PLEASE LIKE ME (TV Series)

Starring Josh Thomas and directed by Matthew Saville, Please Like Me is a light-hearted series on the way to ABC later this year.

With mad typography, fun pictures and a great track, the opening titles connect with the opening scenes and are unique for each of the six episodes. As well as titles, we also produced several technical corrections and VFX shots including digital rain.

THE GREAT MINT SWINDLE (TV Series)

Set in Western Australia is the mid-80's, The Great Mint Swindle tells the true story of the Mickelback brothers who schemed to sell a huge fake gold nugget to tycoon, Alan Bond.  We produced several digital effects shots for the series including a car bomb explosion and the gold pour sequence, where the nugget is created.

The show airs on Nine this year.

MISS FISHER'S MURDER MYSTERIES (TV Series)

Based on the hugely popular novels by Kerry Greenwood, ABC's 'Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries' has completed post production with it's first episode getting rave reviews and impressive ratings of over a million viewers!

Set in 1920's Melbourne, this charming series is both a return to form for ABC and a fresh creative direction in a sea of contemporary crime drama. With an huge and incredible cast, gorgeous production design and each episode featuring unique settings and locations, Every Cloud and ABC have created something special that stirs memories of great Australian and British television of years gone by.

Our involvement in the series has seen an already visually rich world transformed by vistas and elements that would have been impossible to achieve within the limits of budget, logistics and schedule. Our unique ability to digitally remove, add or augment elements to live action footage quickly and cost-effectively was a perfect fit for a production with such broad scope as 'Miss Fisher'.

Every Cloud Productions embraced digital effects early in the process, and it quickly became an indispensable tool for expanding production design, usability of locations and many other aspects of the shoot to create a rich and believable world.

We worked closely with the producers and block directors to ensuring each episode had it's own style and attention to detail. Essentially anything that couldn't be dressed out, framed out or cut around was left up to us to deal with - and with so many bustling locations over thirteen Eps, this ended up being quite a task. The team at Chroma produced over 600 shots across 13 episodes, from digital removals and augmentation to CG vehicles, stunt sequences, digimatte environments, dynamic simulation and more that are peppered throughout the series. The previous limitations of shooting period-genre became exciting opportunities to create a layered, cohesive and believable world for the audience to enjoy.

Like the books, each episode is set against a unique environment and it's what has made the show so much fun to work on. Every script revealed new challenges and set pieces, and diverse techniques were required to achieve them within the tight schedule. Ocean liners, circuses, turkish baths, theatres, steam engines and so much more all require a design balance between practical and digital methods to create incredible production value on a broadcast budget and schedule.

Check out the latest episode here along with some clips detailing some of the effects process.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is airing on ABC for the rest of the year, don't miss it!

LAST DANCE (Feature)

Directed by David Pullbrook and featuring Julia Blake and Firass Dirani, Last Dance is a sombre story of cultures and generations. The film was recently made an Official Selection at the 2012 Melbourne International Film Festival.

We provided a wide range of VFX for the feature including some complex removals and fixes, bullet hits, blood effects and CG aircraft.

CHROMA WELCOMES BRET KING (News)

Chroma Media continues to evolve it's services to meet the integrated needs of Australian production, with the addition of in-house sound designer, Bret King to the team.

Bret has already provided sound design and mixing for several features, shorts and TVC's at Chroma and has just begun work on Russian zombie film, METELESTA. Bret's expertise and experience brings even more value to Chroma, as he oversees our brand new, integrated mixing studio.

This boutique facility is ideal for short form and independent productions looking for something a little different in addition to TVC and radio production, featuring 5.1 mixing, ADR/VO facilities, foley, sound design and big screen, uncompressed HD playback. The rooms tight integration with our visual systems are especially beneficial to broadcast design, titles and TVC clients already working with Chroma.

You can reach Bret at the office or email at bret@chromamedia.com

CHROMA NOMINATED FOR 'BEST VISUAL EFFECTS'

We're proud to announce our nomination for Best Visual Effects at the upcoming AFI's for Showtime's Cloudstreet.

This highly visual production featured over 200 shots covering just about every technique in the book from CG aircraft, trains, kangaroos, jumping fish, talking pigs, flipping coins to surreal dream-like sequences like rowing through stars and fields of wheat. With such a wide range of effects and a tight schedule the team at Chroma worked tirelessly to deliver the level of work that a tale like Cloudstreet deserves - so a big shout out to compositor Stuart Elith and CG artists Harsh Borah and Rob Dowling.

It was an honour to be involved with such a great Australian story and a pleasure to see everyone's hard work across the production being recognised by audiences and industry alike.

