The following HDR shot is one amongst many done by Alter Equals Ltd operators for Where Flavour is King, a Johnnie Walker commercial (video above).
During the three days of shooting done a month before principal photography, VFX supervisor Colin Renshaw for Alt VFX and director Mark Molloy for Exit Films had to figure out which castles and which rooms to use in the final commercial.
Colin trusted Alter Equals Ltd to provide his company with all the HDR reference shots they needed for the previz and VFX tasks.
There were so many magnificent rooms in the three castles to shoot that Mark and Colin had a lot narrative and artistic choices to discuss. Alter Equals Ltd's operators having great experience in both capture and VFX in general, Colin was delighted to simply give them global directives and to have more time to deal with his other tasks.
Alter Equals Ltd stayed dedicated to assist Colin in his choices so he and his team would be able to bring Mark's vision to life. At the end of the shot sessions, 90 gigabytes of photos were taken with 5 to 7 exposures per shot. Even where the lighting of some rooms of the castles was challenging, Alt VFX got first class shots as references thanks to bracketing. Dealing with a large amount of files was not a problem because Enwashot automatically sorted the brackets and produced EXR files with linear HDR data ready to use for VFX (Enwashot is part of Enwaii software developed by Banzai Pipeline Ltd, Alter Equals Ltd's sister company).
We were happy to receive the following comment from Colin once the commercial was on air : "the photogrammetry stills was a great reference and texture source so that helped heaps".
In order to experience all the information contained in the HDR photograph displayed below, please move the slider under the photograph.