Finish Creates VFX For Civil War-Era the Keeping Room

LONDON - Finish (www.finish.tv) recently completed work on more than 90 VFX shots featured in director Daniel Barber's new film The Keeping Room. The studio also created the title sequence for the western thriller, which takes place towards the end of the American Civil War.

Drafthouse Films released the feature on September 25th. The film is a tense and uncompromising tale of survival that also shatters both gender and genre conventions. It stars Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, Sam Worthington and Muna Otaru.

Visual effects supervisor Jason Watts worked closely with long-time collaborator Barber in devising the effects for the film. To work on a long-form project with a director I have a long standing working relationship reaffirmed our collaborative synergy comments Watts. There was a lot of trust in delivering creative shots that were an essential part of the storytelling.

Visual effects were added to intensify the mounting tension as the story progresses, with skies set ablaze with CGI cloud systems, CGI crowd simulation to replicate troops, smoke, impacts and bullets added to discharged gunfire. There are also numerous invisible effects throughout the film.

CGI artist Alaric Holberton explains the effects for the main battle scenes: In one of the scenes the sky needed to look like it was ablaze from distant battles. We graded the plate darker, created illuminated sky passes, then a Maya fluid cloud system would catch the light from below and change structure to look like thick battle smoke rising up from the ground. Along with the pulsating glows of the main fires, quick flashes from explosions and artillery fire were added to show the fighting was on-going.

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Finish have worked with Barber on numerous commercials over the years for clients such as BMW, Ford, Lloyds TSB, British Airways, Jaguar and British Heart Foundation. They also completed all the VFX on his Academy Award-nominated short The Tonto Woman.

LINK:	http://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/Web-Exclusives/2015/Finish-Creates-VFX...
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