Cloudstreet picked up 7 nominations all together including: Best MiniSeries, Best Screenplay, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Young Actor and Best Visual Effects.

I'd like to personally thank Matt Saville and Screentime for their commitment, trust and support throughout the project and wish all nominees the best of luck next year!

Check out the trailer here and some VFX breakdowns here.

BROTHERS IN ARMS (TV Series)

Screentime's dynamic telling of the 1980's bikie gangs involved in the Milperra Massacre is coming soon to Ten in a new epic 6-part miniseries, called Brothers In Arms.

We were engaged to design and produce the opening titles, branding and visual effects for the show.

For the titles we chose to go for a western/frontier-style with minimal type treatment, in keeping with the raw, honest approach to the story itself, comprised mostly of stark, compelling imagery rather than footage of cast or episodes.

Eveything from the image selection, edit, typography and grading were kept very simple allowing the catchy title track (Mark Lizotte), powerful images and photography tell the story, with minimal 'screen furniture' and a bleached, parched grade that sits sitting somewhere between faded Super8's and photos from the 70's/80's. Three variations were produced for use across the series.

Check out the opening titles here

In addition to broadcast design, we also produced several VFX shots for the show including digital removals, augmentations and incendiary effects.

Look out for it on Ten later this year.

CHROMA @ SUMMER FILM SCHOOL 2012 (Event)

Chroma is returning once again to present at the University of Melbourne's 'Summer Film School 2012'.

Focusing on the changing role of digital effects in designing, producing, writing and directing contemporary television drama. The course covers the entire range of digital effect techniques and their relationship with each department from production through to post - with an aim to enlighten, excite and energise the next wave of Australian production.

Click here for more info (PDF link).

THE APPLICANT: TROPFEST FINALIST (News)

Tim Dean's short 'The Applicant' has made it through as a finalist at TropFest2011.

Starring Nicolas Bell and Peter Rowsthorn and featuring music by Yuri Worontshak, the film is about a job interview with a difference.... It was a big year for TropFest, with over 700 entries from all over the world competing to get through and we are proud to see it get through to the finals.

I filled the role of co-producer alongside Tim Dean and Chris Corbert, with Chroma designing and producing the character animation and visual effects for the alien creature and the starship interior, in addition to grading duties. The short been officially selected for ShortsFest in Aspen and the 2012 St.Kilda Film Festival.

Check out the film here!

CONSPIRACY365 REVEALS ITSELF (TV Series)

Another series of popular books comes to the small screen in the form of 'Conspiracy365', which is based on the teen novels by Gabrielle Lord.

We're brought in to design and produce the opening titles and provide a wide range of digital effects and technical corrections throughout the first six episodes, with almost 300 shots produced including removals, additions, CG vehicles, location and stunt augmentation.

The series is currently airing throughout the year on the Movie Channel Network.

RUSH FOURTH SERIES ON THE WAY (Series)

You can't keep a good show down!

Having just won an AFI for best drama, Southern Star have announced a third series for Ten's breakthrough police drama, RUSH. With a action-packed new format and the competition fading fast, RUSH aims to keep audiences nailed to their seats with more drama and incredible stunts.

Chroma return for series four, working closely with the production to deliver some of these crazy sequences. As with previous series, comprehensive behind-the-scenes coverage will detail the extraordinary efforts that goes into delivering the effects and action sequences. Stay tuned for the best series yet!

OFFSPRING SPRINGS INTO SECOND SERIES (TV Series)

Ten's 2010 hit, Offspring returns to screen this year with a second run of thirteen eps.

We are back to continue our work with the show, producing a diverse range of visual effects and animation across the series.

The show also picked up an AFI this year for Deborah Mailman's performance. Look out for it on Ten.

UNDERBELLY HITS NZ (TV Series)

The hugely successful Underbelly franchise continues to grow with the New Zealand production of 'Underbelly:Land of the long green cloud' completing this month. The first UB series set outside Australia chronicles more drugs, sex and violence - set in the 1970's. Chroma are once again providing title design and production for the series making it the 6th iteration for the franchise.

Underbelly NZ airs in New Zealand on TV3 later this year.

UNDERBELLY 'RAZOR' (TV Series)

The Underbelly franchise continues to evolve with its latest series 'Razor' taking audiences back to the 1920's. And we are also back to provide opening titles and broadcast packaging for the show.

Underbelly:RAZOR airs later this year on Nine.

EXIT HEADS TO MONTREAL (Feature)

EXIT, a moody and beautifully produced film by Marek Polgar is all set to play at Fantasia Festival in Montreal this year.

Surface tension films commissioned Chroma to execute a number of tricky technical corrections and removals in addition to various digimattes, sky replacements and more. Check out this months Digital Media World magazine for more information about our work on the project.

