Matt Cameron

Under Exposure

2012-02-13T14:50:00.002Z

In this series I have experimented with under exposure to capture the dramatic high contrast light I found on Arthur's Seat this Sunday. These stills were taken in RAW at up to two stops under the metered exposure. After reducing contrast and pulling in the black levels and exposure to retain all the dynamic range, I opened the images in Photoshop at 16 bits per channel. I then gamma'd down the image with a curves layer, then painted back important details by placing a masked exposure layer underneath.

'META' Trailer

2012-02-01T12:06:00.001Z

Here is the trailer for my 2010 short film Meta

Stills from Portobello

2012-01-03T18:05:00.001Z

I've been back in Edinburgh since last month and staying by the sea has given me a few great opportunities to capture some stills. Here are four of my favourites. All have been processed in RAW to recover all available dynamic range and then in photoshop at 16 bit.

'A Stately Suicide' poster

2011-12-24T16:40:00.000Z

And here is the poster for our latest short A Stately Suicide which will also be screening at the Flyboy showcase.

'Feet for Hands' poster

2011-12-24T16:28:00.000Z

Just made this poster for my 2010 short Feet for Hands. It's going to be screening at the Flyboy Films showcase in January!

Falling Out - Trailer

2011-12-14T20:24:00.000Z

I am holding off putting my 2011 short Falling Out online while I submit to festivals but in the mean time I am proud to show off this trailer cut by myself and Rose Hendry.

ADO - The Ultra - OFFICIAL VIDEO

2011-11-14T22:49:00.001Z

I recently AD'd and colour graded the music video The Ultra by Ado for co-directors Ian Forbes and Rose Hendry. It was a great experience and the first time I'd worked 'on set' rather than on location. Big thanks to Tin Roof Arts Collective for letting us use the space as well!!

Falling Out - Looking Back

2011-08-18T23:36:00.006+01:00

Hanna Stanbridge as Carrie

In November I posted a blog entry discussing the development of a script for my short film Falling Out. In it I mention that it was five months prior that I had first introduced the idea to writer Tom K McCarthy, which would make it now 14 months since we began the project!
As the final film is now complete I am taking a moment to trace the project from inception to completion.

As Tom and I began roughing out the story we used a Tumblog to post our thoughts as we worked towards a first draft. It took a further five months to arrive at the shooting script, through multiple iterations we gradually reduced the heavy handed political elements to focus on the claustrophobic interpersonal story that takes place in the bunker.

Anthony Kelly as Rob

Late in 2010 we began pre-production. I began collecting visual reference and created a pitch document and later a small presentation which helped focus my vision for the project and allowed me to communicate it to the actors and crew.

Once producer John Fairfield came on board, we began pre-production. John on I both focused on casting actors, finding crew and finding locations. We used Google Docs to share a production document which helped us stay synchronised between production meetings.

Adam McNamara as Duncan

The first location which we confirmed was Scotland’s Secret Bunker, on our first recce we decided that the alternative entrance would be suitable for our exterior but the interior didn’t meet the needs of the script. The director of photography, Ian Forbes, and I went on a second, technical recce closer to the time of filming to more accurately plan the shoot.

Rec Room Location

After several months trying to get in contact with the Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust John Fairfield managed to get us access to the Craigiebarns bunker. It suited our needs very well and still contains lots of cold war period equipment. This allowed our art director Bryndís Blackadder to build an authentic feel, integrating our plot-vital props naturally in the environment. For the protest scene she also created an IED prop based on this reference.

To allow for creativity on set, we try to plan ahead as much as possible. The call sheet lets the crew and cast know where to be and when and helps John plan for the next move in his role as assistant director. The shot list and blocking help me, Ian and John plan our setups efficiently and avoid becoming confused in the heat of the moment.

Filming at Scotland's Secret Bunker

During pre-production I sourced visual effects reference images to help me create a consistent look to the shots, when Sean Christie offered to lend his motion graphics skills to the project I also put together a collection of reference images to guide his work. I used a spreadsheet in order to keep myself organised while working on multiple itterations of the visual effects shots and dropping them into the edit.

Mixing at James's studio

Yesterday sound designer James Scanlan and I spent 14 hours in his studio mixing the sound for the film. James brought a lot to the project and went beyond the notes I gave him, bringing life and texture to the film.
The score was made by Lewis den Hertog and the end music is a cover of a Billy Brag song performed by Adam Holmes. The recording was made with an old college microphone in a flat in Edinburgh which lends the recording a certain folky quality.

After screening Falling Out at the DJCAD Masters Show 2011 we plan to show it at the DCA as part of a Flyboy Films showcase and submit to film festivals world wide.

Falling Out - VFX Breakdowns

2011-08-18T23:04:00.002+01:00

Some more quick visual effects breakdowns from Falling Out.

Nuclear Explosion - VFX Breakdown

2011-08-15T17:55:00.002+01:00
Here is a VFX breakdown hilighting the main elements that were used to create the nuclear explosion in the opening shot of my upcoming short Falling Out. In addition I created a background plate composed footage of moving cars composited into an HDRI still image. Other work includes plenty of animated colour operations, glows, motion blurs, procedural noise and liberal use of camera shake!

Thanks to Dylan Gauld for his great cgi work in Maya Fluids.

Monsters Under the Bed - VFX Breakdown

2011-08-11T19:08:00.003+01:00
Here is a quick breakdown of the VFX shot that I composited for John Fairfield's film Monsters Under the Bed. You can check out the film on the Virgin Media Shorts website.

Nuclear Explosion

2011-07-29T15:56:00.002+01:00
Dylan Gauld's work on the CGI dynamics for the nuclear explosion from my short Falling Out is coming to a close. I've been experementing with a single frame render that he's given me to see what I need to do to sell the shot. Because we haven't had much time to refine it in Maya I'm doing the colouring in Nuke using an R, G & B ID pass and generally distroying the image as much as possible to hide the seams.
CG ID passes coloured and merged over plate.

Early pass on reducing detail with over exposure effects.

Monsters Under the Bed

2011-07-05T09:38:00.001+01:00
This is John Fairfield's submission to Virgin Media Shorts. Please check it out and 'like' it on Facebook if you find it deserving.

I was assistant director on the shoot and did the colour grade and the monster VFX, concept artist Ross Burt created the monster asset in Photoshop for me to composite and animate in Nuke. The DP was Ian Forbes.

A Stately Suicide - Wrapped

2011-05-08T19:40:00.008+01:00

Last week we wrapped principal photography on a short film I am directing called A Stately Suicide. It was my most enjoyable directing experience so far and I was so grateful to be working with such a talented cast and crew. The cast are;

Melody Grove as Hannah
Kern Falconer as Spencer
Ryan Fletcher as Tony
and
Annie Louise Ross as Nurse

The screenplay was written by Andy Smith, and developed by Andy, Ian Forbes and myself. Stately was written as a dark comedy and I had always intended to keep the performances naturalistic, however I wasn't prepared for the heart-breaking performances that Melody and Kern brought to the piece. This caused us to readdress the tone of some of the scenes, reducing some of the more farcical elements. I hope that this will result in a steady raising of tensions, misleading the audience towards the outrageous climax.
Stately is the second short I have directed along side producer John Fairfield and director of photography Ian Forbes, in between times we have continued to work together, developing as a team. Ian's work on this film has been spectacular and John brought so much to the production both creatively and practically, bringing the whole production in at under £750!

A critical reflection on the filming of Stately written for my MSc course.
Pre-production reference images.
March recce.
Camera blocking plans.
Call sheet.

Kern Falconer as Spencer
Melody Grove as Hannah

360° Panorama

2011-05-07T12:01:00.002+01:00
I recently purchased the 8mm f/3.5 fisheye from Samyang in order to do create 360° panoramic HDRI's for my VFX work and take sweet hip-hop style images;
I don't have a nodal head yet so I've been experimenting with hand held LDR 360° panoramas. So far I've managed to create one of my bedroom using only 5 exposures, 4 portrait exposures tilted down slightly at 90° intervals on the Y axis and a zenith (straight up) exposure. I combined them with the wonderful PTgui which allows you to convert your resulting LatLong image into other fun contortions like so;
Here is a single frame still I took of my producer John Fairfield, doesn't he look cool!?

