Category: Visual Effects

I recently attended the Drama Summit in London which has grown to become one of the most important events for the International Television drama sector. The three-day conference was attended by over 1700 UK and International delegates drawn from producers, financiers, broadcasters, distributors and Streaming Content Platforms. So, I thought it might be useful to pull together some of the key trends from the Drama Summit that are coming through in our sector.

 

Local Stories working Internationally

A consistent theme across the conference was that very local stories, from within specific cultures and with universal themes (especially love stories) were working really well Internationally. One that’s ticked all of these boxes is Netflix’s Home For Christmas. Netflix’s VP Of International Originals, Kelly Luengenbiehl, talked about series which is about a single 30 something woman who pretends to her family she has a boyfriend and then has 6 weeks to find one to bring him home… for Christmas.

Other examples included Irish series Endeavour, Fleabag and Outlander. There were also examples of shows shot in one language and then adapted into English versions, including S4C’s Keeping Faith and Hope, both shot simultaneously in Welsh and English, and the French series Dix Per Cent, (Call My Agent), set in the world of actors agents which is being re-made for the UK market by W1A and 2012’s Tony Morton.

 

The rise of foreign language / internationally set stories

Commissioners and distributors also talked about the rise and success of foreign language stories. Netflix’s Spanish language series La Casa De Papal (Money Heist) is their most streamed foreign language series. Netflix said that 50% of their subscribers had downloaded a series that was not in their native language in the last year – up 25% from the year before. This is an extraordinary figure and is in part being driven by the streaming content providers, who are investing in local language production globally and who can distribute shows Internationally through their platforms to much larger audiences than was previously possible through independent film releases or on terrestrial and cable TV.

Series with International settings were also seen to be performing well, with shows like Sister Pictures Cheronbyl and Giri Haji (set in London and Tokyo), HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice and Damien Chazelle’s 1920’s set Parisian musical series The Eddy being cited as examples of this trend.

 

The YA, Fantasy / Historical boom

Another trend that seems to be gathering momentum is the number of series targeting the Young Adult (YA) audience, many of which include fantasy, magic and/ or historical settings.

Netflix showed pre-release clips from The Witcher at the event, which was adapted from a well-known series of Polish novels which has already been re-commissioned for a second series and which is their highest rating series to date. Other YA and fantasy / historical shows in the pipeline include Letter To The King (Netflix) and Season 2 of the BBC’s His Dark Materials. Amazon have also purchased the rights to the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and Netflix have the rights to C.S Lewis’ Narnia books – both are looking to create YA skewing episodic series from these IP’s.

As the streamers drive audience demand for YA shows, the BBC are making conscious efforts to target the YA audience. The BBC’s reach of the 16-24 audience fell under 50% for the first-time last year. As part of their fight back to increase the appeal of their channels to this audience, there were two panels at the conference featuring shows, part funded by the BBC, targeting this demographic.

One of these shows was The Watch. The panel featured the showrunner Simon Alan, Producer Richard Stokes from BBC Studios, Commissioning Editor Sarah Barnett from BBC America and Producer Rob Wilkins of Narrativia discussed the development of the forthcoming 8-part series which has been adapted from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novels.

Simon Allen and the team have taken steps to broaden the appeal for the series from the loyal Pratchett fanbase. Simon Allen said his experience in the care system as a child helped him to empathise with the characters who are powerless in their world. With a writer’s room that included, as described by Simon Allen, an Iraqi nonbinary drag queen, a working-class bloke from Burnley and a Granny from Wales and with colour blind casting the show is clearly hoping to increase its appeal to a younger demographic. Commissioner Sarah Barnett (who also commissioned BBC America’s Killing Eve) said Simon should adopt a ‘mean and queer’ tone, for the series. This I something that certainly helped to provide a distinctive tone for Killing Eve, which BBC America have commissioned for a third season.

Simon Allen said The Watch is about the chaos affecting our societies and what happens when lawlessness goes unchecked. Simon summarised by saying they have borrowed some mythology that they hope will power the series for multiple seasons. The team showed brief clips from the series, being shot on location and at Cape Town Studios in South Africa. With fantastic sets and costumes and an electrifying performance from Game of Thrones Richard Dormer who plays the lead Sam Vimes, The Watch looks like it will provide some spirited competition to the streamers YA output.

There was also a panel featuring another BBC funded, South African shot series, namely Mammoth Screen’s Noughts & Crosses, airing on the BBC this winter. The series is the long-awaited adaptation of the Malory Blackman novels of the same name. Malory Blackman was inspired by the Romeo and Juliet love story and placed it in an inverted parallel universe, where history has unfolded differently, with African people dominating globally society economically and culturally, with European economies and peoples being very much the underdogs.           

 

Shorter runs and the return of event programming and the schedule

Several speakers talked about how audiences were now looking for shorter runs of series, so 6-part series or 3-part series. Audiences don’t have the same appetite they used to for the 13-part returnable series. Serials with closed storylines like Chernobyl are increasingly popular.

Another discussion point was the move away from ‘binge and burn’ of series being dropped on to streaming services at once. There is something of a return to releasing episodes of big event series each week, to help drive anticipation for new shots. Apple TV + launch series The Morning Show is released weekly and Disney + have released the Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian the same way.

Several broadcasters and streamers also talked about the importance of event programming and seasonal programming, with a preference for content that comes with marketing ‘hooks’ to help drive audience awareness.

 

Peak TV & The Streaming Wars

The overall sentiment at the conference was that these are good times for the TV drama sector and that despite some concerns about TV drama reaching ‘peak content’ and there being an oversaturation of content – for now there seems consensus – we can have more of a good thing.

From a production point of view this is being driven by demand from the many new and existing commissioners for TV drama. New streaming content platforms who have recently launched in the include Apple TV +, with the Morning Show (star studded an a rumoured $300 million series budget) and BBC / ITV’s Britbox (launched to with little fanfare and no original content) and the Lionsgate backed channel Starz, launching a direct to UK app in the UK for its library of content which includes shows like The Spanish Princess and Good Omens.

Other ‘traditional’ studios who have entered the streaming space include NBC Universal with their platform Peacock. This will screen new original series, derived from the Universal Library. Launch shows include the second reboot of Battlestar Gallactica and a new episodic version of seminal sci-fi novel Brave New World, made by Universal owned Amblin Entertainment. Peacock is also available to Sky subscribers. Sky now also include Netflix as part of their package and will continue to offer HBO’s content through their platform in the UK – which in future will be available to US consumers via HBO Max, the streaming platform due to launch next year.

On March 31^st Disney + will launch in the UK, featuring, with launch series The Mandalorian from the Star Wars franchise and a huge arsenal of library content from Disney, Pixar Marvel and National Geographic – the combined content from the Disney / Fox / Hulu mergers and acquisitions.

The Paramount / Lionsgate / Mgm streaming platform Epix were also active at the Drama Summit, discussing forthcoming series on two different panels, which include Pennyworth, a UK shot Batman ‘origins’ story and Godfathers, a gangster series set in Harlem starring Forrest Whittaker. Epix will also feature Carnival Films new ‘prestige period’ drama series The Gilded Age.

Whilst much of the demand is being driven by US studio and streaming content players, UK production companies and talent are doing really well from the continuing growth in International drama production.

 

Driving up talent Costs?

But not every cloud has a silver lining – the dramatic growth in UK production has led to an escalation of crew and talent costs – and a shortage of both. This has driven production budgets up and lead to a fiercely competitive environment for both talent and commissions. A decade ago, there were under 20 really active UK drama production companies. Now there are well over 150 and many have ITV or BBC Studios investment or US / International studio investment.

 

Leading to direct talent deals

The competition for talent has meant that studios and streaming content platforms have started to develop direct deals with writing, performing and producing talent. Amazon referenced their rumoured £20 million a year deal with Fleabag writer/performer Phoebe Waller Bridge. There has also been much trade press coverage about other talent deals, with Grey’s Anatomy Producer/ showrrunner Shonda Rhime’s $100 million deal with Netflix kick starting the arms race for talent, other big Netflix talent deals include the one with Glee and American Horror Story Producer Ryan Murphy and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss.

