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14/01/2008

Series Two Of 'Primeval' Returns Back In Time

The return of the family drama 'Primeval', the first series of which was broadcast last year, marks yet another success for the ongoing creative partnership between Impossible Pictures and Framestore CFC.
Co-created by Impossible's Tim Haines and writer Adrian Hodges, the seven new hour-long episodes are aimed squarely at an audience hungry for savvy, contemporary drama with a sci-fi edge. The new episodes were directed by Jamie Payne, Andrew Gunn and Nick Murphy.
Framestore CFC supplied the production with seven new CG creatures - and some old 'faces', too - seen in some 350 shots, as well as a further 350 digital VFX and CG enhancements - set extensions, CG vehicles, laser cages and so on. Around 100 people worked over a period of nine months to bring the bestiary to life, up to 60 at any one time.
It's a larger team than worked on the first series, with more animators, compositors and TDs aboard. It was led - as in the first series - by VFX Supervisor Christian Manz and Producer Matt Fox.
Further optimising the human resources at their disposal, this time around Fox and Manz set themselves the task of pipelining the entire project in the same way they would a film. "Whereas last time around we applied this pipelining to the compositing and lighting to some extent," Manz said. "This time we did it for the whole project - modelling, rigging, animation, the whole shebang was reorganised. The tool set we use for TV is now the same that we use on films, which offers our team the chance to draw on some of the fantastic in-house R&D work that the film teams have built up over the years. It's a fantastic resource. For example, the superb work the Framestore CFC The Golden Compass team did on fur while creating the polar bears for that film was a resource that informed and enhanced our own sabre toothed tiger."
"We were told midway through the broadcast of Series 1 that we'd be recommissioned," said Manz." So we got down to prepping for the next shows straight away. That was in March 2007, with the shoots starting in June. We had briefs for several of the creatures and, in addition to storyboarding and pre-viz, we needed to do some intensive R&D on how we'd be creating the fur and other creaturely elements."
New to the team this time around was Lead Animator Mark Brocking and Lead Technical Director for Series 2 was Jason Mayo.
The creature work was done entirely in Maya, rendered in Mental Ray and composited in Shake. Flame was also used for some spot effects.
The project was shot on film, and in addition to all of the VFX post production, Colourist Brian Krijgsman mastergraded the entire series in Framestore CFC's Digital Lab facility. Keeping it all in-house made for a much more responsive and flexible process, one more readily able to integrate changes and tweaks.
(SP)
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