Simon Percy from Little Shadow talks to TVBEurope about how the animation studio used a mobile virtual production setup to create a VFX shark lab for the second season of the Disney seriesBy Jenny Priestley
Published: July 1, 2024 Updated: July 2, 2024
Simon Percy from Little Shadow talks to TVBEurope about how the animation studio used a mobile virtual production setup to create a VFX shark lab for the second season of the Disney series
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Arrow Media's Shark Attack 360 returns for a second season this week, as it investigates why sharks bite people.
The show uses cutting-edge VFX technology to analyse data and understand, in forensic detail, the reasons behind shark attacks.
The producers worked with Little Shadow to create the effects for the series. Simon Percy, director at Little Shadow, talks to TVBEurope about the company's work on the show.
How did Little Shadow get involved with Shark Attack 360? We first worked with Arrow Media on Season One of Shark Attack 360. We were brought in later in the production to work on a series of visual effects clean-ups, blood augmentation, and experiment explainers. We managed to complete these tasks in an expedient manner over the Christmas period and must have made an impression with the Arrow Media team because, in May 2023, we received a call to pitch on all the CGI in season two.
It was clear from the outset that Arrow Media had big ambitions for series two and really wanted to raise the bar. So, our initial task was to deliver a pitch that would meet expectations and then exceed them. Being all about the visuals, we created a 2-minute sizzle reel and a series of bespoke images and dev films that showed the scope of our vision. We were elated that our ambition was rewarded and we were brought onto the Arrow Media team and made welcome.
What were you tasked with? We were tasked with developing and delivering the visual effects for the series, including creating realistic and interactive virtual sharks, integrating them into a hybrid virtual production setup, and ensuring a smooth production pipeline that could handle the project's demands.
From the start executive Producer, Nick Metcalfe and series producer, Laura Offer made it clear that there needed to be a new post/VFX pipeline that would not only create greater flexibility within the Lab but enable more impressive cinematic shark encounters. Linked to that was the desire to make a more immersive presenter/collaborator experience within the Lab by enhancing its use to explain and investigate the attacks. And finally, enable the shoot and post process to become more efficient, avoiding pickup, shot redos or delays in seeing previs in the edits.
Challenge accepted!
How did you go about delivering that? From the outset, our desire was to have a digital replica of our shoot location and from the moment that was chosen - we leapt into action. One of our trusted partners, Lidar Lounge captured a lidar scan of the set to create a 1:1 replica of the multi-level structure to allow shot planning, previs and final shots to be crafted ahead of the shoot and commencing edits.
We generated a pipeline using our hybrid virtual production technology. This method did not involve a full LED volume but instead used our bespoke virtual production setup, including camera tracking, live green screen keying, monitoring and recording in one box. Bringing all the high-end VP tools to bear, allowing augmented AR elements, such as our sharks, into the live scene in real-time.
Intricate planning with the DoP, director, and producers was critical to pre-visualise each sequence ahead of shooting, giving us a clear 3D template for every scene while maintaining flexibility for adjustments on the fly. This is where our mobile VP setup came into its own, it allowed the previs to inform lighting and camera setups well ahead of the shoot, meaning shot setups were incredibly quick. But more importantly, it gave Diva a comfort screen displaying the sharks and other key props accurately into frame in real-time, ensuring correct eye lines and appropriate heights for hand gestures and pointing.
This process allowed framing of shots and the takes to be set up and run through rapidly. We could easily capture the raw clean footage, a matte pass and a composite of the scene with the sharks and props. This enabled the rushes and full-scene composites to be edited within minutes of the turnover of the camera cards. A major benefit was ensuring all the material was shot correctly, eliminating the need for reshoots and avoiding the long wait for 3D compositions that typically follow weeks after the shoot. Double tick against the brief's challenge.
One of our desires was to enhance the energy, realism, and motion of the sharks. We spent considerable time improving the detail and accuracy of the shark models. This included retexturing, re-topologising and adding a new animation rig that allowed for a greater range of subtle motions. We created new mouth, jaw, and eye controls layered on top of a soft body system to simulate the near-cloth-like movement of shark skin during violent movements. Additionally, we developed a particle simulation system to generate bubbles through the gills and mouths during attacks.
Our work began with the great white shark, focusing on the mouth region to ensure accurate animation of its distinctive overbite. We needed to balance the jaw's movement with the anatomical structure of th
