VFX Legion create FX for Scandal' and How to Get Away with Murder'

20 March, 2018 - 08:01

VFX Legion and its global team of 25 artists were called on by Shondraland Productions to build the computer-generated enviroments and visual effects that created the virtual worlds surrounding the actors in Scandal and How to Get Away with Murders highly anticipated crossover episodes.

The storylines of the political thriller and legal drama intersect in the back-to-back two-hour event, which recently premiered ABC and continues to rank as a streaming favorite on Hulu.

Scandal and HTGAWM are shot in Los Angeles and set in DC and Philadelphia, respectively, yet the cast never needs to leave Hollywood, thanks to the creativity, technical ingenuity, and experience of the team at VFX Legion.

The Los Angeles-based company and its global colective of 25 artists, based in cities throughout the USA, the UK, as well as Johannesburg, South Africa,where three artistst that worked on the high-profile TV crossover event are based. The mix of photorealistic CG environments and other effects that they created enabled the actors to be transported into a variety of digital surroundings that seamlessly match the live-action footage, and defy the viewer's eye. The invisible effects dramatically augment the shows' visual landscapes with shots that would be either too expensive or impossible to shoot on location.

The scenario for the tie-in opens with How to Get Away with Murders high-powered defense attorney, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), making an appearance on Scandals turf in the aptly titled episode, Allow Me to Introduce Myself. Keating travels to D.C. for a face-to-face with political fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) to elicit her help fast-tracking a class-action case to the United States Supreme Court. The storyline plays out with the guest appearance of Pope in How to Get Away with Murder's crossover episode, Lahey vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Legion has handled all of the visual effects for both shows for almost three-years, and is slated to work on the upcoming season of HTGAWM. Over the years, the series have tasked the company with creating high shot counts of quality CGI for almost 100 episodes, each matching the overall look of a single show. However, the crossover episodes required visual effects that blended with two series that use different tools and each have their own look, presenting a more complex set of challenges.

For one, Scandal is shot on an ARRI Alexa camera, and How to Get Away with Murder on a Sony F55, at different color temps, and under varying lighting conditions. DP preferences and available equipment required each environment to be shot twice, once with greenscreens for Scandal and then again using bluescreens for HTGAWM. Its team addressed all of these variables, finding creative solutions to bridge the look and match the texture and tone of both series.

The replication of the Supreme Court Building is central to the storyline. Building its exterior facade, and interiors of the courtroom and rotunda digitally, from the ground up, were the most complex visual effects created for the episodes. The process began during preproduction with VFX supervisor Matthew T. Lynn working closely with the client to get a full understanding of their vision. He collaborated with Legion's head of production, Nate Smalley, production manager, Andrew Turner, and coordinators Matt Noren and Lexi Sloan, on streamlining workflow and crafting a plan that aligned with the shows' budgets, schedules, and resources. Lynn spent several weeks on R&D, pre-visualization, and mockups. Legions end-to-end approach was presented to the staffs of both shows during combined VFX meetings, and a plan was finalized.

A rough 3D model of the set was contructed from hundreds of reference photographs stitched together using Agisoft Photoscan, and a technique called photogrammetry. HDRI panoramas and 360 multiple exposure photographs of the set were used to match the 3D lighting with the live-action footage. CG modeling and texturing artist, Trevor Harder, then added the fine details and created the finished 3D model. CG supervisor, Romm l S. Calderon, headed up the team of modeling, texturing, tracking, layout, and lighting artists that created D.C.s Supreme Court Building from scratch.

The computer-generated model of the exterior of the building was a beast and scheduling was a huge job in itself, says Calderon. Meticulous planning, resource management, constant communication with clients and spot-on supervision were crucial to combining the large volume of shots without causing a bottleneck in VFX Legion's digital pipeline.

Ken Bishop, VFX Legion's lead modeler, ran into some interesting issues while working with footage of the lead characters, Pope and Keating filmed on the concrete steps of LA's City Hall. Since the Supreme Court's staircase is marble, Bishop did a considerable amount of work on the texture, keeping the marble porous enough to blend with the concrete in this key shot.

Tracker, Ruy Delgado achieved a perfect lock on the camera moves in SynthEyes using photogrammetry, lens specs, camera measurements and other on-set survey data. The depth of detail enabled him to match the marble columns inside the courthouse exactly. Working from overcast and flatly lit plates, lighting artist Bryan Shepperd added interest to the feel of the shots, while maintaining the continuity needed to blend with the shows.

Compositing supervisor, Dan Short, lead his team through the process of merging the practical photography with renders created with Redshift and then seamlessly composited all of the shots using The Foundry's NUKE.

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