The Last Kingdom 3 (2018)
March 17, 2019
Description
After working as an artist on the first 2 series, BlueBolt asked me to step up to supervise series 3 (taking over from Stuart Bullen).
Filmed in Hungary over 8 months in 2017/2018, and then completing post production in late 2018, BlueBolt created 634 VFX shots to be used across the 10 episodes.
Because the on set supervision requirements were almost daily, BlueBolt moved Matt Badham out to Budapest to oversee the shooting side of things, allowing me to concentrate on managing the team of artists back in London. The fact that we shot over the bleak Hungarian winter added a great look to the show, but I was thankful that I only had to be out there a few times braving the cold.
The move to Netflix meant that the ambition of this series increased, as well as the amount of blood and gore on the screen! There were 3 set-piece battles that take place over 4 episodes, so we spent a lot of time developing CG assets for Dane, Mercian and Saxon warriors as well as their horses.
Environmental work was key to help recreate the world of The Last Kingdom. In this series, the various Dane and Saxon armies frequently move around the country in vast military camps. BlueBolt helped extend these camps in scale and size.
Crowd replication was also an integral part of the expansion of The Last Kingdom world. This is especially evident in the large battle at the end of episode 1. We produced a detailed plan of the battlefield, with breakdowns of each manoeuvre of the opposing armies and key camera angles. We shot our main plates over several days using the hundreds of extras available and also shot a huge library of Dane, Mercian and Saxon warriors against blue screen.
We then incorporated CG assets with the elements and filmed plates to achieve the vast scale of the thousands of warriors needed.
In all it was fantastic immersing myself in this project for the best part of a year, with the completed series getting a lot of critical praise. All credit goes to the talented team of artists that I lead.
You can click here or on any of the images to see BlueBolt’s VFX breakdown video for the show.
Tags: VFX Supervisor
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