Take a look at the beautiful trailer and details on the film here.

CHROMA AT THE 'SUMMER FILM SCHOOL' (Event)

In early 2011, Chroma will be part of the University of Melbourne's 'Summer film school', an intensive , month-long event that aims to educate a new generation of film-makers in the tools and techniques of the modern industry.

I will be discussing the changing role of digital effects in contemporary film and television production, and the benefits this brings to production design, screenwriting, shooting, producing, directing and much more. I'll also be covering the full range of digital and practical effects techniques, post workflow and how to create high-production action sequences and set pieces on low budgets.

We think it's a great initiative and wonderful way to get new blood into the growing Australian industry.

RUSH WINS BEST DRAMA SERIES FOR 2010 (News)

After three successful series, Rush has finally picked up an AFI for BEST TELEVISION DRAMA SERIES for 2010!

This follows news of the show returning for a fourth series in 2011 with a more focused 13-episode series. It's great to see the show get some recognition for bringing high-end action to Aussie screens every week. We had a blast helping to put together many of the vehicle, stunt and action sequences and next years series looks to be the best yet!

RUSH returns to TEN mid-2011.

OFFSPRING (TV Series)

From the same team that brought the excellent 'Love my way' to screens a few years back, Offspring's kooky mix of comedy and drama features a huge amount of surreal moments and unexpected shifts in reality for it's main character, Nina (Asher Keddie). We have been flat-out producing visual effects for the entire series, covering a huge range of techniques, applications and stylistic approaches. Each episode brings some weird and wonderful requests which are a lot of fun to put together.

Like Southern Star's RUSH, we are providing VFX supervision and production for the scripted effects, but also play an important role in reducing day-to-day costs, safety and logistical issues for other departments by providing costs effective post solutions to traditionally practical problems.

Offspring is airing on TEN as we speak - Check it out!

UNDERBELLY: FILES (Telemovie)

The runaway success of the Underbelly series has recently spawned a new series of telemovie spin-offs coming to screens later this year. The Screentime produced project will continue the tradition of gritty underworld crime drama - based on real events, but with shooting moved back to Melbourne as with the first series.

Having designed the original branding and titles for the first 3 seasons, Chroma are returning to create the titles and broadcast packaging for the three 'Files' movies. Although still in the Underbelly style, the new titles will present a more stylish direction, with a more mature edge to its visuals.

As with previous series, we are also creating several VFX sequences for 'Files' including aircraft, set extention and stunt work for the three movies. 'Files' is currently in production, look out for it on the Nine Network later this year!

CLOUDSTREET (Mini Series)

Matthew Saville's TV adaption of the classic Tim Winston novel 'Cloudstreet' is currently in production and we have been commissioned to produce the visual effects for the 6 hour mini series. Due to the novels high use of surrealistic sequences and period settings, Cloudstreet's effects fall between highly-stylised dreamy visuals and ultra-real CG work, transforming the west Australian locations into believable 1940's incarnations.

Rushes look amazing and we have already begun on asset creation and previs for the many effects throughout the series, including an aircraft sequence featuring a beautifully recreated CG model of the 'Catalina' Flying boat, a steam train and more to follow in the coming weeks.

Cloudstreet will be coming to Showtime later this year!

UPDATE: We got nominated for Best Visual Effects at the 2011 AFI Awards!

WILD LIFE (TV Series)

We just finished production on the opening titles for December films latest production, Wild Life.

This realty-based series follows the daily lives of Chris Humfrey and his family who live in a chaotic private zoo in rural Victoria. The purpose shot titles feature an 'animal diary' filled with animals literally coming off the page. Branding and various other on-air graphics were also created for the show.

Wild Life is due to air on ABC (and ITV in the UK) later in the year.

'LOVE THE FALL' (Music Video)

We just finished post production on the new Michael Paynter/Veronicas clip 'Love the Fall' for Sony.

Shot in LA on the RED ONE, the clip follows Michael's pursuit of the girls through a storybook-style forest. Aside from taking on the 2k edit and grading, we also produced several high-end VFX shots of the 'living dress' that one of the girls wears. The brief called for a high-end look but with a dirty finish, requiring advanced skin smoothing, grading and film treatments.

Check out the clip HERE!

RUSH S3 (TV Series)

Southern Star's hit police drama returns for a third series in 2010. With some new faces, new stories and even more action, the Rush formula continues to excite with several high action stunt sequences and effects already in production.

