Lucid Air | VP

I had the great opportunity to work as the VAD and Volume Op for a car process shoot. Big shoutout to the team over at the Be Electric studio up on NYC, working with them is always a pleasure, they're so dialed in to their technology that shoots are always incredibly smooth and efficient.

As the VAD I was tasked with creating 3 environments for background animation- a NY style city street, an open salt flats, and a curving tunnel that bridges the two environments.

The whole project was built in just a few weeks over the holidays, so my focus was on building tools to make layout of asset kits quick, efficient, and controllable. And of course, making sure the scene ran optimally for realtime Volume work. I worked with city sample assets and developed spline tools to help place and randomise street lights, city blocks from level instances, roads, props... I worked on ndisplay animation including building a template sequence to create motion shaking to simulate a camera mounted to the car as it bounces across the desert, created lighting rigs, and I helped with rounds of previs and review with the client team to help them plan, prelight, and block their shots ahead of their single day in the volume, giving them an idea of how the content should look in camera with shallow focus and long-exposure shutter blur.

For Volume ops, I was able to remotely control the operator machine and drive the content on the volume for the client in realtime. Adjusting camera angles, making minor tweaks to lighting and exposure, and helping them flow through a fast paced shooting schedule.

I'm immensely proud of the final result, the footage captured was absolutely gorgeous. I'm also happy I was able to guide a director through their first experience shooting on a Volume, and get them the looks they wanted on such a quick turn-around.