Pipe Up Case Study

Client: Alan Powdrill

  |   Photographer: Alan Powdrill

  |   Retouching & Animation: The Operators

Discipline: Photography, Retouching, Live Action, Animation and Compositing

Brief:

Photographer Alan Powdrill collaborated with The Operators on a personal project. Working together to concept and evolve the idea of static print images into a more stimulating fluidic piece that could be used cross platform. Adding a new complementing medium to the photographers work.

Our Role:

Working with a combination of still images and motion clips. The Operators helped conceive the idea from still to motion with this IMAGEmotion piece. Advising on process through to the creation with a dedicated lead VFX supervisor.

Our role was to collated the images in retouching through to the moving piece, which meant handling the job with a specific artistic direction and pipeline, making sure both bodies of work from still image to motion were seamless in appeal and colour grade.

Production / Solution:

To make sure the photography was transferable from the static realm into the moving. The files had to be undertaken with our own custom pipeline that allows for a seamless uniform look from quality too colour stylisation.

Taking the original photography of the women smoking pipes The Operators began masking the women out, compiling each shot into individual ornate frames. These were then taken and bedded into the background base plate including other stylistic components of the sofa and plant. These were all considered at the retouching stage to allow for the correct camera parallaxes to take place when taken into the moving realm. When the retouching had taken place, the colour stylisation was finessed for adaptability into the moving environment.

The Operators then took the finessed finalised image into the moving realm. Extracting smoke material the was shot and compositing it into each pipe added the dynamics from still to motion. Not stoping there we allowed for slight movement of the models within the frame. Each component adding to realism within the IMAGEmotion piece. Overall the still was composed and edited to a specific music track with quirky facial movement added in post.

Result:

The piece has resulted in a fantastic exploration of photography. Proving that the technological advancements of equipment and variable platform deliverables are transgressing together. This has given birth to video and high-end retouching combined with photography to create IMAGEmotion. A multiple disciplined form that can take still images to a new level.

Feedback:

‘Like every man and his dog, well every photographer and his dog, the moving image has become an important issue in the battle for work. I shot PIPE UP as a personal labour of love and then had the idea of adding something different to help promote it. I called up THE OPERATORS and a week later they produced a stonking 1 minute movie, animated thingy that looks amazing. Their creativity and easy going approach is so refreshing it hurts….in a nice way!’

Alan Powdrill – Photographer

View Commission >>

Pre-Production / Supplied Material

Pre-Production / Retouch Supplied

Production / Final Retouch For Animation

Production / Smoke Live Action