JOHN GAJDECKI
Gorgeous landscapes, epic battles and Goliath. It's not that you forget he was created with VFX after a while.
You never even doubt it from the start.
This reel is deconstructed in the " Demo - Behind the Scenes " reel below,
Amazon and The Wonder Project's sweeping drama of David vs Goliath.
John Gajdecki,
Senior VFX Supervisor,
Sweeping a greenscreen
stage.
Demo - The Battle, episode 1
Episode 101 opens with a tease of the David vs Goliath fight.
Watch the reel though once, then play it a second time to read the brief shot descriptions and look at the elements we used on screen right.
Demo - Behind the Scenes
Creating Goliath was central to the story of House of David, but he was a tiny part ( OK, a giant sized part ) of our scope of work.
This reel details the :
Tent City set extensions
AI Environment shots
AI Character process
CG Lion shots
Tests for Goliath's scale and frame rate
Building the huge Israelite and Philistine armies
Before and After - Pictures
It's always fun ( ok, I think it's fun ) to look at what a shot looked liked BEFORE we added the VFX and AFTER we were done. Unlike a Demo Reel, we can get into more details this way.
Goliath Appears
Goliath walked through the two lines of soldiers. He is carrying the "Giant-on-a-Stick" which gave the other actors the correct eyeline.
We shot at 30 fps rather than 24, to give Goliath a greater sense of mass. We shot a ton of tests to see what the best frame rate was. The faster we shot the heavier he looked, but we wanted Goliath to be an athlete, not a lumbering monster. But also, if we shot much faster then we'd run into sound sync problems with the huge dialogue scenes in later episodes.
We normally shot him at 24 fps.
Behind the Scenes
Assorted House of David behind the Scenes images, in no particular order.
