Union worked on the film 'Poor things' released in 2023. Golden Globe Awards: It won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Emma Stone. +5 BAFTA's +11 Oscar nominations.
For this film the aim was to create a vision of a small world this was achieved by use of various creative effects. Including miniature models for various assets and sets, use of filming paint in water for otherworldly Skies, videos of fish eye lenses for bubble-like quality to give an idea of a child's eye perspective.
Difficulties came when compositing as using fish eye lenses greatly distort the image so when flattening the plate it creates a huge image to work from.
It also greatly increases the work load for dynamic use of the camera when working with fish eye or using high depth of field, so best to use this where it adds to the story/ vision, but don't restrict it's creative potential, when things get hard, you just need to find a way to get it to work.
To achieve the director's Vision a combination of Led walls, Miniatures, film compositing Plates, green screen and CG scans, CG Ocean, among many other things
were combined resulting in a world unlike any other.
Taking advantage of Led screens, huge sets including part of a ship was built to Project a realistic Vision of light from the other worldly Skies acting as a real life HDRI sky and sea.
Union VFX mentioned that they that could see a rise in the use of miniatures, especially with the use of Led Screens and film.
The film depicts the use of hybrid animals, but wanted to use little CGI as possible. I believe that this is because full CG animals tend to be noticeable and creates a slight disconnect. Photoshop Concepts were made combining heads and bodies from a variety of animals.
To create this effect multiple shoots of plates and required lots of takes, time and luck to get a match to stitch the filmed animals together on separate plates including another plate with the actor. For each animal hybrid a CG copy/ rig was created to add effects including stitches etc as an overlay effect.
working with miniatures proved to have multiple uses for filming and also for CG as they
were 3D Scanned to allow combining miniatures, adding detail for close up shots and using wider variety of camera movements.
It was also said that it was very enjoyable to work with.