Framestore

Now where do I even start with this? I don't know. All I know is we left those offices speechless. Literally we couldn't really talk until one of us snapped out of it half way down Oxford Street. 

We had been looking forward to this experience since Natalie first mentioned it on monday. I even mentioned I was going to my friend in 'Digital games and animation' that I was going... and all I got was "I hate you"... so I knew it was going to be good, that it was a real privilege to be going. But nothing could prepare us for walking into a room and seeing oscars and a cabinet full of awards including 6 yellow pencils. 

Here we were. In the studios of the only CGI company to have been nominated for an Oscar 5 years running... winning 3 of them. 

The waiting room. Where a runner offered to get us any drink we liked. 

Mural of one of the projects the studio had worked on. The Coca-Cola advert for the Superbowl. 

Branded water. Still or Sparkling.

Swag. Framestore pads, mints, tissues and pens. 

And here is the award cabinet... Blew our minds. 

We were introduced to Simon Gosling. Senior Producer at Framestore, who had kindly taken a few hours out of his precious day to talk to us and show us around.

Simon Gosling is a Senior Producer with Framestore, Europe's largest, Oscar winning Post Production Company. With 20 years of experience he has worked as Head of New Business and Senior Producer at The Moving Picture Company, Managing Director at Cut+Run and set up a music and sound design company, 2110.

From there he gave us a presentation. Showed us a showreel of all the things they had produced. 

Every piece of CGI I could remember admiring was in this showreel. I could not believe that I was sitting in the studio which produced Dobby in Harry Potter, Aslan in 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe' and many other things. 

He started by telling us about the work they did on Avatar.

The fact the he uttered the words "oh yeah and then 'Jim Cameron' rang me" was when I started to get really impressed. 

He had been working with VFX studios Wetta and ILM for 4 years on this project and decided he needed Framestore's input. He gave them the assets, gave them the characters and gave them 4 weeks. 

He started off by asking for 70 shots... which ended up being 140. 

He showed us on screen how they layered up the images, creating the different assets to build up the background. How the actors talked to tennis balls to get the shot... against green screen. 

He told us that when 'Jim' saw what they had done, he laughed and asked ILM "why doesn't your work look as good as this?".

He explained about how, because they were working in 3D, every part of the shot had to be created. Even the power station far in the background. Whereas in another project, the Coca Cola Superbowl advert, they could use 2D assets, paintings and such to create parts of the background to release some of the work-load. 

He then went on to talk about the new Andrex advert and the fact that it was a very touchy subject to work on as people were so used to the original puppy. They had to get it as close as they could. 

He explained that CGI is split up into 4 sections....

Modelling - essentially 3D plastacine, this stage also includes rigging a skeleton

Texturing - eg-adding fur

Animation - getting it to move

Lighting - making it look realistic

The hardest part apparently is drawing the characters. Identifying exactly what is needed and then drawing and creating characters that the client is happy with. 

There are two types of projects, ones such as Andrex where they ask the Framestore team to draw everything, come up with the characters from the ideas given themselves... and those like the Coca Cola advert where the assets and drawings are all done before they reach Framestore. 

These are some of the ideas boards for the Andrex advert. 

Apparently the Coca-Cola advert for the Superbowl cost 2Million to create... and 6Million just for the air-time. The Superbowl is the most expensive advertising slot all year. The most prestigious. 

He also mentioned that 'The X Factor' is also an incredibly popular one. The 'Yeo Valley' advert won that slot last year. Of which Framestore created the owl. 

He then talked to us about an interactive project, an application for NOKIA. In which you use a video clip, and then add visual effects. 

There are many complications, namely the fact that no phone has the capacity to generate these effects. So they video is taken, the effect is chosen... and are then sent into a 'render cloud' and the finished product is then sent to the person via the web. There are complications... but this is the idea. 

So this was the end of our talk. Our minds were so full of information we didn't really know how to respond. So he took us downstairs to a studio full of guys actually working on the projects. 

One was working on an app where you replace famous character's faces with your own... others were working on editing footage, and one was working on After Effects - FINALLY, something I knew about. 

They talked to us about how they work and the software they use... such as MAYA and after effects, mainly for advertising and title sequences. I was so excited to hear that they had produced my favourite title sequence of all time, the 'Casino Royale' one. 

As we left, our minds heavy with information, Simon told us that if we ever needed any help we could come to him. He have us his email address and he said to ask him any time. 

Chi-CHING - little address book sure is filling up.