls that Raisani and Spates brought the custom shake work to him and Ferstl rather than a VFX vendor. Delegal, who creates most of his VFX work in DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fusion page, explains: “They liked that we could hand-finesse the effect in each shot and make any adjustments almost in real time.” In fact, this is one of the major reasons VFX supervisors like Raisani and Spates have, since their experience on Lost in Space , brought more and more of this type of work to Ferstl and his Company 3 team. “We can do all this work in the colour grading process. When we do, we can then control and refine everything in collaboration with them – and without having to send every iteration to another vendor before waiting days for the results,” Ferstl concludes.
specific objects in a frame down to tinier levels of detail – and in a fraction of the time it would take with traditional adjustments, such as keys and vignettes. While these functions would be overkill for most colour work, they are enormously important for visual effects tasks of this complexity; like changing the look of the foliage or sky without affecting the people in the shot. The rotoscope work alone could take hours or days for a colourist – or would be sent out to VFX vendors to have mattes cut and then returned to the colourist – but this is also a time- consuming procedure. As those familiar with the original animated series know, the Spirit World plays an important role in Aang’s story. Scenes set in this otherworldly plane were shot in a fairly straightforward manner, with Raisani and Spates then overseeing the enhancement of the space into the look we see in the show, one of lavender flora and unearthly skies. “We designed elements of the Spirit World based, to a great extent, on the look of the animated show,” Ferstl says. He added ‘lens distortion’ around the edges of the frame and anamorphic-style flares for whenever there were light sources in the shot, before introducing the specific lavender look to all the foliage, shot in its natural green form. “Just keying all the greens and making them lavender would have made it all look one-dimensional,” he explains.
Influenced by colour infrared photography, Ferstl pitched the idea of creating a look inspired by the effect of this photographic method: “Rather than just adding a wash of lavender, we also created an effect that made the greens less saturated as they got brighter; then that effect translated when we pushed the green into the lavender look. Other times in the series, the story called for a somewhat different look for the Spirit World, and because everything was built inside DaVinci Resolve, we could adapt the contrast and reduce the saturation on top of the previous effects.” In addition, some VFX companies created CG lighting effects for a large slate of shots, which were then handed
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