Black Mirror - Arkangel
Role: DMP Digital Matte Painting & Rotoscoping for Cranrust VFX
Director: Jodie Foster
"Arkangel" is the second episode of the fourth series of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Jodie Foster, it premiered on Netflix on 29 December 2017, along with the rest of series four.
In the episode, the single mother Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt) enrols her daughter Sara in a trial of Arkangel, an implanted technology which allows Marie to track Sara's location, current vision and hearing, and automatically censors distressing material.
Here below a few examples with the breakdown showing the building of a scene. In the first I designed some patches of grass that were subsequently integrated in the edit to cover the brown areas and make the ground more uniform. I also created a series of mattes with trees and plants that were added around the garden to fill any irregular gaps. In the foreground the passing through arms of the actors were cut out with a rotoscoping technique and then repositioned on top of all the layers of the composition.
Below another example showing the breakdown of the shot. The tablet's screen was tracked in order to integrate the footage of the man into it as well the interface was animated synching the movement of the foreground hand. Finally the parts of the hands that were covering the screen were rotoscoped and applied back on top of all the layers of the edit.
