This was a really fun project to do and it was a real shame I couldn't be on set for much of the filming as I was making my own short film, The Cursed Mirror, at the same time. I was able to make it for the final day in the print shop and it was great to meet Ray and Amanda, albeit briefly. I'd worked with Ryan before on Beasthunters so it was a comfortable job to do in a short space of time.

The next section of the film takes place in Blake's apartment and has Ray see a vision of Jerusalem while in the bath. Before Amanda walks into the room, he is haunted by visions of the Flea, one of Blake's most iconic works. I added steam rising from the back of the actor playing the flea and also tracked and warped his eyes so they seemed unnaturally large. This was all done in 2D with a hand-tracked camera. More time and people would have allowed me to do a proper 3D track and reprojection to make the eyes more accurate, but that's short film budgets for you! I also added a light projector effect onto Ray's face (see the image at the top of the page) to visualise his vision. Images of waves, towers and, finally, Jerusalem were animated. The resulting movie was warped around his face as if the projector were directly in front of him.

The action then moves to Blake's brother's shop in Soho where the first exhibition of his work was staged. Again, the environment outside the windows of the shop was greenscreen, although this was much harder to deal with as the interior was filmed in a very small space and there was very little lighting on the actual screen. In fact, much of the lower half of the frame in the wide shots had to be hand roto-scoped as there was almost no difference in colour and tone between the greenscreen and the actor's trousers. The background was also done twice as my first effort was too detailed and distracting, consisting of a perspective view of a London street cobbled together from various photos and paintings. It didn't match the angle properly and caught the eye, taking the audience away from the actors. My second attempt, and the one that's in the final film, was from a single photo image of a pawnshop from which I removed all modern details and lettering. All of the tracking was done in 2D as the camera was always on the tripod for these shots. Some shots had to be hand tracked due to the lack of visible marks.

The last section of the film also takes place at the exhibition, although this time it is at night and only features Mrs. Blake. She has her own vision of a boy, an blind man and an angel. The view outside the window had to be a fantasy version of a London skyline, with surreal clouds and a vivid blue glow. The roof line was taken from a number of photographic sources and blended together. A real smoke element added chimney smoke and a slight warp was added to the clouds to show them moving as if in a high wind. A lot of rotoscoping was required here as well because of the dark lighting and challenging transparencies on the glass.

I really enjoyed doing this project and it fulfilled one of my ambitions of recreating London using greenscreen and actual period photographs. Perhaps if a feature version of Jerusalem get's made then I'll have a chance to push it even further!