Making Of
Once Upon a Flagstaff Hill
Its 1am, in the middle of an empty Flagstaff Gardens in the city of Melbourne, Australia.
A core crew from FloodSlicer are debating whether to go for one final take – the night has gone well so far, but there’s one more thing worth getting.
At the city end of the Gardens is a Jacaranda tree flush with purple flowers. The tired crew resign themselves that its too good not to get, and they begin the process of firing up the octocopter drone one more time, and start up its cargo: a 100W (500W) battery-powered LED film light. A second drone is launched, in order to film the first.
We were there to try and capture the shadows and light effects moving through the canopy of Melbourne’s oldest and most established park. The Gardens are directly adjacent to our client’s site “Flagstaff Hill”, and therefore a major local drawcard for their development and worth celebrating in the film. However, in order to get the maximum contrast of a dark night sky in an inner-city location, we knew we were going to have to stay out late.
Given that our pitch to client involved bright, flying 3d objects coalescing towards the site, which then join up and build-up the building itself, this naturally suggested filming the crawling and surreal light that such objects would create.
The inspiration for this look came from the classic movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which used a similar technique to simulate alien craft creeping around at night.
Engaging our long-time drone collaborators XM2 – fresh from their work on the latest Bond movie No Time to Die and Aquaman – we set about collecting as many drone passes as possible, illuminating every corner of the park and tracing moving shadows through fig trees, down pathways, and over details of flowers, all whilst dodging the furious, disturbed possums and night-time automated sprinklers.
The filming of this light effect involved some of our dedicated staff volunteering their Monday evening to stand around in the park wearing High-Viz, waving permits at curious Police officers, and answering questions about the bright light and whether there was an Alien landing in progress…
Now, we know what some of you in the community might be thinking at this point:
Why did you choose to use drones to create atmospheric lighting when you could have obtained the same effect with 3DS Max by rendering a range of animated Grow FX trees with moving lights?
Our answer would be that at FloodSlicer we kind of like the unforeseeable elements of film production which introduces the small, random interactions that happen in the physical world.
Or, put another way – if you think like that, you’re getting too much sleep.
3DS Max, V-Ray, Phoenix FD, Red Giant Trapcode Shine, Adobe Suite
(C)2020 FloodSlicer Pty Ltd
(C)2020 FloodSlicer Pty Ltd
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