Frakking Incredible VFX Breakdown "Battlestar Galactica" Reboot
182.5K views · Published November 12, 2021 · 7:02
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With rumors of a new Battlestar Galactica film and possibly a series coming out, we decided to take a look at the 2004 reboot and try to understand why it did so well and how it might be a hard act to follow.
It's hard to shine when you're in the shadow of the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek.
It's hard to create decent VFX for a TV series that is as tight on budget as it is on time, and it's hard to be good when you're a reboot of a series that was so iconic! Even if it was, to put it nicely, a little bit cheesy. Incredibly, the 2004 Battlestar Galactica managed all of these things, and the way it managed to do all this, was pretty fraking incredible too!
Previsualization.
Even though the series was a reboot, the director and producers didn't want to completely redo everything but they wanted to make it darker and more complex, they weren't trying to make the reboot superior to its predecessor but attempting to correct the errors that were made in the original and overcome some of the hurdles that hindered them, one of these hurdles were the VFX.
The original series had a surprising amount of VFX shots for its time, in fact, it had almost as many as the reboot but as happens more often than not with a lot of VFX action shots, they were disjointed, first, there would be a shot where a VFX event happens, then a shot of the actors responding, then back to a VFX shot, very clipped and unintegrated.
If the editor wanted the VFX shot to be longer to build tension or for better flow or for whatever reason they had to do it with the VFX shots they had, reusing the same shot, repositioning, reversing, or flipping the shot to make the scene longer.
For the reboot, the VFX team came up with a method that allowed the Director and the Editor to actually design the VFX sequences before they filmed the principal photography.
To achieve this they had a full-time programmer previsualizing the battle scenes, the director and editor could then adjust the sequence as they felt fit so by the time they came to shoot the actors in their cockpits, the editor had a full 3D low resolution render of the VFX sequence.
The actors could watch this sequence and know exactly what was about to happen, they could fully understand everything that was going on in the scene and exactly how long it was going to last, this meant they could react more naturally to what they were seeing and therefore the VFX sequence sits perfectly within the scene.
Principal Photography.
TV shows are generally done on very tight budgets, time and money tend to be short and so in order to get decent VFX on a TV show with a time limit and without breaking the bank, things needed to be streamlined, one of the ways they did this on Battlestar Galactica was to greatly reduce time spent on match moving.
Match moving is used to track the movement of the camera shooting the live-action plates so that a virtual camera can reproduce the exact same movement in our 3D environment, doing this ensures the when we composite our 3D animated elements to the live-action plate, the motion and perspective of the shots will be exactly the same.
Instead of using tracking markers or manually tracking, they used an automated motion tracker that could read the film footage and work out the 3D space it originally portrayed, it could then supply enough data so a 3D CG model could be integrated seamlessly into the shot. Using this method also made it easier for the VFX to be consistent with the show's "documentary style" of camera movement.
PostProduction.
During postproduction, the director sat down with the animators and, in the same way, he did on set, directed the action on the VFX sequence, the editor also sat with the VFX team to fine-tune the cuts and make things smoother, by doing this they removed all the guesswork, the director got the exact look he wanted, the editor got the exact feel and timing that he wanted.
This communication and flexibility between departments led to Battlestar Galactica having Visual FX that was leagues ahead of any other TV series of its time...
Please give us a like if you enjoyed this video, don't forget the links to the music in this video are in the video description and be sure to let us know, in the comments, which movie VFX you'd like to see behind next!
This video was sponsored by Skillshare.
Read more here: www.famefocus.com
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/focusfame
Get some cool drag & drop VFX here! ? https://www.famefocus.com/go/getvfx/ ?
Like the music in this video? I made it!
Support me by getting it on any of these sites :P
Get it on iTunes: ► https://apple.co/2ENGfu9 ◄
Listen on Spotify: ► https://spoti.fi/3boTfCl ◄
Buy it on Amazon: ► https://amzn.to/2QVJZfk ◄
With rumors of a new Battlestar Galactica film and possibly a series coming out, we decided to take a look at the 2004 reboot and try to understand why it did so well and how it might be a hard act to follow.
It's hard to shine when you're in the shadow of the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek.
It's hard to create decent VFX for a TV series that is as tight on budget as it is on time, and it's hard to be good when you're a reboot of a series that was so iconic! Even if it was, to put it nicely, a little bit cheesy. Incredibly, the 2004 Battlestar Galactica managed all of these things, and the way it managed to do all this, was pretty fraking incredible too!
Previsualization.
Even though the series was a reboot, the director and producers didn't want to completely redo everything but they wanted to make it darker and more complex, they weren't trying to make the reboot superior to its predecessor but attempting to correct the errors that were made in the original and overcome some of the hurdles that hindered them, one of these hurdles were the VFX.
The original series had a surprising amount of VFX shots for its time, in fact, it had almost as many as the reboot but as happens more often than not with a lot of VFX action shots, they were disjointed, first, there would be a shot where a VFX event happens, then a shot of the actors responding, then back to a VFX shot, very clipped and unintegrated.
If the editor wanted the VFX shot to be longer to build tension or for better flow or for whatever reason they had to do it with the VFX shots they had, reusing the same shot, repositioning, reversing, or flipping the shot to make the scene longer.
For the reboot, the VFX team came up with a method that allowed the Director and the Editor to actually design the VFX sequences before they filmed the principal photography.
To achieve this they had a full-time programmer previsualizing the battle scenes, the director and editor could then adjust the sequence as they felt fit so by the time they came to shoot the actors in their cockpits, the editor had a full 3D low resolution render of the VFX sequence.
The actors could watch this sequence and know exactly what was about to happen, they could fully understand everything that was going on in the scene and exactly how long it was going to last, this meant they could react more naturally to what they were seeing and therefore the VFX sequence sits perfectly within the scene.
Principal Photography.
TV shows are generally done on very tight budgets, time and money tend to be short and so in order to get decent VFX on a TV show with a time limit and without breaking the bank, things needed to be streamlined, one of the ways they did this on Battlestar Galactica was to greatly reduce time spent on match moving.
Match moving is used to track the movement of the camera shooting the live-action plates so that a virtual camera can reproduce the exact same movement in our 3D environment, doing this ensures the when we composite our 3D animated elements to the live-action plate, the motion and perspective of the shots will be exactly the same.
Instead of using tracking markers or manually tracking, they used an automated motion tracker that could read the film footage and work out the 3D space it originally portrayed, it could then supply enough data so a 3D CG model could be integrated seamlessly into the shot. Using this method also made it easier for the VFX to be consistent with the show's "documentary style" of camera movement.
PostProduction.
During postproduction, the director sat down with the animators and, in the same way, he did on set, directed the action on the VFX sequence, the editor also sat with the VFX team to fine-tune the cuts and make things smoother, by doing this they removed all the guesswork, the director got the exact look he wanted, the editor got the exact feel and timing that he wanted.
This communication and flexibility between departments led to Battlestar Galactica having Visual FX that was leagues ahead of any other TV series of its time...
Please give us a like if you enjoyed this video, don't forget the links to the music in this video are in the video description and be sure to let us know, in the comments, which movie VFX you'd like to see behind next!
This video was sponsored by Skillshare.
Read more here: www.famefocus.com
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/focusfame