Falling Out - FX01 Previz

2011-03-31T17:36:00.004+01:00

Previs for the opening shot of my upcoming short Falling Out. Ian Forbes and I shot the plate last week, now I am looking to have concept design work done on it before meeting with some Maya heads to talk about how to proceed.

'Feet for Hands'

2011-03-04T13:17:00.008Z

"Everyday tasks can be a challenge when you have feet for hands, but there are some advantages."

Written by and starring Dean Fairbairn. My undergraduate comedy short from Time Based Art and Digital Film at DJCAD, Dundee.

Credits:

Starring Dean Fairbairn
with Lewis den Hertog and Eric 'Mugsy' Boyd
Director, Matt Cameron
Director of Photography, Ian Forbes
Story, Dean Fairbairn for Madink Publishing
Camera Assistant, Rose Hendry
Gaffer, Robbie Gray
Lighting Assistant, Matthew Reid
Sound, Duncan Craig
Production Design, Katie Mason
Edit & VFX, Matt Cameron

'Feet for Hands' won best comedy at the Screentest festival in London 18th - 20th March.

Please check out the Facebook fan page.

Good news for 'Meta' and 'Feet for Hands'

2011-03-04T11:52:00.002Z

Meta 2010
My undergrad short 'Meta' has been nominated for two awards at the Bafta Scotland New Talent Awards 2011; 'Producer: Short Form' for John Fairfield and 'Technical Achievement' for myself. The awards take place on the 24th of March so I'm keeping my fingers crossed until then.

'Meta' and my other undergrad short 'Feet for Hands' are also to be featured at Screentest Festival in London which takes place 18th - 20th March with 'Feet for Hands' nominated for best comedy!

You can read the Dundee University press article on the nominations here.

Red Camera Workflow at the VERL

2011-01-31T12:36:00.008Z

Last week I gave a short presentation on behalf of the Visual Effects Research Lab to our North Sea Screen partners from Denmark and Norway. As well as offering visual effects we wanted to make clear that we could offer a comprehensive digital post production workflow. This particular Red Camera workflow was designed for artist / photographer Wendy McMurdo, allowing her the ability to request changes and see them made quickly during any part of the production process.

After the original .R3D files were backed up, we captured to 1080p ProRes proxy files in Final Cut Pro for the offline edit. Once the offline was locked, we exported the edit decision list as an .XML and used Clipfinder 2.2 to reconform the edit to the original .R3D footage. At this point we moved platforms, opening the .XML exported from Clipfinder on the Mac in After Effects on Windows. This required a little text editing to change the file path, check here for Gerard Tay's tutorial. Red Cine-X was used to monitor first light grading but these settings had to be manually copied to the .R3D source settings in After Effects because CS4 cannot read the additional metadata files that Cine-X generates.

In After Effects the composition and footage was scaled to 50% for a 2K resolution finish. This allowed for reframing shots and stabilizing without loss of effective resolution. Once visual effects were completed, we rendered to DPX sequences and wrapped them as quicktimes using AJA's DPXtoQTTranslator. These were brought into the Final Cut Pro 2K online edit along with the soundtrack and sent to Apple Color for grading. Once graded the final film was archived to a 2K tiff image sequence.

HDRI light probe environment light test in Nuke

2011-01-18T13:53:00.007Z
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LDR still at eV 0
I shot an oversized christmas bauble from each side of my room using Magic Lantern on my 550d to bracket the exposures at -5, -2.5, 0, +2.5 and +5eV. The large exposure steps did introduce some banding when converted to HDRI. Also, taking the stills with no tripod and not measuring distances resulted in shallow focus and the need to adjust the input rotation in the spherical transform when matching one lightprobe angle to the other in Nuke. I also realise now that if I took the second set of exposures at a 90° angle form the first rather than 180° then I could have removed myself from the final image.

Each set of exposures were then converted to HDRI in Photoshop and saved as a 32bit float exr.

Two light probes converted to a single latlong HDRI

I then converted the light probes to lat long map using Nuke's spherical transform node. Once these were stitched together I exported my final lat long and set up a simple 3D scene using an environment light and a specular shader on the geometry.

