Atlantis Rushes To Its Destruction

A top London-based postproduction company, Rushes has completed the colour grading for BBC Northern Ireland's drama, Atlantis - End of A World.
Detailing the historical events that inspired the legend of Atlantis and featuring spectacular visual effects, the film tells the story of the greatest natural disaster to shake the ancient world, a disaster that triggered the downfall of a civilisation and spawned a legend.
Around 1620 BC a gigantic volcano in the Aegean Sea stirred from its 19,000-year slumber.
The eruption tore the island of Thera apart, producing massive tsunamis that flooded the nearby island of Crete, the centre of Europe's first great civilisation - the Minoans.
This apocalyptic event, many experts now believe, provided the inspiration for the legend of Atlantis.
Based on the work of leading scientists, archaeologists and historians, this drama immerses viewers in the exotic world of the Minoans.
Starring Reece Ritchie (The Lovely Bones; Prince Of Persia ) and Stephanie Leonida (Yes; MirrorMask), Atlantis is the first British TV drama to use the virtual backlot production technique of the movie 300.
Incorporating the latest CGI technology, the film brings viewers face to face with one of history's greatest disasters - from the precursory earthquakes through the eruption sequence to the pyroclastic flows and tsunamis.
In a companion documentary on BBC Two, historian Bettany Hughes traces the origins of the Atlantis myth and presents compelling evidence that the Thera eruption inspired Plato's account of Atlantis.
Atlantis - End of A World - Birth of a Legend (drama) goes out on BBC One on Sunday, 13 March, at 9 pm while Atlantis, the Evidence (documentary) will be on BBC Two on Tuesday 15 March, at 7 pm.
Directed by Tony Mitchell (Flood, Supervolcano and Ancient Egyptians), it is the first British primetime drama to use the virtual back lot production technique of the movie 300.
Having established a working relationship from Ancient Egyptians through to Supervolcano, Tony Mitchell came to Simone Grattarola and Rushes for the grade for the 90 minute and 60 minute films including the two-minute promotional trailer.
The visual effects (580 shots in total) were provided by Lola with the final conform and online completed at 142.
The sound mix was particularly complicated, challenging and rewarding, its scale being more like a full-blown feature film than a production for television.
Simone commented: "When Mitch came to me with his new project and outlined what he wanted and the production techniques he wanted to engage, I jumped at the chance to work on it. We really enjoy taking on special projects like this."
Shot tapeless on Arri D21 cameras, Rushes were supplied with a conformed dpx file sequence of the film by Waterfront Studios in Cape Town.
Simone used Resolve DI to grade the project: "We used the trailer as a way to establish aesthetics of the grade and test the footage. During this process we decided that we would establish the same aesthetics on all the green screen shots and deliver those to Lola rather than grading the footage after post.
Grahame Andrew (VFX Supervisor at Lola) was keen for us to key into the green screen and adjust that to the colour of the final background."
Producer, Detlef Siebert explained: "The grade was instrumental in helping Lola to obtain clean keys. Resolve is one of the most accurate keying tools available. It's more accurate than any of the keying tools available to VFX facilities.
"So by changing the green screen to a colour that was close to the colour that Lola intended to use for the CG plate, Rushes saved Lola a lot of cleaning up and roto-scoping work, especially where the keying involved a lot of fine detail, such as hair."
Simone continued: "The idea was to grade the green screen to where we wanted it to be. Here you can see we have keyed into the green giving it a cooler feel.
"We drew out the overall warmth and added contrast. It still allowed us to tweak for our final grade.
"To establish the aesthetic we started by de-saturating the image and then slowly returning the colour we wanted," Simone said.
"We added some 'steeliness' and cooled the frame considerably. We brought the lowlights right down and returned some of the skin tones and the fires colour."
Simone concluded: "Once the post was completed we took out a little more of the blue as at this point we realized there was more ash and less moonlight.
"A few vignettes and blending in of the background and the shot was complete. A seamless blend of green screen, grade and VFX."
(BMcC/GK)