Closer to home, the event featured Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, co-founders of Stolen Picture talking with their CEO Miles Ketley about their development slate and partnership with Sony Pictures. Their first show Truth Seekers is a comedy written by the duo with a team of writers and they have an ambitious and diverse slate which includes an adaptation of the Rivers Of London novels, The Technicolor Time Machine, based on novel by Tim Harrison a staff writer on the Star Trek TV series, which is about some filmmakers who use a time machine to return to the Viking era to film a Viking movie. Simon Pegg is also adapting a Neil Gaiman novel. Stolen Pictures also have an initiative to incubate and work with new talent, because both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost acknowledge that it is a much tougher environment for new talent now to get a foothold in the industry.

 

Meaning increasingly shows need to be packaged to secure finance

The increasingly risk averse nature of commissioning was a consistent theme across most of the panel sessions at the conference. Most commissioners and funders stated the importance of having a well-known or recognized IP, acting talent and writing, directing and producing talent with an appropriate track record to realise the project. Although several producers acknowledged that even with these elements in place, it could be difficult to secure writers and schedule acting talent if they were fortunate to secure a commission. Many felt packaging was essential to start the conversation with financiers.

One company working in this way who featured in one of the panel events is Carnival Films, whose founder and Producer Gareth Neame has a long-standing collaboration with actor turned writer Julian Fellowes, which started with their collaboration on Downton Abbey. They have another ‘prestige period’ drama series, Belgravia in production, based on Julian Fellowes novel of the same name. Fellowes and Neame are also working on The Gilded Age, set in 1880’s high society in New York, which is being funded by HBO and Universal Television.

Another panel featured Sally Wainwright and Faith Penhale talking about their collaboration on BBC / HBO’s Gentleman Jack, the adaptation of Anne Lister’s diaries which will return for a second series in 2021. With Ann Listers diaries running to three times longer than Samuel Pepys’, Sally Wainwright is hoping there are several series to come yet for Gentleman Jack.

Manchester based Red Productions also showcased their new series Trace, adapted from a non-fiction book about forensic science and with material from a Val McDermid novel, the series was written by actor turned TV writer Amelia Bullmore. Amelia acted in Red Productions series Scott and Bailey where she became interested and knowledgeable about both police procedure – and how to craft police procedural tv series.

 

To Conclude…

The Drama Summit is a really excellent event and it is exciting to be part of a UK drama production sector that is thriving and taking advantage of the US and International funding to continue growing rapidly.

We at REALTIME are excited to be growing alongside the UK drama sector and are currently working on shows for BBC America, Sky and HBO.

The creation and implementation of 3D VFX in a television show is a long and multi-faceted process. We have talked previously about the different areas this can encompass but even those articles were but brief dips into the deep pool of visual effects, creating 3D Assets for your TV production is no different.

One step we’ve mentioned previously is the creation of 3D assets. Believe it or not, this is a topic worthy of its own blog. There are many stages to creating a 3D asset before you have a fully formed, TV-ready model.

 

Planning

We won’t spend too long talking about this because we have recently written a blog about planning your VFX solutions, but it is still worth mentioning here. You can’t jump the gun and create a 3D model without first figuring out what is the best way of designing it and bringing it to life. If it is a character from an existing story or piece of IP, you may need to follow an existing design idea, or you may need to create something based on the underlying book or story. In the early stage of planning a CGI character model, it’s generally a good idea to start with some concept sketches so you can share these with key members of the team, including writers, showrunners, producers, directors, production designers, and your broadcasters and investors.

If the character is integral to your production – say if your main character is an alien – you will need to know where it will be and how it will move in a scene. You can use previs to help work this out, so when you film the scene you are framing correctly to allow for the character’s or model’s movement. From creating initial storyboards to previs, collaboration with a VFX studio will make this part a breeze.

