We need more post-production supervisors right on the film set! Why?

We deal with post-production, and yet for some time, we have been sending more and more employees to the set. While working on the latest Orange and Biedronka campaigns, we delegated as many as three people to the set. For what purpose?

As a standard, the film crew was accompanied by one supervisor. His main task was to provide filmmakers with practical support in the field of VFX and prevent problems in post-production, such as the unfortunate placement of props in the frame. In the meantime, this supervisor collected the necessary information about the camera, lenses, and surroundings, took photos and documentation with references. We used a lot of his work in online editing and compositing.

– We like to raise the bar, which is why we engage in projects that require ever more perfect 3D animation, often combined with live-action. The scale of work on the set began to exceed the capabilities of a single supervisor. We needed more data, better quality, faster pace – says Magdalena Zimecka, managing director at ORKA.

Currently, when one of the supervisors is busy assisting the film crew, the second and sometimes a third run around the set, recording everything they consider appropriate and helpful: dimensions, distances, references. This means hundreds of photos, including carefully made HDR, which allows us to quickly translate ambient light into 3D programs and illuminate CG objects with it.

Yes, it may look strange: a guy with a camera takes pictures of a lamp, a Christmas tree, softboxes... – but it comes in handy. In the Orange spots, the "HDR-ed" Christmas tree allowed the addition of luminous dots and lamps in the reflective shell of Max's robot. Christmas vibe: checked!

Here's an example of a 360-degree HDR panorama of the skatepark where one of the spots with Biedronka's Smart Gang was shot:

The same skatepark in the finished spot:

But supervisors do not live by HDR alone. We also need them for photogrammetry. It consists in taking a series of photos of individual props or scenography from different perspectives to reproduce them in the form of 3D models in a graphic program.

This can be used as a basis for further modeling or a properly finished object. Sometimes photogrammetry only helps our graphic designers to orient themselves in the space of a given scene and the position of its elements with each other – but it is very important. In addition, we measure the photographed objects, thanks to which all models have the appropriate scale in cm.

While working on Orange ads, we used photogrammetry in the entire spectrum of its applications. First of all, it allowed our graphic designers to find themselves in the space of the film apartment, because they could see the exact distances between the blocks of the actual set design and the added effects at any time.

Second, the technique provided us with a basis for graphic modeling, as in the case of a sofa or a table covered with a tablecloth, whose photogrammetric models made it possible to match the shadows cast by the robot with the wrinkles, folds and textures of real furniture and fabrics.

Photogrammetry also provided us with almost ready 3D models that required only a few improvements, as was the case with the hay resting on the robot's hand...

...or the dishes that were supposed to be on the plates he collected:

Some sets are so demanding and so fast-paced that supervisors need an assistant. In such spectacular projects as commercials with Biedronka's Smart Gang or Orange's robot the presence of three of our experts on the set turned out to be indispensable. And fruitful – just look at the final results: