The USA Network Series “Royal Pains” returned for its Second Season on June 3, 2010. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the comedy television series, here is a brief summary to fill you in. Royal Pains is about Henry “Hank” Lawson, a young E.R. doctor played by actor Mark Feuerstein, who moves to the Hamptons after being wrongly blamed for an important patient’s death and becomes a reluctant “doctor to hire” to the rich and famous in a resort community. When the administrator of the local hospital asks him to treat the town’s less fortunate, Hank (the young doctor) finds himself walking the line between doing well for himself and doing good for others. This entertaining rap video consists of the Royal Pains cast as well as a few new and familiar faces. Henry Wrinkler is joining the cast in Season 2 as the no-good father of Hank (Mark Feuerstein). The video promoting the new season features not only The Fonz rapping, but Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) of “Burn Notice” and Neal Caffre (Matt Bomer) of “White Collar,” two other USA Network Series.

On a very limited budget, The Molecule was asked to spice up the video with some key-framed 3D animation and compositing. First, the scene was match-moved using Maya Live. Using the track, we were able to keyframe a rigged 3D skeleton into the scene, and composite it to look like an x-ray. The rendered skeleton uses an “X-ray” shader, which uses the facing angle of geometric surfaces to derive opacity. The skeleton is interesting because rather than using a rigid IK rig, it has a “squishy” effector that allows bones to be stretched. This makes matching the skeleton to the underlying video easier, because Henry’s proportions could be matched and fudged.

The track from Maya Live was solid, which made adding monitors very simple. Once everything was rendered together with motion blur and some color work, this fun little piece was cut into the edit and delivered to the network and Youtube, for everyone to view.

A mysterious script landed on the desk of The Molecule unlabeled and  unmarked beyond “Untitled Political Thriller.” The enigmatic story of  espionage, coded signals, and strange behavior immediately sparked our intrigue. We pored over the script in great detail.

Chris Healer, Visual effects supervisor, recalls receiving the script. He thought, “This is really interesting. There are crossword puzzles, chess pieces, and all this interesting detail.  What could this possibly be called? How do you contextualize something of this nature?” His answer came a few weeks later when Canterbury Pictures finally came up with the name. RUBICON

This political thriller follows Will Travers (James Badge Dale, The Pacific, The Black Donellys), a green research analyst for New York City American Policy Institute. This exciting and stylish new series is shot in NYC on 35mm film in shades of sepia, which sets a classic tone for the paranoid ride of conspiracy and deception. “Nothing appears as it seems” says co-star Miranda Richardson who plays another pawn in this complex artifice.

To all of those who need a brush-up on Roman History the Rubicon is a river in Northern Italy that marked the border between Italy proper to the South and the Celtic province of Cisalpine Gaul to the North. On January 10^th (which happened to be the first day we shot Rubicon) Caesar dragged his army across the river, which made armed conflict inevitable. The phrase “crossing the Rubicon” has survived to refer to any individual or group committing itself irrevocably to revolutionary course of action or “Past the point of no return”

Director Allen Coulter has done an epic job of shooting Rubicon in an entertaining, cult classic way. Many shows rely on casting or locations to create excitement and while Rubicon has those in spades it is very focused on details and how they fit together to make an interesting story. For instance Coulter told wardrobe that a particular character should wear a watch but told the actor to never to look at it. The character already knows the time. The entire production is very rich in detail and symbolism throughout.

Canterbury Pictures and The Molecule previously joined forces for Rescue Me and now Rubicon. Chris provided some insight on the inner workings of the show.  We began shooting on  a very frigid day in January. They were about to shoot a train sequence. “Shooting on any MTA or Metro North is a little tricky,” he explained.  They don’t offer permits to film on any train or subway. Our main objective was to film the train tracks themselves, but MTA made us buy 24 individual tickets for the crew to ride Metro North.  I suppose it turned out to be worth the trouble since the scene is sitting pretty in the pilot episode and the end of the trailer.  Details on the VFX of this scene will be coming soon in a tutorial with Chris Healer

Beyond the VFX shoots, Chris said he was really impressed with the rest of the crew. There was a time where The Rivington hotel had to quickly be turned into an exotic European Airport. Within seconds the Production designer, Henry Dunn, covered the eyesore that was a billiard table. He boarded it up and dressed it to look like a long elegant banquet hall. Only in the world of production can you go from Rivington Hotel to Exotic Airport in the matter of minutes.

The Molecule produced over 20 shots for the pilot episode of Rubicon, which can be currently viewed on Hulu. The pilot is highly charged with conspiracy and leaves the viewer grasping for more. Check out The Molecule’s stunning work on AMC when it premiers August 1 at 11pm.

Beauty retail giant Sephora recently employed The Molecule’s unique array of 3D talents to help create their first ever commercial spot. The leading make-up retailer recently partnered with Japanese-inspired lifestyle brand Tokidoki to bring their colorful and unique designs to the world of make-up. Created by Italian designer Simone Legno in 2005 Tokidoki’s popular designs have been on toys, clothing, and accessories.

Brought in by Producer Matthew Achterberg and teamed with director Labour and Greencard Pictures, The Molecule was tasked with creating a world where animated Tokidoki characters would interact with live Sephora shoppers. Shot on RED, this shoot provided challenges which ranged from appropriating a landscape with enough information to properly composite the hosts, to making sure there was enough 3D tracking information to accommodate the plethora of camera moves. Careful planning and generous use of tracking lights eased these concerns.

The Majority of our work in post concerned the actual animation of the Tokidoki characters. All 3D tracking was done using Boujou, and all of the animation as well as texturing was done in Maya. The texturing was created via a “toon” shader that we manipulated to get the proper thickness for edge lines and shadows. Animation of the character’s movement and facial characteristics furthered the illusion of a world where shoppers and Tokidoki characters could interact. The 3D renders were composited into the live action footage using Nuke. Some final color correcting finished the job to create a sleek ad campaign.

