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| Could you supply a bit of background on how and when Atmosphere was started? |
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"Atmosphere was founded in 2003 by Andrew Karr, Jeremy Hoey, and Tom Archer. Starting with a mere three employees, Atmosphere has continued to grow and expand, and now boasts over 20 employees."
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| What are recent and current productions that have gone through Atmosphere? |
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"Some recent and continuing projects are: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1, The 4400, and Wrong Turn 2."
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| What industry related association’s do you belong to? (please list credentials) |
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"VES (Jeremy Hoey, Andrew Karr & Brenda Campbell)
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Jeremy Hoey, Andrew Karr, Daniel Osaki & Brenda Campbell)"
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| Have you ever won or been nominated for other awards? |
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"As a company we have: two VES Awards (2006 - Best Animated Character in a Broadcast Series - Battlestar Galactica 'Fragged' / 2007 - Best Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series - Battlestar Galactica 'Exodus'), one VES nomination (2007 - Best Animated Character in a Broadcast Series - Battlestar Galactica 'Downloaded') and 3 Emmy nominations (2004 - Kingdom Hospital / 2005 - Battlestar Galactica 'Hand of God' / 2006 - Battlestar Galactica 'Ressurection Ship'). I have personally won one VES Award for 2007 Battlestar Galactica 'Exodus' and one Emmy Nomination for 2005 Battlestar Galactica 'Hand of God'."
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| What does winning a VES Award mean to your career? |
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"Winning a VES award is first of all a huge honor and I'm hoping it will open doors for both me and for Atmosphere. Being a small boutique shop in Vancouver, it's great to get our name out there and to have a VES award and nomination to back our work."
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| What was the outline of Battlestar Galactica? (Who was the client, what were the requirements?)
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"Battlestar Galactica is run through the Sci-Fi Channel and NBC Universal. Our direct clients are Gary Hutzel (VFX Supervisor) and Michael Gibson (VFX Producer) from whom we are awarded individual shots and episodes."
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| What is your role on the show at Atmosphere? |
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"At the time of episode 303 'Exodus' my role was Lead Compositor. I've since been promoted to Comp Supervisor with Atmosphere."
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| What is your basic pipeline procedure (configuration)? |
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"Our pipeline for Battlestar starts off with Previz, depending on the show. Sometimes we do previz and sometimes the in-house team will provide it for us. The next step is for CG to start breaking down the shots and for Comp to start any prep work. The CG is done in Lightwave and Maya,
all Comp work is done in Fusion. Once Comp starts receiving layers from CG, we slap them together. From there we get into a lot of back and forth between comp and CG as to 'ok, this element is working... this one's not', etc. For our big space shots we breakdown the CG into multiple passes for each ship so we have full control in the composite. This is where Fusion is very powerful; it gives us the ability to handle huge comps with hundreds upon hundreds of layers. Our final stage is adding all the great little finishing touches in Comp - shakes, flares and a very fat heavy grain to give it the gritty look the show has."
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| On how many episodes have Atmosphere worked? Can you approximate the amount of shots that were completed? What is the average weekly shot count?
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"This is our 3rd Season working on Battlestar. I honestly can't give you a total count for how many shows we've worked on... it's been a lot. When in our peak time, we can be delivering upwards to 20 + shots in just 1 week - this all of course depends on the episode and how many shots we have been awarded."
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| What specific skills do you think Atmosphere possess that made you the perfect choice to work on this project? |
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"At Atmosphere we pride ourselves on having extremely high standards and can provide a quick turnaround while maintaining those standards. I believe these are a few of the reasons why Battlestar has chosen us to work on their show."
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| Atmosphere is one of several effects houses working on Battlestar Galactica. How tightly do you collaborate with the other studios? Do you end up sharing composites, 3D elements and resources? |
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"With multiple shops working on Battlestar Galactica we do need to collaborate for continuity and time management. Depending on the episode we share models, elements and previz. For example, sometimes we create the models and share them with
the in-house team and sometimes they provide us with ones they've created. This happens much more on the 3D end of things rather than in Comp. With the Comp side we share elements that have been shot specifically for the show. The biggest challenge with sharing the elements (models, etc) would be to ensure that we are all using the same version of the software. Another plus for having multiple houses working on the show is that if one gets overloaded the other can usually jump in to help out with a shot or two."
