Tangle 1 cast photography
My client approached me with what seemed like a mammoth task - to build a hedge maze from scratch, and shoot an entire cast of a television drama within it.
My solution incorporated the aspects of all 3 considered approaches, plus the use of 3D modelling. The end result surpassed client expectations. We finished hours ahead of schedule on the day of the shoot - all involved were very relaxed.
Also, the actors needed to be separate from the background, so they could be easily moved for different formats.
On top of that, they required various separate portrait set ups of all of the cast members.
My client had considered 3 approaches.
• Shoot at a real maze on location. There was a maze in Tasmania that could of worked with a lot of Photoshop manipulation. The travel costs for the cast and crew, shooting schedules, and allowances for weather made this impossibly expensive.
• Build the maze in studio. This was still prohibitively expensive, and there was legitimate concerns that he foliage would look plastic.
• Create the maze in Photoshop from stock and reference shots, and combine with separate shots of talent. The variety of angles and the specific light of the scene meant that it wasn't going to generate a result that would meet the client's expectations. Also, there were legitimate concerns that it would be difficult to match the angles of talent if they were simply shot and deep etched.
My solution incorporated the aspects of all 3 considered approaches, plus the use of 3D modelling. The end result surpassed client expectations. We finished hours ahead of schedule on the day of the shoot - all involved were very relaxed.
The original layout from client. The character positions were to change, but the basic shape of the maze remained the same to completion.
From the visual, I created a 3D wireframe, and placed revised character sketches in position.
The next step was to check angle lighting and scale by getting a model in the studio for a test.
Once I was happy with the scale and angle of the maze, I began working on the vine foliage using a vine generator. I used real photography of the leaves to get as realistic a result as possible. We ended up making the walls of the maze thinner to show more of the characters.
I then created a sectional test with my test model to indicate the final result. By the time it came to the day of the shoot, I was able to show the actors a near complete maze, which help immensely for them to visualise the end result, and to get them enthusiastic about the image.
We spent the day before the shoot pre-lighting the scene, and transferring the maze layout on to the studio floor. It was important that we got positions right, particularly as we were to be staggering the shooting of talent. I used large flexible softboxes wrapped in chromakey fabric, that the actors could interact with, to simulate maze wall position when needed.
On the day, we shot talent in the maze scene scenario separately. Once the maze scene was shot, I did some quick gallery type shots. Approaching the job this way meant that some of the talent were done on set in minutes. We finished several hours ahead and everyone was genuinely surprised.
After the shoot was complete, I focused on fine tuning the maze. Here it is in final form without actors, atmospherics and grading.
And the final result. Actually, most of the atmospherics ended up being removed, but this is how I originally envisioned the maze looking.