Recently, in the November 2009 issue of Post Magazine, Molecule’s visual effects supervisor and lead compositer, Luke DiTommaso was interviewed for the article “Early Intervention.” Luke discussed some tips and tricks, stemming from his experiences with on-set vfx supervision. In this blog you can read what Luke had to say for the article.

Tips for VFX Supervision:

Be prepared:

There was a time when I would show up on set to VFX supervise with just my hands in my pocket. If I needed tape to make a tracking marker—I’d ask Scenic for a roll, if I needed a tape measure—I’d ask an AC, for a pen I’d ask the Scripty. For the most part people are friendly and happy to help, but there was one incident that made a light bulb go off in my head.

The scene called for a fire at the end of a dark hallway and my borrowed tape tracking markers were disappearing into the shadows. So I had the brilliant idea of taping some mini Mag-Lites to the walls as tracking points. I was going to go around to all the gaffers and start collecting their mini flashlights. When I asked the first guy, he stopped coiling a massive cable around his forearm and looked at me for an uncomfortable period of time. He calmly explained that he would in fact lend me his mini mag-lite if I really needed it, but he said it in a way that led me to understand he would in fact give me CPR if I really needed it. Unless this were a dire situation, you just don’t ask another man for his mini Mag.

After that shoot I went back to the office and we bought a pelican case, stocking it with rolls of tape of every color, Sharpies, little LED tracking points, tape measure, laser level, still camera, etc. Everything we could think of we threw in there like it was Batman’s utility belt. When I saw that gaffer at the next shoot, I made sure to flash him a smile—and my new min-Mag.

Wardrobe & Hair/Make-up can save you more Roto than you can imagine:

Especially on a greenscreen shoot, the Wardrobe person and Hair stylist can save you so much time in post that it behooves any VFX supe to be super friendly. There are the obvious situations where you show up to a music video shoot and the dancers are wearing reflective outfits and big fuzzy hair-dos, in which case you stop production or plan for a roto slumber party at the office. But often times it will be a more subtle detail that can cost weeks in post.

On one shoot, the production opted for ReflecMedia greenscreen which is notoriously difficult for very fine details like hair because of the ghosting/shadow issues with the technology. I happened to know the hair person from another production (NYC is a small town in this industry), and we chatted amiably during the long stretches of downtime between shots. When it came time for my greenscreen sequence, one of the actresses had a few single strands of hair sticking out that I knew would not key well. So in the frantic moments of “last looks” I asked the Hair person if she didn’t mind smoothing it out. No big deal, right? Well, they ended up doing many takes from several angles and those stubborn hairs kept coming undone. I’m convinced had I not made friends with her earlier, she would not have been as eager to run out onto the stage in between takes to flatten out of those few strands of hair time after time. That small extra effort on her part must have saved us hours and hours of frustration in post.

Similarly, there was a scene shot against a black screen that involved firefighters covered in soot and ash. The firefighter outfits are dark and I knew that unless they were covered in white ash it was going to be a tough roto. The wardrobe person had given the actors a nice delicate sprinkle on the shoulders. Had we not been friendly I’m not sure she would have made the effort to take fistfuls of soot and mash it all over their uniforms—for several takes. It was messy for everyone involved but it saved us gobs of roto down the road.

Production designers need you, speak their language, make their life easy:

Visual effects are often determined by a simple subtraction equation—the script calls for something, the production designer can only provide some portion of it, and the difference is made up with VFX. An easy example would be a cemetery scene we worked on where one of the characters is visiting the grave of a deceased character and his name needs to be on the tombstone. It’s cheaper, faster and better to carve a name into the marble digitally than practically. Often times we’ll do a set extension and there will be a greenscreen flag set up where the set ends, or where a location needs to be modified. Those are obvious examples, but other times being a little creative can make a big difference. In one scene, the script called for a long hand-held shot around the corner of an L-shaped corridor in the basement of the WTC. During the pre-production meeting, the Production designer expressed concern about the scope of building such a set with all the destruction and detail involved. We suggested building just one straight corridor and dressing it twice. A hidden cut between the two could be buried as the actor turned the corner. It was a simple suggestion but it made a world of difference to the Production designer. Alleviating that burden allowed him to think of the production design in a different way. He was able to focus his resources and still have his set look amazing and we benefitted because he became our staunchest ally for opting to use VFX in scenes.

This morning in Metro New York, a principle and senior editor of The Molecule, Luis de Leon was featured in an entertainment story about one of the documentaries he edited. “Every F—ing Day of my Life” is a documentary that follows the story of Wendy Maldonado- a woman from Oregon convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail for murdering her abusive husband. Film director Tommy Davis was so captivated by Maldonado’s story that he decided to center his documentary solely on her, as opposed to a group of people, as he originally intended. In 4 months, de Leon and Davis edited 80 hours worth of footage down to 80 minutes. This powerful story played at many film festivals including SXSW and the prestigious Locarno Film Festival. In addition to a theatrical release in L.A. and New York, the documentary will premiere this Monday night, December 14, 2009, at 10p.m. on HBO.

This isn’t the first documentary to come from Luis de Leon and Tommy Davis. The pair worked together on Davis’ documentary “Mojados: Through the Night” which won the audience award at SXSW in 2004. Currently, de Leon, with The Molecule, is working on a documentary surrounding Bill Laswell’s new band Method of Defiance. To find out more about “Every F—ing Day of my Life,” and to see a trailer of the documentary, you can visit its IMDB page here.