3D comp with latlong HDRI driving envoronment light to illuminate geometry

Field of View Calculator

2011-01-05T15:18:00.000Z
This is the best online field of view calculator I have come across yet. It is simple, gives you all the info you need and has all the sensor sizes you are likely to need.
Field of View Comparator from AbelCineTech

Three Pass Keying Tutorial

2010-12-15T19:13:00.619Z

Before and After
After enjoying using KeyLight in Nuke to consolidate an edge matte, a core matte and a garbage matte with one node I decided to see if the same could be done in After Effects. Unsurprisingly it is not quite as simple in AE but after reading the Foundry's user guide and a blog post from Mark Christiansen as well as watching a light wrap video tutorial by Jerzy Drozda Jr, I have found a workflow which meets my needs.

The footage I am using was captured directly from the EX1 to ProRes4444 using an AJA break out box for Rachel McLean's Scottish Arts Council project. I now realise that 422 chroma sampling is all we were getting out of the camera but I'm sticking with 444 to avoid a rerender.

After Effects Flow Chart

This tutorial covers the whole three-pass keying process but doesn't discuss the principals of keying or KeyLight in any depth. For a KeyLight tutorial, check out Andrew Kramer's video here. A still frame of the footage is available here for anyone wishing to follow along.

Core Matte: The core matte is used to make sure there is no transparency in the core of the element.

Pull the footage into a new composition and apply KeyLight. In KeyLight sample the 'Screen Colour' from your footage and use the Screen Matte controls to create an eroded matte while in the Screen Matte view. Make sure that the core matte does not extend to the edges of the element and that the background has a consistent value of 0 and the foreground has a consistent 100% white value (I later increased 'Screen Softness' to a value of 6 to allow for better blending with the edge matte). Finally set the view to Intermediate Result to allow the core matte to be passed through to the edge matte.

Generate Core Matte
Set Core Matte to Intermediate Result

Edge Matte: The edge matte is used to create a fine detail edge for the element which retains transparency.

Create another instance of KeyLight on the same footage, then go to Inside Mask and select 'Add to Inside Mask' under 'Replace Method'. This adds the core matte to the edge matte. Then choose the same 'Screen Colour' as for the core matte and use the Screen Matte controls to create a fine detail edge matte without pushing the 'Clip Black' and 'Clip White' values too hard. Some transparency values in the foreground an opacity values in the background are acceptable in this pass. Finally set the view to Final Result.

Set Core Matte as Inside Mask of Edge Matte

Garbage Matte: The garbage matte is used to remove unwanted elements such as lights from the shot as well as avoiding the need for aggressive keying in the fine detail passes.

Pull another instance of the footage into the composition above the first instance and apply KeyLight. Create a matte similar to the core matte by using the 'Clip Black' and 'Clip White' values aggressively but this time grow the matte beyond the edges of the element. Now draw a rough mask round the footage to exclude any unwanted elements and animate if required. Finally set the view to final result and change the blending mode to 'Stencil Alpha'.

Create Garbage Matte

Set Blending Mode to Stencil Alpha

Spot Fix: Often pulling a matte from an unevenly lit greenscreen needs to be done in multiple passes to avoid resorting to an overly aggressive edge matte. In this case the area at the elements head was significantly darker, requiring a spot fix.

First create a new composition with another instance of the footage. Next add an adjustment layer and mask the area of the fix, next add a Color Key effect to the adjustment layer and sample the key colour of the offending area. When refining the key, make sure not to remove any of the edge detail of the element. Finally pull the spot fix comp into the original comp and apply a 'Stencil Alpha' blend mode above the keyed footage.

Spot Fix in New Composition

Set Blending Mode to Stencil Alpha

Matte Footage: KeyLight is a terrific keyer but it applies operations to the RGB values of the footage as well as creating an alpha. Although these operations can help compositing it is often preferable to apply things such as despill and light wrap separately. To avoid any unintentional RGB operations the keyed footage can be used to matte another instance of the footage.

Create a new composition and pull in the original keyed element composition. To reduce fringing add a 'Minimax' effect, set the operation to Minimum, Radius to 1 and Channel to Alpha. Pull in another instance of the footage an place it below the keyed element composition. Then set the 'TrkMat' (track matte) mode of the footage to Alpha Matte.

