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Final matte painting with all elements combined

Original 1940's background element

Modern London panoramic mid ground element

Matte Painted foreground element

Final frame with matte painting composited into live action plate and addition elements added, including smoke, water and atmos effects

RIGHT TO LEFT:Fir st image is the green screen window acquired on -set . The second image is a murky dirt plate, used to give the glass character. The final image was used to create a fake reflection from within the building. This was borrowed from another shot.

RIGHTFirst image is the original plate

acquired by production on the day. The second image is a matte painting

created to mirror the street, clean up the road, plant Wembley Stadium and

give a glimpse of the destruction. The final image is the finished shot.

Bert & Dickie is a story that tells the tale of two rowers performing in the "Austerity Olympics" held in London during 1948. It was a time of turmoil, London was a bomb site and the government were feeling the pressure of holding a successful Olympic games . The production wanted to set up this world in the first sequence of the show, by providing the audience a view of a war torn London, overlooking the Thames . This page demonstrates how we built the scene using matte painting and compositing techniques .

Initially the production delivered a tracking shot of a green screen window, as shot on -set , the rest was to be created with visual effects . Building a city line is a tall order, especially one that exists from a bygone era. Our first task was to research around the subject using books, films and library archives , gathering as much imagery as we could. We found a skyline photograph of London, taken before the war, which provided us a guide of what London used to look like . From a vantage point, we took a panoramic image of modern London, which served as a canvas for our matte painter to build the final scene upon. Time was taken to form the layout; we removed building, added structures , cleared spaces , etc . With a layout locked we were then able to detail the skyline, which would provide much of its war torn qualities . This process took some time, each building had textures , elements and painting applied. The final stage was to breath life into the scene, which was completed in the composite . Animated smoke, atmosphere, moving water and boats, reflections on the glass ; all helped to add realism to a once static shot.

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!e "amera #$wa%s &ies � Ğ ƌ ƚ � Θ � � ŝ Đ Ŭ ŝ Ğ � � ī Ğ Đ ƚ Ɛ � � Ă Ɛ Ğ � ^ ƚ Ƶ Ě LJ

�KWz Z / ' , d � > � y , �' �Ξ Ϯ Ϭ ϭ Ϯ

Above is the original image of the 1948 Games held at Wembley. The score board is clearly seen and was used as our main refer�ence .

This image is our first "slap comp" using our sourced crowd, flag elements for other shots and the scoreboard form the photo. This rough comp enabled us to lock the design with the director.

After searching the rushes, we found this small shot, which was ideal for the scoreboard crowd.

ABOVE:This is an untextured render of the score board created in CGI . It was positioned to favour the crowd plate . Flags were rendered separately and composited onto the flag poles . We used a technique that allowed the flag print to be changed in the composite , without re -rendering in 3D.

Another pivotal shot was the start of the Olympics , featuring Wembley Stadium and the original score board. In the offline this was achieved by using archive footage but this was not appropriate for the broadcast show. The team at Lexhag set about building the shot from scratch.

The two main components we needed to complete the shot were : crowds and a scoreboard. The production had already sent a skeleton crew to capture general crowd shots during the Henley Regatta. However, shots were not acquired for this specific shot, leaving an important component missing. The budget didn't allow for any CG crowd creation techniques, nor did it cater for an element shoot, leaving our options quite limited.

Really the only option was to return to the rushes and gather pieces of shots that could be composited together into one crowd. Luckily, while trawling through the extensive rushes we found one shot, which was just long enough, at just about the right angle and had the right feel for the Wembley grandstand (see below right) . With this shot sourced and cloned into a crowd, we were able to build the rest of the scene, including a CGI scoreboard, grandstand structure, flags and flag poles .

ABOVE: This texture was rebuild from scratch to look identical to the original.

LEFT:The final shot with all the compo�nents in place . Everything above the people is CGI .

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This plate was used just for the water

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Typical for any period drama, a high degree of clean -up can be necessary to sell the show. This page demonstrates three typical shots ; location clean -up, rowing composites and background replacements .

For most, each shot required several plates (layers) , all photographed at different times , at different locations . To keep the shots achievable within the schedule, camera movement was kept to a bare minimum. Shooting plates at different times and locations can throw up many technical challenges . Most composites worked very well and provided a very believable scene . However, there were times when plates had to be carefully composited together. Our main challenges was to composite three, very different, light spaces into a single shot. These difficult shots were broken into smaller parts, enabling greater control for our artist to tweak each element individually. A heavy composite could consist of three main plates (BG, MG, FG) and several mattes to control individual parts of those plates , such as skin, water, costume, etc .

For all of the car shots, we captured separate background plates for the green areas and reflection plates for the bodywork and glass . This was performed on a low loader after principle photog�raphy, with an Alexa and other VFX cameras . The reflection passes were projected onto a 3D mesh of the car. This provided accurate deformations as the reflections rolled over the body work.

This was the main plate providing the building. Work was done to alter the building structure.

This boat features in the close foreground, providing a sense of depth

We used this plate for the four small boat houses on the left of frame.

The final shot with all elements, clean -up and colour correction applied.

ABOVE:This green screen action plate was photographed unsupervised. It was quite difficult to extract a good key, you'll notice the seam and variation of colour.

RIGHTThese two plates provided the rowers and background crowd. Again, photographed unsuper�vised, but only a small amount of distortion was need to make the perspectives match.

The final shot with all components composite together. Notice the degree of clean -up and detail on the canvas grandstands . To make it feel more of The period, modern colours were de -saturated, blue strips on the canvas ’ were removed and dirtied down. Also, all the upright wooden posts were thickened to hide the modern steel counterparts .