On Babes with Babes Lightworx produced over 200 VFX shots. There was variety of different types of shots to work on- we had crowd and set extensions to do, full CG environments, sky replacements/weather changes and other interesting bits of magic, but the main bulk of jobs was to enhance the fight choreography with CG blood, sword sparks and dust impacts.

The blunder buster was great fun to work on. The gun was described by the director as having the same impact as a sawed-off shotgun - short range and maximum damage. So with this in mind, I looked at reference footage of real life sawed-off shotguns to ground the shot in reality. Then it was a case of ramping this up to fit the other-worldly setting. The film predominately has a steam punk look so we tried make the effects fit this mixture of Victorian and future throughout. 

The prop gun provided the Victorian element, so I decided the muzzle flash that came out of it would the futuristic element. When it came to actually making it, I made it large to give it sense of its power and added sparks for character. I saturated to the colour blue to match the palette of the film. For final touches I added some soft blue glows around the muzzle and on the actors face and hands for natural illumination.

These crowd multiplication shots were very effective at adding a great feeling of production value when your budget might not stretch to having masses and masses of extras. 

They were achieved by filming the same group of 12 or 13 people in different positions on set. Then in post adding the multiple plates of the crowd into 1 take. So in this particular shot the crowd were standing in 5 different positions. It's then a simple case of masking the plates out and in this case I had to manually roto out peoples flailing hands so it would seamlessly blend with the background. The results are near photo realistic because the effect is achieved using real elements compiled together - always the best way to go if you can!

This was one of the most time consuming VFX shots of the project as there was a huge amount of layers used and lots of colouring was needed. The idea of the shot was to establish the outside world and make it feel bigger, whilst reinforcing the Steampunk setting.

Initially I made the original footage smaller in the frame, so it gave me space in the composition to create an interesting back drop. Once this was done, I extended the foreground area by adding the metal gates you can see to the left of the image. I painted some more of the floor in using Photoshop. I took these 2D elements then placed and twisted them into 3D space to give the correct perspective.

To place content into the background behind the real factories in the footage I applied a black and white filter to the image and tuned up the contrast, this allowed me to key out the sky fairly simply using a luma matte. With this done, I drew the cogs in AE and animated them spinning to give the factory a bit of life.

I drew the background factories out of pictures of old pipes rusted metal in Photoshop. The main inspiration for the factories were the big American steel factories because they look like big and evil, and the steel element was in keeping with the Steampunk world.

The sky would add mood with heavy clouds and I put a gradient fading from blue to red to make the sky. Real skies give natural illumination so I added a glow to sky texture. As well as adding a small bit of right to left movement on the clouds to make it a bit more dynamic and moody than the original dull blue sky.

The factories were a little static in the background so I added 2D stock footage of bellowing smoke elements to make the environment feel more alive and operational.

The most important bit is blending all the layers together like ingredients in a food recipe. I backlit everything accordingly as if the light from the sky I created was illuminating it, I did this by using masks on all the various layers. This touch made all the layers consistent and fit together.

Lastly, because I was using lots of still 2D images in this comp, I added all the necessary noise and grain to match the textures of the camera footage. 

This is a very short shot in the film but one we were very happy about.  The character has been poisoned earlier in the picture and in this shot the poison is reversed. The director wanted the eye to go from dark to light to show this. 

The dark colour we would use to represent the poison in his eye would just be straight-up black because this was in keeping with black oil the antagonists pour into the sea at the beginning of the film and on a practical level it would blend with his pupil. 

Rather than just a simple fade from black to light with the director we came up with something a bit more dynamic. We used a black solid and a matte of a blood vessel diagram on the eye. So it looked as though his eye has all these black veins in it.  As it moves on I masked the black solid in towards the pupil as if the eye is returning to its normal healthy self.

It came out well and it's a good shot as it adds a nice little super natural element to the film.

For this sequence I was required for the scene to change from very dark stormy weather to a glorious winning sunshine. At this point in the story the world has been polluted and the heroine drops the magic plant into the sea to give the earth back its life so the idea would be to grade back the beginning of the sequence and once the she drops the flower in the sea begins to become richer in colour. Consequently this determined how we go about the VFX.

For some context - the sequence happens over the course of about 13 shots. When the crew was shooting this sequence the weather was being very unpredictable (as it often is) so the footage was quite inconsistent- when the camera was facing the horizon the footage was very dull and grey, however when the footage was facing the actors faces is was very vivid and had blue skies. So it wasn't a simple case of adding to every shot, with the reverse close-ups of the actors and I had to take away and pull out the colour by de-saturating it. All the while keeping in mind where it was the duration of the sequence because the dynamic change in weather had to be consistent shot to shot as well.

The shot above is a good example of reverse close-up. The before is very blue, however this particular shot comes at the beginning of the sequence before she has put the flower into the water, therefore I had to grade the shot backwards. I attempted to grey cloudy skies into this shot but it proved difficult because there wasn't enough information in the sky to track to and the actors would have been near impossible to track around as the footage was handheld. I got around this by de-saturating the blues in the image, then adding darker soft clouds around the edge of the image and the result works well.

So looking at this diagram, you can see how the sequence plays out and because the change is gradual and dynamic it shows why this shot was challenging and fun to achieve.

Scene Changes Made

1. Shot de-saturated and sharp grey clouds added
   
   
2. De saturated blue sea, and taken colour out of skin.
   
   
3. De-saturated sea then added matte that re-introduces colour and glow once flower is placed into sea.
   
   
4. Added 2D cloud textures to sky and de-saturated sea. Created matte with organic wave edge to spread rich gold and blue into sea.
   
   
5. Created rich golden sky and sea, then layered the grey clouds from previous image over the top, then animated the grey clouds to split and reveal the golden sky from the middle. To blend it with the rest the image, the glow of the gold sky reflects into the sea.
   
   
6. Full reveal of weather change, 2 suns added - one with a flare that bleaches across the image. De-saturated and brightened horizon to get a sense of distance. Added gold colour to sand to make the shot more heroic.