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| What were some of the biggest challenges you faced on this project? How did you overcome them, and how did Fusion fit in to the solution? |
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"The biggest challenge we faced on this show in particular was definitely the timeline - we had so many huge shots to do in a very small time frame that we were pretty much in crunch mode from the start on this show. The only way we were able to finish it on time was to stay organized, using Fusion was a key part in this. With
Fusion we are able to keep our flows clean, labeled and organized which makes it a lot easier to swap out a layer or add a whole new set. When you are working with a flow that has 250-300 loaders, this is essential."
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| Battlestar Galactica is an effects heavy weekly series. Tight deadlines and large shot counts put a lot of pressure on the artistic team. How does Fusion help you achieve your deadlines without sacrificing the ’shows artistic vision and tone? |
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"With Battlestar Galactica we always have a very tight deadline, it's just how the show is. So keeping that in mind we know we're always fighting against the clock. Whenever we can do a master setup for the look of a ship, a particular effect we will do to get us 90% of the way there in a fraction of the time. Some minor tweakingand finessingis always needed but having these setups to throw into a slap comp gets you a lot further along right off the top. This also helps with continuity among various artists to keep the same look throughout the whole show."
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| Who were the artists working on the shot? What particular features were essential in getting their work done? |
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"This episode was a large undertaking and we needed the whole Atmosphere team to pull together to get it done on time. It was a huge effort on everyone's part, and communication between all departments was key... without that we wouldn't have met our deadline. As for the Compositing side of things, we were able to create a master setup for the look of an element (be it the sky/ships/cylons/etc...) and with Fusion we were able to combine any number of elements and setups into one flow quickly and easily."
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| What specific tools were used and why? How did Fusion fit into the overall production pipeline? |
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"We chose Fusion as our compositing package for not only this show but for our entire shop because of its versatility. There are a million and one ways to do anything in Fusion; some, admittedly are better than others but the huge benefit in this is that if something isn't working there's always a work around. A few of the other reasons we've chosen Fusion include; capabilities of working in any resolution and mixing resolutions, working in multiple depths as well as multiple formats, the Grid Warper, the render nodes, the Particle System and now the built in 3D system, among many other features. All of the above features were very important for us to get the show done."
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| What can we expect from you in the future? |
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"Hopefully great things! For myself and for the team at Atmosphere we are always trying to learn new techniques, advance our skills and keep up with the latest features and products. This helps us bring our A game to each and every upcoming show."
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| What has been the most rewarding shot in the series for you to date? Was there a particular shot that was more complex than usual, or turned out better than you could have hoped that you want to highlight? |
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"PBy far the most rewarding shots for me have been the Pegasus destruction sequence at the end of episode 303. It was just sweet explosion eye candy and so much fun to work on. It was a lot of layers and I was worried that it would be painful to work in but Fusion held up great.
Unfortunately because all the elements were so intertwined I wasn't able to precomp a whole lot so I ended up with 250-300 elements in each flow... times that by 10 shots and a week and a half to do it all in. When I look back at those shots and think about everything that went with them... I'm very proud of how they turned out."
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| How vital were Fusion’s roto capabilities on the project? |
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"Fusion's roto capabilities are extremely vital to us at Atmosphere. The fact that we can track our object we need to roto and then apply that path to our poly is huge, it takes a lot of the drift out of the roto and allows us to set key frames at extreme movement frames. This saves us from having to frame by frame roto in the subtle movements of the element."
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| In your experience, what are major differences between producing effects for film vs. effects for broadcast (please explain specific cases if possible)? |
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"In my experience, the major differences between creating effects for film vs. television is definitely the time frame and budget. Now with most episodic shows going to HD and a lot of features shooting in HD there really isn't a huge difference in regards to resolution, etc. If you think about how much time you have for a feature - say roughly a year for 200 or so shots and for an episodic show you have a month and a half to do 50 shots with a fraction of the budget…maybe…if you're lucky. We aim to create feature quality effects on the budget and timeline of an episodic. It's not always easy but that's the standard we've set for ourselves."
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| How capable is Fusion as a compositing application in the broadcast industry? |
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"Fusion is more than capable as your main compositing package in the broadcast industry. The only real disadvantage would be not being able to have a real-time playback without creating a preview first but this is something that you can work around if you plan ahead and create/save out your flipbooks then play them back with the client. Any changes you make while the client is here can be quickly fired off to the farm and rendered by the end of the session where you can review your changes, as creating a flipbook of just a loader only takes a few minutes. Fusion also has a very powerful text tool that allows you to make some very creative burn-ins without having to go to another package."
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