War and Peace (2016)

Description

 

 

A six hour BBC mini-series with a £10 million budget and all star cast – this show was a visual pleasure to work on.
BlueBolt provided visual effects, including the vast CG armies that fought during the “War” part of the show.
My main contribution was a POV shot as Pierre Bezukhov looks down on the battlefield for the first time. This is a key moment in the novel, as he has a romantic notion of the idea of war and so sees beauty in the vista before him. I was given two pages of the novel describing this moment to inspire the look that was to be achieved. The panning shot had tens of thousands of CG troops engaged in battle, with layer upon layer of smoke.
“…clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the whole expanse. These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle. “Puff!” suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging from violet into grey and milky white”
A full breakdown of the work can be seen on the BlueBolt website or by clicking either of the images on the right (my shot described above is at 00:56).

Tags: Compositing