Dead Gorgeous: bringing ghosts to life
VFX supervisor Thomas Parkinson writes about the ghostly challenges behind the ABC children’s drama series Dead Gorgeous or, in his own words, creating champagne effects on a beer budget.
After living in a mysterious limbo for 150 years, three teenage sisters find themselves back in the ‘real’ world, but it is very different from the one they knew; a frustrating and difficult transition made harder by the fact that they are living ghosts.
That is the premise behind Dead Gorgeous, the children’s drama series produced by Burberry Entertainment and UK’s Coolabi Productions. It was created by Barbara Slade and produced by Margot McDonald, with Stephen Johnson as the set-up director in charge of nine of the 13 episodes.
Johnson and McDonald developed the look for the series, in conjunction with the production designer Peta Lawson, DOP Leilani Hannah and costume designer Louise McCarthy. I was brought on board as VFX supervisor and we started discussions quite early on.
FLOATING CAMERAS
With a desire to keep the shooting style of the show modern, Johnson chose an ‘off the shoulder’ method for shooting, which gave the series a fly-on-the-wall documentary feel and a sense of ghostly mystique. In keeping with that theme, he wanted all the VFX to have realness about them. As opposed to most mainstream TV that relies on sparkles and light, Johnson wanted to give the viewer a sense that all this was possible – for instance, that it’s very simple to be able to walk through a wall – and that the camera movement should be maintained for the effects.
Using a floating camera created an additional level of complexity to the VFX shots. Johnson had a preference for using the small Sony PMW-EX3 pro-consumer cameras. I, along with the DOP, felt that we needed to test these before we could commit to using them. The guys at VA Hire gave us unlimited resources and time to help us through what could have been a slow and costly learning curve. The EX3, like most cameras of that calibre, put out a highly-compressed image. The compressed images deliver a lot of artefacts which make it difficult to pull a key from.
We were able to reduce the compression to an acceptable level by tethering the camera to an external capture device. The pictures, from my point of view, would have been good enough, but Hannah had concerns about the tethering and the suitability of the camera over such a long session of shooting, and eventually chose to go with a more tried and tested Sony F23.
I have worked many times with the F23 and knew that it was capable of delivering great images.
GOING THROUGH HERITAGE WALLS
Having found our camera, the main problem to address came from the story: three girls who, as ghosts, live in a world that is halfway between real and ethereal. This magical world allowed the writers’ imaginations to run wild and of course, this should always be encouraged, but the shooting restrictions of a television show (4.5 days per episode) and the post time table allowing two weeks for VFX meant that the amount and complexity of effects per script had to be contained.
That is why we all agreed that we should focus our resources on making a few signature effects that could run through the whole series. The main effect is the passing through walls by our ghost characters. There had been a decision to shoot this series in heritage houses rather than on sets and in both houses chosen as locations – Labassa and Rippon Lea Estate – the wall coverings are original and highly susceptible to damage.
One of our conditions for entering the houses was that we could not touch the walls; the acid on our hands was deemed to be harmful to the beautiful but fragile, ageing surfaces. We needed to come up with a solution. The obvious one was to take plates and place the characters in a green screen.
The director was adamant that we had to retain the handheld look through the whole series, and he did not want the camera locked for effects shots. He felt that the audience would read the difference and the element of surprise would be lost. We set about testing a few options and decided upon a system that would give Johnson what he wanted and still be able to produce it within our schedule and budget.
We shot our plates locked and got the actor or double to perform the actions up to the point where they would walk through the wall. We set about measuring the camera in relation to the wall. We then replicated those measurements in the green screen studio. We set up a laser line to define the wall for the compositor in 3D space. I built curved mirrors to allow the line to completely surround the figure.
The F23, as a high-end HD camera, gave us a large negative. We shot all the plates 20 percent wider. I got the DOP to shoot a series of tracking marks on the green screen using her handheld rig. With the final compiled shots we zoomed in approximately 20 percent and attached that tracking information to the compiled plates. This gave them a very organic and natural handheld look, and a seamless cut between VFX shots and the rest of the drama.
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Once shooting wrapped up, post-production continued in the UK with John Hardwick and his company Invisible Arts. Skype allowed us to discuss each problem as it evolved. We decided that the most effective way to produce all of the shots was to set parameters: shoot for 2D, not 3D; remove any elaborate tracking shots and, where possible, keep the composition of shots simple. We had the opportunity to test before we started, and that gave us a lot of information that we could groom into our shooting method.
Once we had done our tests, the fly-onthe- wall and the ghostly mystique elements that the director was looking for became effects that we could just dial in, and this saved us an enormous amount of time. It is never easy to produce VFX on a fast turnaround set with no second unit.
For Dead
Gorgeous, Hardwick and I produced somewhere between 250 and 300 VFX shots. In average, we spent about $500-600 per shot; for a feature, this type of shots can range from $3,000-10,000. It is also true that in making any of these effects it was still important to be clear about what we could shoot and how well we could do it.
This clarity gave the crew a better chance of understanding what we were trying to achieve and therefore helped us get there and bring a little bit of ghostly magic to Australian screens.
Dead Gorgeous is screening on ABC1 and ABC3, and will be released on DVD on May 20.
