Double Negative Captures Lonely London for Bridget Jones Sequel
London-based vfx house, Double Negative, developed a series of CG shots for BRIDGET JONES: THE END OF REASON, opening Nov. 12, 2004, including one of the film’s pivotal sequences: “The Lonely People.” Alex Hope, co-founder, Double Negative, said: “For both of these shots, the brief was to very subtly push the limits of realism to create an effect that bordered upon fantasy.”
THE EDGE OF REASON picks up a few weeks after the first film left off - Bridget is happily hooked up with the honorable Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), having seen off the dastardly Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Sadly, Bridget manages to complicate this idyllic set-up, with her usual gift for saying completely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time, and Cleaver is back to continue his heartbreaking ways.
Despite having three people wrangling for her attention, Bridget appears to be innately unlucky in love, and this shot finds her home alone in South London, gazing wistfully out of her window. Director Beeban Kidron believed with this “Lonely People” sequence she had an opportunity to show London in all of its romanticism and glamour, as directors have often treated New York in the past. At the same time she wished to emphasize the loneliness of Mark and Bridget by juxtaposing it with views of hundreds of happy couples across London. She conceived a shot, which pulls back from Bridget, passing windows full of happy couples - giving a sense that every twinkling light on the London skyline contains a scene of marital, or familial happiness. The camera would then jib down to find Mark Darcy walking unhappy and alone near his house.
The shot was storyboarded initially, then Double Negative started pre-visualizing the shot with 3D mock-ups, showing how it might work in practice. Hope commented: “Though the end result had to have a touch of fantasy, we felt that in order to sit within a non-effects film it was important that we strived for realism as much as possible.” Double Negative thought that previous realizations of London skylines in miniature and matte painting tended to oversimplify the layout of the city.
Instead, Double Negative took 1:5000 scale maps of different areas of London as the basis for the shot. These were selected to cover different periods of London’s building architecture, from the great fire of 1666, through Queen Anne, Georgian and Edwardian styles. Hope added, “By blending these footprints together we aimed to create a layout representative of the cramped, haphazard London skyline that we see today.”
Double Negative then photographed hundreds of houses around London to present to Kidron and production designer Gemma Jackson. They selected their preferred architectural styles and low-resolution models with simple photographic texture projections were built. These models were laid in terraces on the street plan and broken up into blocks that could then be dressed to camera.
Kidron was keen that the shot should not just be about rooftops and the audience should see plenty of facades as well. Therefore, the Double Negative team cheated the topography of London slightly to create a valley of houses sweeping away from camera and topped by the bright lights of the city center. Once the layout had been established, Double Negative set about shooting the live action elements to include in the windows:
The shot begins as a pull back from Bridget in her window revealing the pub beneath her flat. Expense and restrictions at the location did not allow Double Negative to use a crane to film the exterior of the pub, so this was shot as a tiled photographic “plate” from a nearby window.
The tiled plate was projected onto a CG Model of the pub and surrounding area. Kidron’s preferred camera move was ported into a motion control camera so that Bridget could be shot separately in her room.
In this scene, Mark is seen to be walking in the park, reflecting on a row with Bridget, and feeling equally forlorn. This shot was filmed from a crane, which pans down to Mark walking in a churchyard. After filming had completed, Kidron thought the Churchyard setting did not quite work, so Double Negative replaced the entire backdrop with a digital representation of a London square, complete with London black cab.
THE EDGE OF REASON picks up a few weeks after the first film left off - Bridget is happily hooked up with the honorable Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), having seen off the dastardly Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Sadly, Bridget manages to complicate this idyllic set-up, with her usual gift for saying completely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time, and Cleaver is back to continue his heartbreaking ways.
Despite having three people wrangling for her attention, Bridget appears to be innately unlucky in love, and this shot finds her home alone in South London, gazing wistfully out of her window. Director Beeban Kidron believed with this “Lonely People” sequence she had an opportunity to show London in all of its romanticism and glamour, as directors have often treated New York in the past. At the same time she wished to emphasize the loneliness of Mark and Bridget by juxtaposing it with views of hundreds of happy couples across London. She conceived a shot, which pulls back from Bridget, passing windows full of happy couples - giving a sense that every twinkling light on the London skyline contains a scene of marital, or familial happiness. The camera would then jib down to find Mark Darcy walking unhappy and alone near his house.
The shot was storyboarded initially, then Double Negative started pre-visualizing the shot with 3D mock-ups, showing how it might work in practice. Hope commented: “Though the end result had to have a touch of fantasy, we felt that in order to sit within a non-effects film it was important that we strived for realism as much as possible.” Double Negative thought that previous realizations of London skylines in miniature and matte painting tended to oversimplify the layout of the city.
Instead, Double Negative took 1:5000 scale maps of different areas of London as the basis for the shot. These were selected to cover different periods of London’s building architecture, from the great fire of 1666, through Queen Anne, Georgian and Edwardian styles. Hope added, “By blending these footprints together we aimed to create a layout representative of the cramped, haphazard London skyline that we see today.”
Double Negative then photographed hundreds of houses around London to present to Kidron and production designer Gemma Jackson. They selected their preferred architectural styles and low-resolution models with simple photographic texture projections were built. These models were laid in terraces on the street plan and broken up into blocks that could then be dressed to camera.
Kidron was keen that the shot should not just be about rooftops and the audience should see plenty of facades as well. Therefore, the Double Negative team cheated the topography of London slightly to create a valley of houses sweeping away from camera and topped by the bright lights of the city center. Once the layout had been established, Double Negative set about shooting the live action elements to include in the windows:
The shot begins as a pull back from Bridget in her window revealing the pub beneath her flat. Expense and restrictions at the location did not allow Double Negative to use a crane to film the exterior of the pub, so this was shot as a tiled photographic “plate” from a nearby window.
The tiled plate was projected onto a CG Model of the pub and surrounding area. Kidron’s preferred camera move was ported into a motion control camera so that Bridget could be shot separately in her room.
In this scene, Mark is seen to be walking in the park, reflecting on a row with Bridget, and feeling equally forlorn. This shot was filmed from a crane, which pans down to Mark walking in a churchyard. After filming had completed, Kidron thought the Churchyard setting did not quite work, so Double Negative replaced the entire backdrop with a digital representation of a London square, complete with London black cab.
Printer-friendly version
Post new comment