Oliver Bersey Freezes Time (Lords)

Oliver Bersey Freezes Time (Lords)
 
If you're not British or of the geeky persuasion, you may not know that one of the most iconic UK television characters of all-time is celebrating his 50th anniversary in November. Yes, everyone's favourite 900+ year-old, monster hunting, sonic screwdriver owning, history baiting, companion collecting Time Lord, Doctor Who, is marking his half-century on-screen next month, and the BBC is getting awfully excited about it.


Amongst the numerous anniversary shows scheduled to appear in the upcoming weeks, the jewel in the Beeb's crown is an (almost) feature-length episode of the show starring Matt Smith (the current Doctor), David Tennant (the previous Doctor) and John Hurt (Doctor Who?!). To advertise the fact, Red Bee Media and director Matt Losasso were tasked with creating a sumptuous 'Day Of The Doctor' promo, journeying through the history of the character with moments 'frozen in time'. Naturally they needed a VFX whizz at the helm - Oliver Bersey, VFX Supervisor for Framestore.
 
We caught a few moments with Oliver to discuss the pressure of delivering such a high profile project, the technical complexity of freezing 50-year-old images and the perils of risking the vitriol of Whovians worldwide.

 
The 50 Year Anniversary of Doctor Who is one of the key elements in the BBC's 2013 calendar, and this special episode is the jewel in the crown. Did you feel the pressure when you got the call?
 
As soon as someone comes to you and says the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, you know this is a huge TV event, and with that comes a high level of expectation. So yes, I did feel some pressure, but to be honest, I felt more excitement about being part of this moment. 
 
At what stage did you get involved in the project? Did you get on board during the conceptual process?
 
We were on board pretty early. The script was written, but in jobs like this we have to plan everything carefully and work out the best way to approach everything. Matt is a very post-savvy director and had a clear idea of what he wanted to achieve, and a good understanding of how we would do it. 
 
How did you go about extracting the elements seen in the film? There are a lot of images from past episodes and Doctors – how did you manipulate those?
 
Broadly speaking, the general theme was to shoot with doubles and do head replacements. Being frozen in time was a huge advantage and meant that we were able to source all the elements from stills. We took the decision to shoot on long lenses to reduce the amount of visible parallax within the scene. William Hartnell was the most critical shot to pull off, being the first doctor and pretty much unknown in colour or any reasonable detail. We were helped enormously by an excellent high res still that the director created painstakingly from many, many stills of the double. We then added simple and subtle manipulations to achieve a more plausible three-dimensional feel, and with the tracked camera, loaded the shot with fragments of glass and general debris. We worked hard to match the lighting and the depth of field to maintain the photographic quality of what was originally shot. 
 

Is there an extra level of concern for the details added on a project like this, considering how it's going to be dissected by fans online?
 
Absolutely. We were all too aware that any mistakes would be spotted instantly and be the subject of a lot of online debate and ridicule. Luckily Matt is a bit of a Doctor Who fan, and we also received some help from the BBC team who checked through it pretty carefully.
 
We're guessing (and a quick Google search would confirm) that there are a huge number of easter eggs slipped in. How did these get incorporated? Were there any that you couldn't fit in? Are there any that people haven't spotted yet?
 
Yep, there's an awful lot of extra stuff added in. We tracked all the cameras in 3D and were able to load the shots up to our heart's content. In fact, the more we got into this, the more we got carried away. The Sarah Jane scene now looks entirely different from what was shot. We couldn't help ourselves recreating the iconic Westminster Bridge scene instead! The reaction to it online has been phenomenal. Within 24hours there was a web page up with dozens of stills from the trailer and their relevance. And to be honest, they pretty much had it all covered. Well, mostly!
 
How long did you work on the project? What size team did you have? What software did you use to create the final piece?
 
The project took seven weeks. The team was small – me on a Flame full time, another support Flame artist for the last couple of weeks, a little bit of Nuke and quite a lot of rotoscoping.
 
Are you happy with the film? How did witnessing the flurry of online speculations feel?
 
Overall, I love it. The deadline was tough, and we ran right up to the wire. The reaction to it though has been absolutely fabulous, and it made all the long days and hard work worth it. The interest in it has been brilliant.