The Tomorrow War
Luma, Melbourne | Lighting
A good portion of early 2021 was largely spent on this Amazon Studios film, primarily on the apocolyptic Miami intro sequence and subsequent underpass showdown with the alien 'white spikes'. As it took quite sometime to get consenus on exact time of day and available light - in a rainstorm.., at dusk.., with smoke everywhere.., we churned through quite a lot of iterations until we hit the sweet spot that made the client happy. Lighting and rendering wise I was responsible for the main Chris Pratt full CG falling sequence into the pool and numerous city on fire background setups after they regroup on the pool deck. Lighters were responsible for shader look dev'ng all fire, smoke, cloud, and sheeting rain effects, in addition to adjusting placements of fx smoke/fire volumes for better read, composition, etc. I provided tidy but elaborate precomps to make sense of all the layers going in and adjustments needed, while addressing comper concerns and feedback for better elements.
For the underpass sequence I handled the hero 'white spike' attack shots with the largest challenge probably being the live action standing water they were running through, particluarly manipulating various refraction/specular settings for feet under water versus medium and fine mist splashing in the air and integrating it all together cohesively. Also the white spikes themselves had a semi translucent skin which made them susceptible to flattening out so extra care was given to always try and provide local light from fires, muzzle flashes, or other plausible light sources when possible to help define their volumes better in all this chaos.
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