DRAMA | THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY
CREATING DOCTOR POGO EVERETT BURRELL, THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY’S VFX SUPERVISOR, EXPLAINS HOW MODERN EPISODICS ARE APPROACHING MORE MOVIE-LIKE VFX SHOTS
Definition: We wondered about the practicalities of VFX for episodics; what are the compromises, if any, of producing VFX for what are in effect TV shooting schedules? Everett Burrell: Everybody was made very aware from day one that we had a tight budget and needed the production team to help VFX out. We made a director’s welcome pack for VFX that had concept art, storyboard examples, R&D, tests and some early shots of Dr. Pogo. Sort of a ‘what not to do’ list. The directors and the DOPs sat with me and went over all the VFX beats. Things like, where not to point the camera and how much camera movement, etc. At the same time we needed to tell the story and be conscious of the emotional beats. Def: Are there budget considerations and expectations that need to be managed with such fast turnarounds? EB: Budget and schedule are always concerns. We try to give the VFX companies at least 16 weeks to get a jump on the VFX for each episode; even more time if it is a very CG effects- heavy episode. Def: How did you get Weta involved? Was the company looking to enter the episodic world or were you after its experience for the Dr. Pogo character? Is this Weta’s first job in episodics?
EB: We had a long talk with Weta about helping make a character that would be part of the cast in a seamless way. I have always said from day one if Pogo does not blend in 100% with the real cast we have failed with the show. Pogo is a big supporting character and out of respect to the other actors he needed to perform as one of the cast. Def: Could you detail the capture of the Pogo character; was this traditional mocap or something else? EB: Step one was to cast an actor to be on set and in the scene as if Pogo was there with them. We cast a great local actor named Ken Hall who was also the perfect height for Pogo. Ken wore a grey suit with tracking marks on it for the witness cameras. The key thing about witness cameras is that it is not just about capturing the performance, it’s about capturing what is going on in the scene – the main cameras, cranes, lights and the other actors. You want to witness the scene and all that goes into it. “We used two Panasonic GH5s for the 4K video as our witness cameras. They were small and we could put them in tight places and hide them from the main cameras. “Then in post they hired Adam Godley to do the voice of Dr. Pogo. So we had to use the same cameras to do witness cam on his performance, for Weta to use in their animation pipeline.
Def: The Umbrella Academy is clearly a show with many VFX challenges; are there any aspects of the production that stand out for you as being particularly tricky? EB: We had to create a vision of the world as if it were an apocalyptic landscape. Also there’s a character that can teleport, set extensions to create the unnamed city the show take places in, and last but not least adding green leaves to quite a few trees (we shot in Toronto during winter of 2018). Def: The level of knowledge needed by crews for increasingly complex captures is an issue. Do you think there needs to be more education for approaching technologies like augmented and virtual reality, as well as newmethods of performance capture – eg. Lion King ? EB: Yes, indeed. As the Cinema VR/AR technology becomes more affordable and more commonplace, everybody in production will need to re-educate themselves on how to tell a story with the new tools. Storytelling is still the foundation of what we do and If it helps tell an entertaining story then we all must embrace new technology. But to be clear, it will always be the artists, not the tools.
46 DEF I N I T ION | MARCH 20 1 9
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