It's summer again and I'll soon be working on Grandpa in my Pocket Series 2. Dinamo are providing the visual effects for the series and I’ll be working on set supervising the visual effects, setting up the workflow (using the new Codex Portable machines) and getting all the lighting reference for the CG stunt double. This time round we’ll be doing over 900 shots over the course of 26 episodes, an increase from last year of about 15%. That’s only an estimation and it could increase, as it did last series. To make things even more fun, we’ve decided to raise the bar and incorporate more moving CG shots and let Grandpa interact with the live actors. Not only that, we’ve got less time to do it in, thanks to BBC budget cuts. The difference, however, is that the experience of the first series and meant that everyone on the production understands the visual effects process so a shorthand exists to guide us. I blog more about Grandpa in a future post.

On the film front, Harry Potter and Moon have been the movies of choice. Potter was very disappointing and, for once, the trailer was better than the final result. It was a beautiful film and had some arresting imagery but completely lacked drama and pace. The characters wandered the halls of Hogwarts staring moodily at each other with tense anticipation of a dreadful event. When it did eventually happen, it turned into a disappointing romp through the great hall kicking over goblets and then standing around as Snape pushed Dumbledore over a balcony. Where was the large battle from the books? Where was the revelation that Harry’s father bullied Snape? Where was the mystery over the Half-blood Prince? Did they have a budget cut? In fact, while the visual effects were uniformly excellent, they did seems superfluous and simply added for the sake of it, as if they’d budgeted an extortionate amount for visuals they could have achieved much more economically.

Moon, on the other hand, was excellent. Although it may have suffered a little from its limited script and reduced locations, for $5m it was a tense scifi thriller that showed what could be done with a solid idea and clear focus. The visual effects were a mix of model work and CG extensions, the best way to give a credible location that doesn’t feel synthetic. It was a great example of an intelligent and serious scifi film that hadn’t become a comedy or bombastic blockbuster in order to get made.