This year, as usual, we brought into Escape a number of exciting external projects. My students worked on two, ‘Made in Italy’ feature film directed by James D’Arcy and Alexa’s ‘Out On My Own’ pop promo directed by Zissis Papatzikis.
We like doing that as it gives our students the opportunity to work with the directors and producers and experience the client – artist relationship and all the diplomacy that requires. We are very much into arming our students with the soft skills the industry requires.
Of course, students also had the opportunity to test their technical and creative skills, problem solve and work to the set deadlines.
‘Made in Italy’ project mainly required sky replacements which are usually associated with UK filming as the weather can change 10 times in a day wrecking havoc with continuity.
This film was shot in Tuscany and the weather just didn’t match viewers expectations of Italian skies. We can blame global warming. We match moved, keyed, rotoscoped and graded the skies in Foundry’s Nuke.
Our shots even made it to the Trailer.
Alexa’s pop promo needed standard clean up when shooting within reflective surfaces as it is unavoidable that crew would be seen in reflections. We love that sort of work and getting good at it as cleanup is bread and butter of the industry. Always there. Here we used good old fashioned paint skills combined with tracking in Foundry’s Nuke.
THE ART OF VISUAL EFFECTS AT ESCAPE STUDIOS 