Once again Stopp’s Vfx team had the opportunity to work with director Rane Tiukkanen. This time on two spots for the Swedish Armed Forces showing an “over the top super hero” military force in contrast to the actual real world conditions.
A big part of the story was shot in the freezing cold archipelago outside of Stockholm. The snow, ice and cold weather made a lot of the planned in camera effects like depth charges, explosions and smoke impossible to get on film. On top of that none of the boats that were supposed to be shot in open water could be used because of the ice. The only vessel available was one huge hovercraft.
This was not enough for director Rane. He wanted everything to be as spectacular and over the top as possible. The more explosions and boats and helicopters the better. Fortunately Stopp’s Vfx team were there on set to help take the decision and prepare for adding explosions, smoke and duplication of hovercrafts and helicopters later in post.
The surprise of having to add all of these extra effects of course made the already tight schedule even more hectic. But with good planning and prep-work and a heroic work effort, Stopp’s Vfx team managed to deliver both spots on time.
The work consisted of duplicating helicopters and hovercrafts. Adding smoke, explosions, debris, muzzle flashes. Everything to help make the images as action packed as possible. Almost none of the shots were untouched. The techniques used were a mix of stock footage, matte paintings, together with CG generated smoke and explosions.
For the depth charges, the team studied footage of actual explosions and found a style which was both visually interesting and realistic looking. After match-moving the camera with the shots, the ice sheet in the plate was built to match, and then split up as fragments of ice which could be animated to crack open. The main bulk of the explosion consists of millions of volumetric particles with sunlight and ambient lighting rendered through Mental Ray. The motion of the water plume was set up in Autodesk Softimage’s integrated simulation system called ICE (short for Interactive Creative Environment). The rules were set up for each particle to follow so that heavier parts would fly less high, and the tiniest drops would fly sky-high, creating the over-all shape of the explosion. Additional particle systems threw chunks of ice in all directions, and an additional mist cloud were simulated for the finest spray of water droplets.
For the space sequence Happy Camper delivered CG assets to Stopp Vfx. Those elements were then composited and enhanced with animated backgrounds, added explosions, warping and lighting effects.
Almost all compositing was done on cost effective workstations equipped with the Foundry’s Nuke software. The final touches were completed on Autodesk Flame. The collaborative workflow of Stopp’s Vfx crew was key to keep up with the tight deadline and also at the same time contributing to the project with the creative input of the whole team. We think that shows in the end result and hope you think so too.