Shelton
Perry Mason Season 1 breakdown
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Perry Mason was the show I was working on when the Pandemic shut down the world. I remember vividly sitting on a desk in the comp bullpen talking to the team. We were all in a daze, not prepared for the future that was about to unfold. Nobody really had a firm handle on what we were supposed to do- what about the work, the shots we were right in the middle of. Do we still have jobs?
And so it began, this new paradigm called work from home. What followed was chaos, frustration, and an uncharted road ahead where anything was possible.
We were first approached to do a test on some footage for the WW1 sequence which was being shot in the hills of Santa Clarita. Our main battle was with the sun, neutralizing it’s effect on everything it touched. Knocking down highlights on metal and skin tones as alike. This needed to pass for France, during a particularly brutal battle around the town of Montfaucon.
The comparison images above show a glimpse of how this balancing along with the layers upon layers of smoke and additional elements got us there.
Getting back to my previous comment about the pandemic, and the “anything is possible” statement-well let’s just say I took that ball and ran with it.
My counterpart over at HBO was Justin Ball, who I really enjoyed working with. Solid Supervisor and a great collaborator. Now Perry Mason is not an Avenger movie with eight figure vfx budget and Justin never asked for anything particularly over the top. For the battle sequence we were just layering in atmosphere, explosions and gunfire and trying to mask the fact the terrain just wasn’t anywhere near a good match. Solid comp work, nothing more expected.
So what happens when you are sitting in your spare bedroom without anyone around, as time all of a sudden had no meaning? Well what I did was create an entire 3d matte painting with intricate trenches and machine gun nests, and divisions of digi double soldiers. I created a more traditional DMP for the hills and the town itself as they were only ever featured in a handful of shots that had no real parallax. For everything else I went full Saving Private Ryan and detailed the hell out of this massive asset that nobody paid for. It was satisfying beyond words to just be able to go for it, without guardrails. Once I saw the shots comped with the renders I felt like I had really contributed something of substance to the project.
The second aspect of the show we were responsible for was the crowd inside the Church. Our task was to create filler to layer behind the live action. Because of the sheer numbers needed to fill the seats we ended up populating entire sections with our doubles and seating the background actors on set to fill a particular section that favored the camera.
We had a scan truck on site and ran background actors through the process all day long. From that base we were able to set up multiple texture and wardrobe variations to greatly increase the number of unique digi doubles we had and avoid duplicates.
During the filming of the Church scenes I brought our Mocap Supervisor and a suit performer to set to get a sense of the scene and guide our mocap sessions back at the studio. Additionally, I shot quite a bit of movement reference to play back once we started the motion capture sessions.
The comp team on this project was exceptional, led by Dyvia Gupta- Comp Supervisor and absolute rockstar. Dan Smizek was our CG Supervisor and handled our crowd set up and dealt with all the cuts and bruises that go along with digi doubles with grace and excellence. We made it to the end, despite the zombie apocalypse enveloping the world. Additional important shout out to our Paint and Roto Supervisor Scott Crawford, whose experience and great eye were critical to the success of the battle sequences.
I was really excited to dive into this project knowing the caliber of filmmakers and actors who would bring this series to life. There was real HBO royalty involved that built the brand into what it is today.