Little White Lies is about a small family from Swansea with some rather large problems. The father, Tony, is an armchair politician, the daughter Serena is pregnant, the son Steve has just become an active member of the BNP and mum is just trying to cope. Oh yeah, one more thing: the baby will be black.

Directed by Caradog James and produced by John Giwa-Amu. Starring Brian Hibbard, Helen Griffin, Jonathan Lewis Owen and Sara Gregory. IMDb

In March 2006, Little White Lies was nominated for six BAFTA Cymru awards, winning two on the night: Best Actress and Best Actor. Congratulations!

www.redandblackfilms.com

Little White Lies on IMDb

In October/November of 2005, I was contacted by John Giwa-Amu to do some VFX work on a film he was producing, then called Flesh and Blood.

The first shot was of a Swansea exterior standing in for a local police station. The budget couldn't stretch to replacing the sign on the front of the building so I took the original plate, tracked the slight camera move and composited in a new sign being careful to add a new reflection. I also muted the colours to match the original and duplicated the film grain effect. Although originally shot on HD, the film had already been graded so it was up to me to match the new look. I made the white writing of the police sign slightly darker than the original because the new version seemed too fake when viewed side by side, perhaps because it was too sharp or the white text was larger.

The second shot was a wide shot from the end of the film where a small crowd of extras needed duplicating and given flaming torches to hold. Although the crowd duplication was always intended, extraordinarily windy conditions on the day forced the filmmakers to shoot without a reference of the torches for me to match. The low light and heavy grain on the image sequence I received meant that I couldn't track it but the camera move was minimal and no-one noticed! I took on-set photographs of the extras, cut them out and repeated the images (with a few alterations here and there). Then, building a particle effect in After Effects, I added a large number of flaming torches (burning much more fiercely than they really should do to show up on camera) and added them to ramdom members of the crowd. Like the street shot, I then colour corrected and added grain to blend everything together.

Although I only worked on two shots, it was great to do some effects for a film for the first time, especially invisible effects that the audience wouldn't notice unless they were pointed out. It's just a pity I had to miss the premiere!