Frankenstein,
ITV1 Wednesday 24th October 2007 9.00pm

Gold World Medal - New York Festivals 2009
RTS Nomination - Best Digital Effects 2008

Writer, Director Jed Mercurio (“Bodies”, “Cardiac Arrest”) adapted Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for this modern day, star cast version of the classic novel for ITV1. Produced by Hugh Warren for Impossible Pictures over 90 shots were created by the team at Jellyfish Pictures.

Frankenstein has been done many times before. The challenge for Jellyfish Pictures was to work with the design of a new Frankenstein for the 21st century. The monster needed to be totally convincing, the photo realism of the head needed to match from live action/prosthetic to cgi. Some of the shots were extremely close up and the level of detail and skin movement needed to be totally convincing. In close ups the head was totally replaced and then there were more than 50 shots where the prosthetic head needed to be brought to life and enhanced for dramatic effect. This was achieved in compositing using various warp and repaint techniques. Due to the nature of the monster’s design this also included a large amount of clean up and background restoration. While consistancy was the key, the monster close up needed to look arresting, half child, half monster with a resemblance to the child of Dr Frankenstein in the story. This was a huge challenge given the time and budget. With a challenging schedule and budget the Jellyfish team came up with new techniques to convincingly portray the monster on television.

The techniques used involved: Developing a facial animation system in house that gave the creature expression not possible using a prosthetic; HDRI images were taken on location and then used to light the model; up to 25 layers were generated from skin tone to wet reflection to create the required look in the composite; a combination of Softimage XSI and in-house tools were used for the 3D; and a library of expressions were built up based on reference footage of actor Julian Bleach playing the monster.

The Jellyfish Pictures team:
VFX Director: William Rockall
VFX Producer: Stefano Salvini
VFX Supervisor: Didier Muanza

3D Department
Matt Chandler, Christian Cheshire, Cesar Eiji Nunes, PierreYves Girard, Sam Howell, Marion Nove Josserand, Antonio Mossucca, Didier Muanza, Gemma Thomson,

2D Department
Arthur Broome, Adam Gefen, Richard Frazer, Dom Halford, Sam Meisels, Ben Perrott, John Slattery, Fabio Zaveti