Sweden’s VFX studio Fido created retro-style looks and 400 effects
shots for comic thriller ‘Kung Fury’, working with Autodesk 3D software
and their in-house production tracking tool, ftrack.
Fido Packs High Action VFX for ‘Kung Fury’ with Autodesk and ftrack |
Following a successful Cannes Film Festival premiere, the short film comedy‘Kung Fury’, inspired by 1980s action thrillers, recently made its debut online. The 30-minute film follows a kung fu-fighting cop from Miami as he time-travels from the ‘80s to the 1940s on a mission to take out Adolf Hitler – an unmissable storyline augmented by hundreds of frenetic VFX shots. Watch the film,here. |
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Singular VisionDavid Sandberg, after directing many music videos and commercials over the years, was able to shoot the scenes for the initial trailer and produce the effects himself. Aware that the out-dated look for the film – sending up 1980s video and filmmaking techniques and fashion – had attracted many of his backers to the project, he was keen for Fido to recreate this style faithfully. Their team got started on ‘Kung Fury’ shortly after the crowdfunding effort had concluded in early 2014 and worked through a seven-month post production period, completing the project in April 2015. |
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Both David and Fido’s 46-person team of artists created the assets withAutodesk3ds Max, MayaandMudbox. The ‘Kung Fury’ story unfolds in three major environments – an inner-city street intersection, a police station interior and a huge steampunk-style Nazi hall. Fido created each environment digitally and then integrated the work with live action green screen footage of actors. Given the trailer assets David had originally designed in 3ds Max, Fido transferred the files to their Maya workstations using Maya’s Alembic support. |
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In the Studio with FidoDuring post-production, David and the team from his company Laser Unicorns moved into Fido’s studio to help guide the project. This arrangement helped them work very closely with David, for example, when finding the proper 'VHS-style colour aberration’ look he envisioned for the film. Having him in-house also made sure that time wasn’t wasted on waiting for feedback, which helped the production stay on schedule. |
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Fido’s team are the developers offtrackvisual effects production tracking software, and therefore know how to take advantage of it. ftrack started life at the studio in 2008 as an internal production tool, eventually evolving into the commercial product now available for sale to other studios. |
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Top-Down and Close-UpAs well as scaling between large and small projects, ftrack also lets you see individual projects from macro and micro levels. On ‘Kung Fury’, which features effects ranging from giant creatures to machine gun muzzle flashes, the ability to view the project at different user-levels was quite useful. Nils said, “You can fly high above the project and keep track of the general progress of it with the Status and Time Reports, for example. Then you can useNotesto dive down into small details whenever you need to, to look up-close on a shot or task level." |
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Fido also put some custom tweaks into ftrack to align it to specific needs for the show. One was to add customShot Category tagsfor characters in the film, so that they could be sorted and artists could focus on specific characters or creatures in their work. Another customisation built on ftrack's existing integrations with other software such asNUKEandMayato add extra functionality. Fido also has acustomisable launcher, for example, and various other tools.http://fido.se |