Rushes creates effects for HDCAM series

Over the last 18 months, Soho facility Rushes has been working closely with Dangerous Films to produce VFX for Human Body: Pushing the Limits, a four-part series for Discovery US. In all, 400 VFX shots totalling 80 minutes duration were delivered. The shooting format for the series was HDCAM, using a variety of Sony camcorders in both the US and UK.

A graphic and in-depth exploration into the functioning and phenomena of the human body, the series reveals the human body as it has never been seen before. Real-life examples are used to illustrate its most diverse moments of strength, endurance and survival. From strength to sight, pain to sleep, heat to eating, the entire range of body challenges is explored.

Dangerous producer Tim Goodchild’s brief for Rushes was to create a CG Human that would show the wonder and beauty of the human body, remaining close to reality, while avoiding the potential for squeamishness on the part of the viewer. Originally the intention was for the body to fit one presenter, however as the scripts developed and the work of R&D on the model progressed, it became clear that it would need to fit to both men and women, small and tall. Other issues such as potential nudity problems also had to be addressed as did the re-scaling of the anatomy and animation rig to fit the different cast.

Creating a versatile workflow

Hayden Jones, VFX supervisor at Rushes, comments, “At this point, we took the view that we would need to spend longer ensuring that our model could be used in as many ways as possible. We developed a workflow that put constraints on the rig in order that any animator could pick up the model and know that it would only do, physiologically, what a real human body does. We split the model into various layers of bone, muscle, nerve systems and so on so that we could ‘dial through’ as many as we needed in the final composites.”

The stories in the series place the body in extreme situations that couldn’t be filmed and so Dangerous went to Mike Tucker (series SFX supervisor) at The Model Unit to help solve some of the more difficult ones. To this end SFX models of caves, houses exploding, fireballs in forests and motion control were filmed in HDCAM at Ealing Studios in London.

Mike's unit also provided art department construction and SFX for all the studio filming in the UK. All the other filming took place in the US based out of LA and involved a huge range of different locations and stories across the series.

Hayden Jones adds, “It was such a great pleasure to work with Mike Tucker. He completely understands where his models will fit into the final composite and so the combination of his work with the live action and our CG gives the VFX shots a real depth and richness.”

One of biggest effects jobs

Louise Hussey, VFX producer at Rushes, goes on to say, “This project is one of the largest that Rushes Film & TV has completed to date. We are incredibly proud of the standard of the VFX that we have produced, in that they fully encompass a broad spectrum of approaches and skills. Our previous work with Tim Goodchild and Dangerous has given us a short-hand and trust that allowed us to produce a large range of diverse effects with a relatively small team.”

The 4 x 1 hour programmes were all off-lined at St Annes in their Avid suites and Simon Brookes on-lined the programmes in DS Nitris, conforming the programmes and creating the information graphics sequences that enhance the science of the series.

11 March 2008