Discreet lends a hand for ‘egg-straordinary’ short

Discreet has given time on its award-winning visual effects system, flame, to help in the production of ‘Egg’, a short film by All Films director Clive Richards.
‘Egg’ is a surreal three minute film whose central character is a bald headed man. The film opens on him sitting at a table with a hard-boiled egg in front of him. After a bizarre series of events involving a cuckoo clock and a spoon, the guy is horrified to find that he has become the egg and someone else is about to ‘crack’ him with a spoon. The film has been entered for the Soho Shorts Festival and will be submitted to other awards festivals throughout the year.
‘Egg’ was shot over three days at Shepperton Studios on 35mm film. The Film Editors created an EDL, which was telecined at the Moving Picture Company. Discreet’s Dan Harvey conformed the EDL using flame and built the effects shot by shot, matching them back into the edit. The central character was shot green screen and after trying a number of options, All Films opted for a stylised, blood red 3D environment with artificial lighting that was built entirely within flame’s action module.
Discreet’s 3ds max™ and combustion® were also used – the former to create the 3D elements of the film and the latter as a back-up for flame in the creation of key, colour correction and garbage mask setups. A final Technicolor feel was added to the entire film by DGP using 5D’s Techno spark. Sound effects were created by Adelphoi.
All Films’ Simon Plant comments that ‘Egg’ turned into a much “bigger and darker” film as the project progressed. He said: “We initially deliberated about the best way to create the backdrop to the film as we did not want it to become a slick post project - shooting green-screen enabled us to be flexible with the space. Although there has been a lot of post work we were keen for this not to over-ride the 50’s feel that Clive had given to the film. It is quite different to anything else that Clive has done and is a wonderful uninhibited and refreshing bit of film making.”
(GB)