Framestore CFC create VFX and mastergrade for 'Love Actually'

'Love Actually', the new romantic comedy from Richard Curtis, has been digitally mastergraded by Framestore CFC, who also provided the film's digital FX and implemented the titles.
Love Actually producer Duncan Kenworthy first approached Framestore CFC in 2002, having worked with the company as far back as 1986 (on 'The Storyteller' TV series) and with company Director of Visual Effects Tim Webber since 1996 (on 'Gulliver's Travels'). Initially the digital effects brief involved sequences far more elaborate than those that ended up in the shooting script, including a demanding helicopter track along the Thames past several well-known bridges. As the script evolved, however, these scenes became unnecessary and the final digital elements were on a more modest scale.
The digital VFX on Love Actually are largely cosmetic in nature - both in terms of occasional complementary touches of digital make-up, as well as set extension. This last was for the sequence where we follow Prime Minister Hugh Grant from a Downing Street exterior to the inside of No.10. This involved the construction of a huge set at Shepperton, of which only the buildings outside the security gates were not physically included. A gigantic green screen was set up for these shots, to be filled with the help of digital stills taken of the area, for a properly authentic environment.
The titles, which were designed by Maguffin, also presented some unique problems, in particular the sequence that lead in to the end-roll. A slo-mo of Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon in a Heathrow Airport set is followed by a number of shots (all filmed in HD) of real people meeting and greeting loved ones in the real airport. One frame dissolves into a tiled four shots, which becomes nine, then 25 and so on until the screen is filled with 400 miniature frames. This mass of screens is graded very subtly so that a heart shape appears in its centre, which only really registers as an after burn of a shape, inside which the words 'The End' appear.
"From a technical point of view it could have been a nightmare," said Tim Keene, Framestore CFC Producer for the project, "Building 400 separate frames on the Inferno could have taken forever. But we were using Version 8 software, which allows you to use different resolution images within the same partition. Christian Manz could then down-res each individual file from what it should be to even less than PAL. It was still a long render - 16-18 hours - but it was feasible."
(GB)