Fremont, CA – July 28, 2017 – Blackmagic Design has today announced that London-based visual effects boutique Lexhag used Fusion Studio to help create the main title sequence for “Riviera,” Sky Atlantic’s new 10 part drama series starring Julia Stiles as the wife of a billionaire who uncovers the dark truth behind her opulent lifestyle.
Led by visual effects director Alexis Haggar, the Lexhag team was tasked with delivering the winning pitch for the sequence by capturing the show’s glitz and glamor through a vibrant, kaleidoscopic effect. Using Fusion Studio, the team generated and animated the kaleidoscope using imagery from the show as a source, ensuring hints to the storyline were woven in to allow audiences to understand more as the drama evolved.
“We were approached by the main title design team on the show, The Morrison Studio, who we already had a long-standing relationship with, to create the sequence,” begins Haggar.
“They had worked extensively on the establishment of a set of style frames for each section of the sequence,” he continues. “We used those style frames as a base to build the shot directly within Fusion, and applied the kaleidoscopic effect and animation with Fusion plug in Krokodove, all at 4K UHD 16bit float. This definitely provided a challenge when finding the right plate from the show to use for the kaleidoscope, especially with elements such as the actor’s faces, which could look a little odd. Fusion enabled us to produce our animated plates very quickly, allowing us to modify them with the client in our suite almost interactively, which saved a lot of time.”
Once the work on the sequence was complete, each rendered shot was then passed to a third party application timeline, which was then used to online the sequence and lay out the title cards to achieve the final result.
“We tested several options before we took a decision to use Fusion within our workflow on this project. Given what we set out to achieve it really was the fastest and most capable tool at our disposal,” Haggar concludes. “Handling 4K UHD at 16bit Float was a breeze with Fusion, and it kept the creative process alive because we didn’t have to stop and wait for lengthy renders or flip books. It made our pipeline more efficient than ever, and produced some impressive final results.”
About Riviera
After newlywed Georgina’s billionaire husband Constantine is killed in a yacht explosion, she is shocked to discover the fortune and lifestyle he maintained was surrounded by violence, lies and murder. She soon must step out of her comfort zone to protect the family…and herself.
About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.