We are thrilled to share that our recent project for Casey House Toronto recently picked up a few awards at this years ONE SHOW!
To fight HIV stigma we used characters from the two most streamed shows on earth to create HIV positive episodes and help expose the stigma. Over 430 episodes were edited together to create our 2 versions of the shows and then the task of matching the new dialogue to each character was undertaking using a range of visual effects techniques.
Working from the new locked cuts our Sr. VFX Artist Daniel J. Kelly directed body-doubles to perfectly match the actors in the original scenes. The faces of these doubles then provided the base from which the original characters faces could be animated. The result is a true testament to the trust empowered to us by the agency and being given the freedom we needed to test, direct and execute the visual effects required to pull this off.
You can enjoy the full episodes and our Visual Effects Breakdown below.
The HIV+ Episodes
Agency: Bensimon Byrne / Toronto + Narrative / Toronto + OneMethod / Toronto
Client: Casey House
Director: Daniel J. Kelly
Post-Production: The Faculty
Category: Moving Image Craft: Innovation in Moving Image Craft
Losing Friends
Agency: Bensimon Byrne / Toronto + Narrative / Toronto + OneMethod / Toronto
Client: Casey House
Writers: Matthew Valenzano & Jessie Sorell
Category: Moving Image Craft: Craft - Writing / Single
The Toxic Office
Agency: Bensimon Byrne / Toronto + Narrative / Toronto + OneMethod / Toronto
Client: Casey House
Director: Daniel J. Kelly
Post-Production: The Faculty
Category: Film: Under 100K Budget
The HIV+ Episodes
Agency: Bensimon Byrne / Toronto + Narrative / Toronto + OneMethod / Toronto
Client: Casey House
Director: Daniel J. Kelly
Post-Production: The Faculty
Category: Film: Innovation in Film
VISUAL EFFECTS BREAKDOWN
We explored a wide range of visual effect techniques in the R&D stages of this project. Everything from DeepFake, 3D modelling, CGI animation and projection were all considered in this process but we quickly realized that we needed to be able to rely on a guaranteed output within a limited budget. This is also an extremely sensitive topic to embrace, one that requires an educated thought process and a humanized approach to a deeply important social issue. DeepFake is a controversial science at this point-in-time and in approaching something that is very sensitive for so many reasons we decided that the compositing of real actors would give us greater control in the time that we had available while also ensuring a sensitive human approach to the direction and creation that fed our final image.
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In pre-production we broke down each episode into scenes based on lighting for each actor. Each scene was stabilized and enlarged so that we had an accurate lighting reference for each actor who then read their lines matching those that had been pre-recorded using voice impersonators.
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Each take was then isolated and tested to find the best match to each actor that was being replaced in the original footage. The original actor’s face was tracked and we typically found that planar tracking techniques proved accurate for 80% of the shots that we were manipulating. Original the intent was that we would use the jaw, mouth and cheeks from the acting doubles and composite them over the faces of the original actors. We soon realized that these actors are so recognizable that any small variation instantly read as incorrect so, after having tracked the doubles faces to the original we then used this simply as a base to reanimate the original faces off the actors back into the original footage using the doubles as an accurate guide for lip-sync. This was achieved using a range of planar tracking, camera projection and frame-by-frame hand animation techniques.
FINAL EPISODES
You can enjoy full versions of both final episodes that we created here and hope that together we can #SMASHSTIGMA around HIV and AIDs.
”LOSING FRIENDS”
“THE TOXIC OFFICE”