 

Modelling

This is where the fun starts. Once you have agreed on what your character or other CGI model needs to look like, the first thing you need to do is create a basic model – a featureless grey sculpture that acts as a foundation for the stages to come. ‘Sculpture’ is very much an apt word; CGI modellers carve their model from a pre-existing 3D block as if they were Michelangelo himself.

Although this will need a lot more work before it looks like the final product, you can still use these basic greyscale versions of the character during the planning stage. Your chosen VFX studio can also put them into test plates so you can get an idea of how the model will look in the scene.

 

Texturing

This is the stage where your model starts resembling something. Texturing creates a flat, 2D image that you can apply to your model, giving it things like skin, clothes, or facial features.

This is where a lot of the realistic detail that brings your model or character to life will come from. Often, texture artists will use texture libraries of photo-realistic textures captured from real creatures, buildings, or vehicles to help them texture their models. Over the years, texturing has become more complex and detailed. Compare the models from the original Toy Story to 2019’s Toy Story 4 to see how far we’ve come. This has been driven by technology – as we are able to render more material to a higher resolution, we have been able to achieve more photo-realistic texturing.

 

Rigging

Now you have a fully detailed 3D asset, but it can’t do anything. Until you rig the model, it won’t have any joints and will be nothing more than a motionless statue.

Rigging is the process of creating a skeleton that allows the model to move. If it was for a human model, for example, it would detail the movement of the joints in places like the elbows and knees. This also includes rigging the muscles in the face so they can change their expression. Depending on the model, it will most likely have a unique skeleton that can be manipulated in the next stage.Riggers and animators study the skeletons and musculature of the animals and creatures that are going to be animated. If the creature is imaginary, they will study the skeletons and muscles of real creatures – for example, for a dragon, they might look at lizard, eagle, or bat skeletons

During the rigging stage, animators will look at reference footage of the creatures or vehicles who they are rigging to animate. They may also do tests of their own to replicate the movement of the creature. 

 

Animating

This is where you actually make your model move. When you apply the rigged skeleton to your model, you can freely move it as you wish. Animating is the process of creating fluid movements that match you want it to do.

If the model needs to crouch, you can apply this to the skeleton. But animating will also take into account what changes in the model when it does this. How do other parts of their body move? How does the face change? The more realistic you want to be, the more fine details there will be.

 

Lighting

At this point, you will have a fully finished model. But to correctly integrate it into your footage it has to look like it belongs. This is where lighting, shadows, and shaders come in.

If you are working on a fully CGI scene or project, the lighting will all be created in CGI by Lighting artists. If your model or character is being incorporated into live action plates, then compositors will take the model and the lighting created by 3D Lighting artists to then incorporate into the shot.

If you are putting your new model into real-life footage, you will need a lighting system that mimics the one from your shoot. That means the model has to be illuminated from the same angle and shadows have to fall in the same way real objects’ and actors’ shadows do. The better the lighting, the more your asset fits into the scene. 

 

And the rest

When you’ve done all of this, all that’s left is to render it out and composite it into the scene. Rendering can take hours depending on the detail of the model and is very much a hands-off process – just let the computer do its thing. Compositing takes your 3D assets, the real-life footage, and any other elements and puts them all together.

There are sometimes strong differences of opinion between 3D artists (so animators and modellers) and 2D artists (compositors and VFX Supervisors) about whether it is more important to favour the lighting conditions created by the 3D team or whether the 2D compositor and team should be allowed to light the 3D asset. 3D artists are sometimes said to favour lighting their models to show showcase them, whereas 2D artists can place much of their emphasis on ensuring the model beds into the live action plate and looks as photo- real as possible.

If you are working on a production that is mainly or completely CGI, then you will need to work in a full CGI lighting workflow. If you have large rendering capacity, there are benefits to using a CGI lighting workflow if you have lots of models that need to be incorporated into live action plates. 

Creating 3D assets may sound like a complicated and arduous process, but in the right hands, it can be simple and streamlined. It is likely the VFX company will have experts solely dedicated to each stage, which means you end up with the best final result. The key is to work with a studio that has the experience to make the process as smooth for you as it is for them.

REALTIME is one such studio. Our work speaks for itself. If you would like to talk about your next project, feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected].