'Nathan Barley' effects completed at Framestore CFC

'Nathan Barley', Talkback Productions' new six episode series co-written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker for Channel 4, features visual effects created at Framestore CFC.
Much of the work involved screen replacement, though frequently with a strong design element involved. Work began in November 2004, with an intensive schedule that resulted in almost 300 FX shots being created over eight weeks, as well as a complete tape to film to tape transfer at the projects conclusion.
Senior Designer Adam Parry created and comped his shots using Inferno, but the majority of shots were completed by Designer Sharon Lock using After Effects and Combustion. On-line Editor Adam Windmill became an invaluable member of the team, conforming all the episodes, feeding Lock and Parry the material they needed to work with, and eventually committing the final programmes to tape - all using Avid Symphony.
Morris's television work has always been admired for the authenticity of look and sound, the attention to detail that he pays. So working on a show of his that satirises new technologies and the uses to which they are put really put the Framestore CFC team to the test. "We had to give the material a lot of different looks," said Framestore CFC's Sharon Whalley. "In one sequence, footage of tramps racing for online betting is supposedly being transmitted in a Quicktime window, live from a Russian website. We spent a week getting the look right. In order to degrade the images and also capture the nuances of Quicktime playback on a computer, we first compressed the footage in Cleaner, creating low-res Quicktimes. We played these back on a Mac and while doing so recorded the output of its desktop to Digibeta. Bringing back in from tape, now with authentic Quicktime look, we would frame cut – lose, say, six frames - so it would look like it had hung. The digital equivalent of kicking it round the room, really."
Other sequences required a more specific design element. These included the 'WASP T12' mobile phone animations, the 'Channel 7' corporate identity, a mock Japanese fashion programme and the opening titles for the '6 O'Clock This Evening' news programme.
Adam Windmill and Sharon Lock also developed an entirely new pipeline for Nathan Barley, one which involved the use of Avid Symphony and After Effects as a way of passing shots from the editor to the compositor and back again over the network, thus eliminating the need for tape. Extremely fast and cost effective, it was a technical challenge to implement, one which will stand the team in good stead for future projects.
One final service the company was able to provide Morris and Producer Derrin Schlesinger with was the creation of the final, filmic look for the series.
Whalley said: "They wanted it to have a film look, but not that kind of rendered CG film look you see a lot of. We created six film look tests – using Shake, using Fire and so forth, but the shoot out to film was the clear favourite. It was supervised by Anna Melly and Luke Drummond in our VF department."
(GB)