Apply Minimax to Keyed Element

Matte Footage with Keyed Element's Alpha

Background: The generic background for this example was generated with a radial 'Ramp' effect applied to a background. This must be placed in it's own composition for the light wrap effect to recognise the ramp.

Radial Ramp Background Composition

Composite: Once the element is successfully matted, operations must be made to the RGB of the element to match it to the background. If premultiplication artifacts such as black haloing occur, the RGB operations should be applied to the footage before it is matted.
Place the matted element composition over the background composition, then apply a Spill Suppress effect setting the screen colour as the colour to suppress. Next apply a Levels effect to match the Input Black, White and Gamma to the background. If possible use the RGB read out in the info panel to accurately match elements, in this cases such as this it must be done by eye.

Composite Matted Element over Background

Suppress Colour Spill and Match Luminance

Light Wrap: Light wrap is required in most cases to simulate the light from the background hitting the edges of the element. This recipe was taken from Jerzy Drozda Jr's video tutorial.

Add another instance of the matted element composition over the original. Apply a 'Set Channels' effect and set the source RGB values to the background composition. Apply a 'Channel Blur', blur the RGB channels by 10 and blur the alpha channel by around 200. Invert the alpha channel by applying a 'Levels' effect and swapping the 'Output Black' and 'Output White' values. Matte the result with the original alpha by applying 'CC Composite' and setting 'Composite Original' to Stencil Alpha. Next duplicate the light wrap composition and change the Alpha Blurriness to a value of about 30 for a sharper light wrap. Finally set the blend modes of the light wrap compositions to Add and reduce the opacity to taste.

Add Soft Light Wrap

Add Sharp Light Wrap

Match Grain: The final step in matching the elements of the composition is matching the grain.

Add another instance of the footage below all the compositions then apply the 'Match Grain' effect to the background, set the 'Viewing Mode' to Final Output and the 'Noise Source Layer' to the footage layer below.

Match Grain

Final Result

'A Stately Suicide' a short film in development.

2010-12-08T13:29:00.038Z

In late September director of photography, Ian Forbes and his writing partner, Andy Smith came to me for advice on a screenplay they had been working on. I liked the tone of the story immediately but it was clear to us all that it still needed some work. I came on board to advise at version three of the screenplay and was asked to direct shortly after that. We have since been through four iterations and made some drastic changes to the events of the story.

Synopsis:
The volatile Lord Spencer must be kept under heavy sedation if he is to be placed in a nursing home without a fight. When Hannah, his private nurse takes all of Spencer's medication, she must enlist Tony, a small-town waster to find street drugs to replace the prescription.

Hospitalfield house, the primary location for the film

The first pass that I worked on was simply a case of stripping away all the interior monologue and description to reveal the story which would actually appear on screen. Andy has a background in prose and had to learn to focus cleanly on action and dialogue to efficiently address our notes.

The next pass addressed the logic holes in the script which were one of the chief criticisms from my MSc supervisor Peter Richardson. Some of the notes I wrote for this pass:

Problem: Tatiana choosing to assist Spencer's suicide.
What is Tatiana's dilemma?
What is in it for Tatiana? (no incentive/no bond with Spencer/why should she care?)
Why hasn't Spencer managed to commit suicide himself? (he is strong enough/his motive may be too weak)
Why should it by a street drugs overdose rather than paracetamol for example?
Why would Edward (Spencer's son) treat him so carelessly?
What benefit is there to Tatiana being an immigrant?
We considered various incentives for Tatiana to assist Spencer in his suicide but all seemed inefficient for such a short film. We realised that Hannah (formerly Tatiana) would only cause this outcome unintentionally.