Rush is continuing its tradition of utilising high-end CG animation and VFX techniques to add a whole new dimension to Australian drama, something usually only reserved for feature films with massive budgets. As with series 1 & 2, we will be producing all of the shows visual effects and working closely with the stunt and camera departments to create some truly breath-taking sequences. Series three will also be accompanied by an exhaustive 'Behind the scenes' site where we will be covering some of the bigger shots produced for the series.

The current promo for the show features a few shots from the 'airliner' sequence we just produced, check it out here!

BED OF ROSES RETURNS IN 2010 (TV Series)

ABC favourite, Bed of Roses returns for a third series this year!

And we are back too, with a revision to our opening original titles and some VFX throughout the series. Can't say what we are doing yet (spoilers!), but its pretty epic - more news as we get it.

Bed of Roses S3 can be found on ABC later this year.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW TITLE IN HD

WORLD EXPO 2010, SHANGHAI OPENS (Visuals)

After two years of production, the Australian pavilion at World Expo in Shanghai is now complete, opening to the public on the 1st of May.

Designed and produced by ThinkOTS!, the pavilion is a massive purpose built venue that dominates the Shanghai site. It has already enjoyed a lot of media attention, placed in the top 5 pavilions to visit and even received an early visit from China's President. Chroma were commissioned by ThinkOTS! to provide the overall broadcast design and create all of the animation for the projection content, producing both the 'ANZ Theatre' and 'Sisters' exhibits.

The 'ANZ Theatre' is the centrepiece exhibit of the whole pavilion experience, comprising of a massive rotating screen system situated in the centre of a 1,000 person ampitheatre. On the outside, it employs a 6k 1:1 tracked projection surface presenting the main show - on the inside, 3 huge LED arrays create animated backgrounds for the set pieces.

Using 7 Christie projectors and 3 LED arrays, the 10 minute show presents three animated children as they discuss the concept of the Expo's over-arching theme, "Better city, Better life". As the screens rotate around large practical sculptures (that change as the show progresses via a lift system), as the viewpoint of the animation changes to match the angle of each viewer's position in the room. This involved a long and complex process of prototyping and testing the optical effect created by the rotating, bi-secting canvas.

Between these animated character sections, the screen system reconfigures where it presents other animated sections and image sequences filmed exclusively for the show in 8K anamorphic on RED cameras. This footage was graded in-house to create some of the most stunning and high resolution pictures ever shot in Australia.

We also designed the content for the 'Happy Tubes' lighting system. This massive circular array of over 300 LED video tubes presents animated graphics with the appearance of a lighting rig, synchronised with the central show. This works in tandem with Phil Lethlean's main lighting design of the hero sculptures and the various video and animated content.

Our 'kids' (Blue, Tom and Kate) create the narrative for the whole show, appearing in three different sections covering various aspects of the 'Better City, Better Life' theme. The animation presented a huge challenge as not only are three separate characters performing and talking (in Mandarin no less!) in 360 degrees, but are also visible from all angles at all times with lots of interaction between the characters, props and environments.

The character designs, CG modelling and lighting were created by Harsh Borah (HarshCG) with Robert Dowling (PixelPickel) taking on the rigging and animation of the three characters for the whole show. All of the 'kids' sections were created in Maya.

'Sisters' is an hour-long, super resolution projection show presented on a large curved 'wave' screen, set into the entry ramp of the pavilion. Fed by four rear-projectors, the show features the success stories of 20 Australian and Chinese women making their mark in business, environment, finance, politics and culture. The entire program was shot in 2k on RED and sliced into 20 separate 'diamond' screens that join to form a lush, super screen show. The animation and broadcast design for Sisters was created by Stuart Elith at Chroma. The program was so well received that a shorter, 'sizzle' version was produced soon after for events and special visitors.

Both exhibits projection tracking and media delivery was handled by Florian Mosleh from Coolux. The ANZ Theatre in particular was a huge challenge, requiring complex 3D tracking and warping of the rotating, vertically travelling 'pillar' screens. The content was produced at a native 6k resolution with the projection mapping done in real time.

The project was an immense creative and technical challenge, involving the balancing of many technical and creative elements. It was delivered on time and budget, surpassing our clients expectations and receiving glowing reviews from visitors.

Shanghai 2010 is the largest World Expo in history, expecting to attract over 8 million visitors during the year.

It's an honour representing our country once again (Japan 2005) and working with the ThinkOTS! crew on such a massive project. The Expo event continues until the end of the year.

UPDATE: Well, that was quick! Expo 2010 is now closed and we are pleased to announce that the Australian pavilion placed in the top 5 overall with a 95% satisfaction rating from over 8 million visitors - bested only by China own pavillion! It was Australia's biggest presence at any Expo to date and also the most successful.

UPDATE: Won 2011 AVIA Award for Best install over $1M and Best Audio Visual Production