The second series of Grandpa in my Pocket for Adastra Creative and CBeebies, for which I was VFX supervisor and digital workflow manager. This series was commissioned on the strength of the first, which had been a massive hit for CBeebies and became one of the top rated shows on the channel, as well as the BBC iPlayer. Little of the workflow was changed but the number and the complexity of the shots increased so that we completed 1051 VFX shots overall, including a large number of moving and interaction shots.
The main changes to this series were the use of Codex Portable machines instead of the large Codex Recorder to record and convert all the footage, two editors instead of one, more moving shots and some new CG props, including a balloon and a steam train.
The portable Codex machines allowed us to record an entire day's footage to the diskpacks and then use a separate transfer station to offload the footage to an Avid Unity. Although there were still a couple of delays here and there, it meant we were no longer tied to one machine, could transfer to the Avid without having to stop filming and could add a third camera without complication, something that happened during the final two week's of filming. Again, we recorded everything in Avid DHxHD and transferred the entire shoot to the Unity storage and Dinamo's storage.
Now that everyone was familiar with the VFX process, things went a lot smoother on set. We freed up the camera a little to increase the number of moving shots and give ourselves more of a challenge. This included some moving greenscreen shots, something I was a little nervous about but the compositors coped with brilliantly. The larger number of shots meant that we had two people on set at all times to take measurements and approve the camera angles. However, despite this I feel that the VFX shots feel a lot more integrated this time round and have Grandpa interacting with Jason and the other characters more often. There were plenty of times Grandpa was standing in costume on a character's hand and talking to them!
Post production was more hectic but smoother because the editing delivery schedule was more solid. The extra editor helped a lot and we were delivering three episodes a week over about nine weeks. There were some episodes (like the one with the CG carrot and the CG spaceship) that took a lot longer to produce and these ones pushed us behind a little. However, overall, we caught up and delivered on time.
Grandpa has now been renewed for a third series, albeit with half the episodes, so I don't think much will change. We've got it down to a fine art now!
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The second series of Grandpa in my Pocket for Adastra Creative and CBeebies, for which I was VFX supervisor and digital workflow manager. This series was commissioned on the strength of the first, which had been a massive hit for CBeebies and became one of the top rated shows on the channel, as well as the BBC iPlayer. Little of the workflow was changed but the number and the complexity of the shots increased so that we completed 1051 VFX shots overall, including a large number of moving and interaction shots.
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