Framestore CFC completes 'Ocean Odyssey' spectacular

Framestore CFC has announced the successful completion of over 420 underwater digital visual effects shots for 'Ocean Odyssey', an adventurous new documentary. This groundbreaking television spectacular will be broadcast in two one-hour episodes on BBC1 on Wednesday May 24 and Wednesday May 31. An Impossible Pictures production for the BBC and the Discovery Channel, Ocean Odyssey was produced by Ceri Barnes and directed by Dave Allen.
After the enormous (and continuing) success of the two companies' 'Walking With…' prehistoric documentaries, the two companies have recently struck out in some exciting new directions. 2005 saw the broadcast of 'Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets' – a thrilling round-trip through our solar system. Now, 2006 sees them venture to an area in many ways even more mysterious to us than outer space – the depths of our own oceans.
What does it look like at the bottom of the sea? Not the pretty bits of the sea floor that we are able to swim in, of course, but the deepest reaches – far out into the ocean and at profound depths? The truth is that we know very little of how this underwater seascape might appear, and there are two main reasons for this: it's incredibly hostile to humankind – freezing temperatures and lung-crushing pressure; and it's dark – very, very dark.
But what if we found ourselves a guide – a being familiar and comfortable with the ways of the deep, who could lead us through the miraculous and terrifying sights on offer down there? And, in addition, what if someone switched on all the lights?
This, in brief, is what Executive Producer Tim Haines and his Impossible Pictures team set out to do in Ocean Odyssey. Our guide is a sperm whale whom we follow through his life, from calf to veteran bull. And, through the collaborative vision of director Dave Allen and digital wizards Framestore CFC, we are able to follow this whale's adventures in impossibly clear conditions, with beautiful, long-ranging shots and spectacular views, as if all the oceans had been fitted with floodlights. Visual Effects above the surface, as well as some beautiful graphic elements, were handled by Red Vision.
VFX Supervisor for the project was Tim Greenwood, a veteran member of the Framestore CFC Walking With… team. "We started to do some initial tests for an underwater project immediately after we finished Space Odyssey," he said. "Although at first it was planned to be an imaginary voyage in a submarine." But by the time that shooting started in the summer of 2005, the idea had evolved to its final state, with Framestore CFC's mastery of underwater digital creatures – seen to such brilliant effect in Sea Monsters (2004) - being applied once more to a host of aquatic mammals and fish; though this time all of the creatures seen are real and can be found in the oceans now.
Greenwood attended all of the shoots, but he is quick to point out that the backplate shoots, which form such a crucial part in the process of creating the dinosaur programmes, played a much lesser role this time around. "Although we shot for a couple of weeks in the Azores," he said. "As well as a similar time in Greenford Studios in West London, the greatest part of the 'shoot' took place inside the computers at Framestore CFC." In other words, while the 'Walking With…' programmes called for Framestore CFC to create just the extinct animals that were then placed into real environments, Ocean Odyssey often required them to also create the environments themselves – backgrounds, foregrounds, the water itself, as well as designing and implementing the moves of the virtual cameras which shot the scenes. Co-Lead TD, Theo Facey, said: "The shot-building time doubled, on average. And that doesn't include the occasions on which, having created these environments, we had - in effect - to scout them, too. It was important that we provided interesting looking places for the action to take place in."
It took a core team of around 40 artists and technicians some seven months to create the 422 shots that Framestore CFC delivered. As well as the whale himself, the team animated seven other hero creatures, as well as larger group shots of whale schools and fish shoals. Peter Clayton headed the team of animators that brought the creatures to life.
With such a relatively small amount of live action footage shot, Digital Matte Paintings (DMPs) played a crucial role in the success of the project. They helped to create environments that varied from the depths of the Mariana Trench (a sort of sub-aqua Grand Canyon) to dramatic volcanic stacks and ridges. A four-strong team led by Jason Horley were involved from the earliest, conceptual stages of Ocean Odyssey, creating hundreds of images that were used in both 2D and '2.5'D – where a 2D painting is mapped onto 3D geometry.
(GB)