Artery Adds Effects to The Discovery

Bookmark and Share

Thu, 02/02/2017 - 10:47 -- Nick Dager

 The Artery contributed more than 70 visual effects shots to The Discovery.Art and technology company The Artery contributed more than 70 visual effects shots to The Discovery. It stars Robert Redford, Jason Segal and Rooney Mara, made its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

The film, which will launch globally on March 31 on Netflix, tells a compelling story: One year after the existence of the afterlife is scientifically verified, millions around the world have ended their own lives in order to get there. A man and woman fall in love while coming to terms with their own tragic pasts and the true nature of the afterlife.

Primarily, The Artery’s work for the film consisted of digitally inserting various images onto monitors to simulate static, graphics, animation, and medical imagery. The company also did several VFX shots, including the removal of crewmembers, characters, equipment and reflections.

Vico Sharabani, founder and executive creative director for The Artery, said, “This was a terrific project for us to take on. The tracking and models for various scenes were imported to Flame so nothing was rendered using 3D software. This workflow allowed a handful of our artists to tackle many shots on a challenging budget and within a tight schedule.”

For The Discovery, The Artery’s lead Flame artist Asaf Yeger used Flame for compositing, while 3DS was used for the 3D work. 

In one scene, a character commits suicide on camera. The Artery provided a muzzle flash from the gun used to kill him, as well as blood splattering onto a light element.

According to Lynzi Grant, The Artery’s head of production, “There were several shots when Robert Redford was lying on a table under a fictional brain wave scanner. The scene called for him to have red lines projected onto his face. They were not able to achieve this practically, so we match-moved a model of a face on to Robert Redford using Boujou. This 3D tracking information was brought into the flame and projected onto his 3D face. That’s how we created the laser look.”

Adds Grant, “In the original shots, there was a high collar wetsuit being worn under Jason Segal's sweater. Our clients asked us to remove it in many shots.  We match-moved his neck using Boujou of the wetsuit area, then retextured 3D geometry on the flame to create a new bare neck for him.”

Tags: