It is often said that no matter how precise the preparation may be, the film must be created from scratch again in post-production. However, this was not necessary in the case of the HÉV expansion commercial, as the material came together exactly as we dreamed it in advance as a result of the serious previsualization. Editing of the entire campaign film took barely more than a morning, which is considered quite a brutal record.
Only the animation post-production was left. Although we solved the problem of the moving HÉV well, drawing in the mist still had to come to life magically. And this could be done only in post-production
During the shoot, we created a lot of footage that we only wanted to use to help the animation, clean plates, windows without and with fog, etc. These were very handy during the VFX phase. Although drawing in mist promised to be very spectacular, it also had serious limitations: there was no possibility for colors or transitions, since we had two “colors” in total: either there was mist or there was not. Looking at it this way, all the animations we made could be compared to a black and white marker drawing.
Although the concept worked perfectly, it soon became clear that it is not that spectacular at all when someone draws a line in a foggy window. For example, if someone draws in front of a blurred green mass of trees passing by a train, there is essentially no difference between the humid and non-humid versions. That is why, after a while, our task was no longer to create realism as accurately as possible, but how to move apart from it so much that the result was spectacular, but still believable.
We did everything to distance the two states as well as possible, we made the glass dirty digitally, and added a lot of digital light and diffraction slipping through, to which the humid and the non-humid part reacted completely differently. Since the drifting trees formed a dataless mass, we digitally added extra drifting elements to it. What’s more, if we stop the film and look at the horizon line of the landscape in humid and non-humid state, we can see that they are not in the same place: by moving the unique landscape a little further, we have achieved a significant visual improvement, and the viewer’s eye does not notice the fraud by itself.
Overall, the end result became believable, but much more “magical” than we originally thought it would be. Although we strived for a long time to create a physically perfect illusion, in the end, we put this endeavor on hold. Instead of that, we focused on making the cuts convey the story and the emotional impact in the best and most effective way possible. We believe this is the most important goal of any film.
You can watch the commercial here:
You can watch the full werk movie here:
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