BORGIA - Promo

The Studio was delighted to have been asked to work on the promo launch for the period drama Borgia for Sony Networks.
Director Alexandra Nazarenko came in to brief the Studio on the launch, the concept was based around creating a living canvas reminiscent of the renaissance period showcasing all the main characters in classic still life poses.
The assets provided to the team were high res stills of each main character from the show shot against a black backdrop. Everything else had to be sourced or created by the Studio team.
The team helped develop the idea into a sequence made up from a series of camera moves panning across the canvas.
The angles were picked to create subtle depth of field and to showcase the intricate details of the paint, characters and canvas.
By using this technique it was possible to introduce living moments onto the painting, like blood dripping down the edge of a sword to the subtle smirk of a character or a mischievous frown across a forehead, all of which tie into the plot and character personalities that Alexandra wanted to get across.
The workflow for this project consisted of firstly creating a high resolution matte painting of the cast within a renaissance setting. This involved incorporating props and lighting suitable to the period as well as to the characters individual traits.
This meant at times tweaking the characters poses to suit the arrangement, as well as creating the whole room, floor and lighting from scratch.
The Studio had to come up with a technique to recreate aged oils on the canvas and slight discolouration to give an authentic look to the painting, this involved R&D between the high resolution still and the compositing techniques used to create the final moving sequence.
Once a look had been signed off for the matte painting, the team then proceeded to create camera moves in Nuke for the entire sequence based on the final composition.
This resulted in various versions being quickly produced and tweaked where necessary until the director was happy with the final sequence.
Creating the moves within 3d space in Nuke saved a lot of time over creating them in 3d, once the moves were signed off the nuke composting could move speedily along creating depth of field, adding atmosphere and grading to the shots.
All the shots could then be quickly reviewed and rendered within the timeline in the latest studio software 'Nuke Studio' which enables seamless integration with the compositing teams on projects, as well as playback of video up to 4k in resolution.
Audio was mixed and masters created all within Smoke & Mirrors.
The Programme launched in December.
Client - Sony Networks
Director - Alexandra Nazarenko
Post - The Studio - Smoke & Mirrors
Studio Creative Director - Dan Andrew
Executive Producer - Kabir Malik
Producer - Krystle Timm
Matte painting / Nuke - Dan Andrew / Guillaume Weiss
Audio - Scott Little