La Volière contained a lot of VFX shots. Almost all of them needed small fixes here and there. Since the movie was all shot on a steady cam, most shots were very long and asked to be tracked multiple times at very specific moments. Moreover, most of the sequences contained time remapping which means that we had to be very careful with the elaboration of the pipeline.

I had the chance to be both VFX artist, postproduction coordinator and Key grip on this shoot! Rigging the lights was a very special experience since we were stuck in a very small apartment and need all the lights (Skypanels) to be mounted on the ceiling. These were then all linked so we could change the color of the panels from a DMX board.

All the shots were ARRI RAW (shot on an XT) to keep the color information as accurate as possible. This meant that I had to work with full 16bit DPX transcodes we created on Resolve and I had to generate proxies along the way to be able to deliver previz for the director. All the VFX were done in NUKE to get the best tracking/compositing quality as possible.

FLY BIRDY FLY!

For the beginning sequence, we had a very special moppet made by a professional to achieve the impression a bird was flying away from the actor. The only issue was the space and time we had to manipulate it. At the end, the best actor performance did not match the best bird performance.

I was then asked to create a CG bird that would fly like it was supposed to. Having everything on a Steadicam made it a little tricky since the shape of the window was constantly changing. I had to use Keys and Masks to make it fit perfectly and was then able to remove the previous bird. Since I like little details in VFX, I found a very similar window glass on the web and added the frost back and used the image as a distortion map for the shadow.

I then took multiple frames of the moppet and animated them with distortions and custom paths to make it fly realistically. I would like to thank the sound team who did an amazing job syncing the sound with the movement, it helped a lot to pull the effect and add realism.

CAMERA OPERATOR PAINT OUT

This was one of the first shot I tackled. To achieve it, I had to recreate the mirror reflexion and used a combination of luma/color matte to bring the actor back in the foreground. I had a nice experience working with Alexandre Nour Desjardins (DOP) on the reflexion. He went to see the VFX since we had to discuss other shots for color accuracy.

I liked that we had the opportunity to select the right amount of brightness of the reflexion and was surprised on how DOPs should be more involved with the making of VFX nowadays.

MORE FEATHERS

As we constantly used bird related movements and imagery as a leitmotif, the director asked me to add more feathers at the end of the film. I started by thinking about how much time it would take to create 3D feathers and put them into a simulation and quickly realized that it was not a good option. The deadlines were short and since I was the only one helping with the VFX, I proposed shooting assets in a studio. Since my main expertise is in compositing, I always prefer to blend real elements and like to get my hands dirty by actually creating visuals with real-life objects.

We shot all the black feathers on a white backdrop that was backlit with a 2K. Shooting everything on a RED Epic MX at 4K with slow motion allowed me a very nice amount of control in compositing afterward. I tracked the shot and used a combination of different takes we did that day to get the perfect illusion of sizes, movements and wind motions. I pulled the key very easily by creating selecting the feathers according to their luminescence. This allowed me to get a lot of details in the very fine particles. 

The shadow was added at the end. The director Vincent René-Lortie asked me to add a bird flying from the window. This was not originally planned in the script but ended his film I a much more conclusive manner, meaning I had the end of the movie on my shoulders. I like a lot the end result. It was a very long debate according to speed, shapes, and motion. The thing with this effect is that it is literally impossible to see in real life. No light could react this way and that made the job a lot more difficult than I first expected. A lot of times, it looked wrong but we couldn’t tell exactly why.

I ended up looking at birds hitting windows for a very long time and to be honest, almost depressed myself by doing it too much. I then found a slow motion assets of a pigeon flying and bent it in different ways to use it as a shadow. I then keyed the shape and animated it frame by frame to match the liking of the director.

MAKE EVERYTHING INVISIBLE

Yep, that is my job. A lot of fixing needed to be done in VFX. Smaller things like electrical wire removal and wallpaper fixes, but also blacking out part of the image. This was almost only done using roto and making things frame by frame using NUKE’s cloning tools and projection 3D.