Proud to finally upload some VFX! So here it is, the first completed VFX shot of Still Falls the Rain. Completed in 3 days using Nuke, and proxy geometry models in 3ds Max.
It’s also worth mentioning that the colour grade is only temporary, I haven’t settled on the film look just yet.
Stay tuned, I should be churning them out at a pretty fast rate from now until May.
Starting to think about colour grading, using Davinci Resolve Lite. It’s a fantastic program, limitations of which are just Stereo tools, 1080p maximum resolution, control surface limitations and denoising tools. Pretty much everything else is there in the free version though!
Just beware of the above image, depending on which browser you’re using, it may not be colour managed and therefore appear darker than it should!
Here is the first installment of the behind-the-scenes videos documenting the making of Still Falls the Rain. This ‘episode’ contains a brief segment of location scouting, followed by Day 1 of shooting the film - with the Red Epic and Arri Ultraprimes.
Enjoy, we hope you find it as amusing and interesting as we do!
So here is the new promotional poster for Still Falls the Rain!
Would anyone be interested in a breakdown/mini tutorial on how it was created, including lighting diagrams for the photography?
This graphic shows the route the characters take in the ‘film world’ (going from bottom right to top left), annotated by which streets they are in the ‘real world’, colour coded by which areas of London they are in, and numbered by shooting order on the day. So we had to shoot all the same-colour streets together, going from north to south London.
This graphic was there also to prompt the actors as to where they were in the ‘film world’ at any given time, so that they would know how tired to be at any particular point in the chase.
I’ll admit, I’m not the most organised person. However, I knew just how much ground we had to cover in our second shooting day - both figuratively and literally. This meant that our route had to be meticulously planned, leaving no room for unplanned journey times or any sort of quiver in regards to our momentum and efficacy as a shooting unit.
9 locations in 9 hours… It was a miracle we got it all done, if I’m honest. The majority of streets only required a few shots for the major chase sequence, but still, that left us only one hour per location. I’ll write more about day 2 in a separate post. But we pulled it off, god damn it.
Above you can see the rough concept art montage vs the plate we shot in greenscreen. This shot belongs to a brief flashback sequence where Stanley watches his house burning.
Here’s a still frame from one of our shots in the Greenscreen scenes, shot at 5K with the Epic and Arri Ultraprime lenses (not sure which one in this shot). Sharp enough?
Features Officer Bradford in the corridor (to be), listening out for any noise coming from the kitchen where Stanley is. #Tension
Here are a few behind the scenes shots from Day 1. We shot all the interior stuff in a place near Watford called The 1940s Experience. They have a permanent fixture of a 1940s home, which was perfect for the film - most of the set dressing was there already! All we needed to do was rough the place up a bit, add some debris and broken pieces of wood to suggest a semi-collapsed ceiling.
Though we started half an hour late due to forgetting a key prop, we quickly caught up and got all the shots we needed, by the skin of our teeth.
You’ll also see above, we set up a greenscreen studio in one of the empty halls of the property. For this, we shot a few of the extras walking past camera, to throw into the film on any shots that need extra depth.
It was an incredibly intense day, lots to worry about, and lots that could have gone wrong, but all the Cast & Crew did an incredible job on the day. It went as smoothly as I could have hoped!
We were shooting on the Red Epic camera, at 5K and 4K, with Arri Ultraprime lenses.
The Costumes: Officer Bradford, Stanley, and a couple of extras.
I picked up these costumes from The Vintage Years, a lovely costume hire company in Leicester.
After doing my research, it turned out it was actually cheaper to hire from them, including a train journey to Leicester, than to hire from a more expensive London-based company. Every little helps!
I can’t say I’m aware of many films that show London during the Blitz. It’s a world as beautiful as it is sad, but one that deserves to be visually ressurected nonetheless.