The reworking of the story required these plot points:
Spencer is to be relocated to a nursing home the following day.
Spencer must be heavily medicated for the move as he is prone to outbursts.
Hannah has a dependency on Spencer's medication.
Hannah runs out of Spencer's medication.
Hannah must enlist Tony to get street drugs to replace the missing medication.
Tony brings inappropriate drugs but Hannah is desperate enough to give them to Spencer.
Spencer dies of an overdose.
Tony steals one of Spencer's prized belongings and Spencer comes back to life, shoots Tony in the back and dies again.
The nursing home nurse witnesses the murder, Hannah is the only living suspect.
This reworking can be found in screenplay version 4.1. This version still has two unaddressed issues, firstly Hannah isn't a fully realised character;

We know that she has to be under pressure, living on the breadline, to resort to using Spencer's medication as a crutch. It is a matter of showing that in her personality without signposting it or wasting pages on it. She also doesn't have a defined voice (this needs to be addressed soon otherwise we will have little chance of attracting real acting talent), we need to find her natural every day working class voice as well as the voice she uses when trying to impress people in a position of power such as the nursing home nurse.

The second issue is how suddenly Hannah runs out of medication;

This currently reads as too obvious and I think needs some misdirection at the beginning of the scene to stop the audience finding it too predictable. Unfortunately it IS the inciting incident and as such needs to happen very early on in the film (short films often begin with their inciting incident).

These issues will be dealt with by the new year to allow us to begin pre-production for our April shoot.

Burning Building Projection Test

2010-12-07T15:05:00.010Z

This video shows the current state of my work on Colin Andrews' film for the Scottish Arts Council which is being produced at the Visual Effects Research Laboratory in association with North Sea Screen Partners.

I rendered this long sequence in Nuke to give me a chance to make notes on all the things which need to be fixed before I can begin moving toward a believable comp. One of the most obvious problems is the fact that there is no geometry to catch the projection of the smoke and flame which extend beyond the house. After fixing alignment issues and patching missing detail on the house before the burn, it will be the extra smoke and flame catching geometry that I move on to. Making a rough comp with all the projections roughly in place should give me a better idea of what I can get away with and which areas will need the most detailed work.
Dylan Gauld, a 3D artist on the MSc course, is working on a more detailed pass on the house geometry based on the witness cameras and location measurements. Once this is completed he will begin with basic deformations of the model, for this I will supply him with key frames from the live action plates. This will allow me to tweak the timing of the deformation in Nuke as the inbetweens will not be baked out to the animation. It would be inefficient to ask Dylan to model the skeleton and high detail degradation of the house so any holes in the geometry will have to be rotomasked. I plan to animate the smoke and flame catching geometry in Nuke with polygon primitives.

A pan and tile set from the location converted to a single latlong image.

The OpenGL view from the render camera showing the 3D geometry and projections which include four perspective projections of the burning house footage and a spherical projection of the latlong still.

The projection setup in 3D space, with and without the background geometry.

The Nuke node tree has two scanline renders of the 3D scene, one for the house and one for the background. Additional elements will continue to be merged this way to allow for flexibility in compositing.

Non-player Character test for 'In-World War'

2010-12-03T11:21:00.007Z
I was approached by Graeme Turnbull of the Mill a few months ago to do some visual effects work on a film he is involved with called In-World War. One of the problems was to create NPC's that had their faces pixelated in world space rather than on the cinema screen. I struck upon the idea of mapping the pixelation onto their faces in 3D but it wasn't until I saw this interview with Digital Domain artist Justin van der Lek on fxguidetv that I realised how it could be done.

As a 2D artist, the toughest part for me is to get a good animated match of the head in 3D space. For this example I just downloaded a free head from Turbosquid. I had overlapping UV problems at first so my brute force approach was to get rid of the eyes which cleared up my UVs but created the eye artifacts in this example.
Once I had projected the frame onto the geometry, I used the Scanline renderer in UV mode to do the processing in 2D. I then reformated the UVs to a fraction of their original scale, threw in a write node so Nuke wouldn't recover the pixel information, reformated back to the original scale and used another write node so Nuke would no not to filter when remapping, thus loosing all the hard edges. The result needed a little extra degredation so I threw in a dither filter to introduce some noise. To give a resolution dropping, struggling processor kind of look I keyframed the first reformat nodes scaling in the curve editor, if we use this in production I will write an expression to do that (not my strong point).
At one point in the film, the character Randy reveals herself to be using the NPC look as a disgise and switches it off on screen. Because the effect is dynamically linked, it can be turned off gradually by increasing the resolution of the first reformat node to the original scale. This should tell that story point well without destracting from Randy's actions.