VFX Artists: Creating Merlin Magic…even on a strict TV show timeline

Somehow out of some complete and random series of events, I ended up being talked into taking an upper level division class this semester on creating special effects. While this is sort of an introduction class into rotoscoping, compositing, tracking, modeling, painting, and essentially creating special effects for live action pieces, I am in a class full of mostly male film and digital arts majors who are old pros and seem to understand the programs that I have never even opened up before inside an out. They thoroughly enjoy blowing up random buildings and trucks and adding random dragons into their projects. The class is difficult, and I spend more late nights in the lab battling the keyboard to do what I want it to do, but it is really opening up my eyes to an entirely new world of digital arts that combines both traditional film and animation. It’s an incredibly broad and diverse field that takes a lot of manpower and a lot of tedious work to manipulate an imaginary world with one that has already been filmed in real life.

As I have been slaving away on After Effects rotoscoping a T-rex chasing a kid through a forest, I have been thinking about how long it takes to make a heavy special effects laden film, like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

When I suddenly remembered my favorite nerd show of all time was starting up again soon. And it dawned on me; how is it that a television show, just as heavy laden with special effects and compositing as high budget fantasy films, could possibly get the job done in a short amount of time and make the end result look incredible??

Honestly, BBC’s hit show Merlin is my guilty pleasure. I have been in love with the show since I first discovered it last year. The characters and actors are both charming and wonderful, it’s well written, witty, full of adventure and mythology, alarmingly suspenseful and full of heart, and is a refreshing twist on the old Arthurian Legend. I somehow managed to even turn my chick-flick and Glee loving friends and family into Merlin geeks (my roommate even has the theme song as a ringtone), and now it seems as though everyone that I know that has ever seen an episode is in love with the magical world of Merlin. I could go on and on about how great the show is, but I do that quite frequently in real life so I won’t, but what really has struck me since the beginning even though I never realized it, was how aesthetically pleasing the show is.

It’s apparent that Merlin, being one of BBC’s hit shows equivalent to the popularity of Doctor Who, is a large budget show with an even bigger following. The show, as of the start of Series 4 this year, is now being aired in 183 territories (countries) around the globe (why it isn’t airing in the U.S. until January of next year, I don’t know). The increased production budget from BBC is now 35 million (which, as compared to the 95 million production of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, is an insane amount for a television show.) I’ll admit, I saw the first episode of Series 4 online, and already the level of the show production has increased drastically since last series.

What is even more incredible for a show like Merlin is the amount of detail and aesthetic appeal that is demonstrated in each episode. Though the show took almost half a year to film before this current series aired earlier this month, it is safe to say that the amount of time the VFX team has to work on each episode is very limited. The episodes, about an hour in length from start to finish, with about 13 episodes per series, take a long time to make on a tight deadline. To put it into perspective, it takes a little over a year on average to create an hour and a half VFX laden film like Inception from start to finish, so you can only imagine how long it takes to make an hour long episode that airs every week. It’s incredible to think about the amount of work that VFX artists on shows like Merlin and make it consistent from start to finish in every series. And the quality of work, though not as refined as films like Avatar or even The Lord of the Rings, is still incredible for a television show.

Somehow the artists do motion capture, compositing, modeling, texturing, and animating in CGI programs and make it look convincing. Visual effects are honestly some of the most important aspects in telling the story of Merlin. It transports us, the audience, into a different fantasy world that doesn’t exist in our modern day world. It’s incredible to think of the impact these effects have in telling the story, and even more incredible to think about the work that these artists are putting into their craft.

I have a lot more respect for visual effects artists now, and more than likely will someday be involved in creating special effects. But I think I have an even greater respect for VFX Artists that work on television shows like Merlin. If it takes a week for me to calmly rotoscope a 12 second piece of animation, I can’t imagine what it feels like to be modeling, rendering, and lighting a dragon in a week for an episode that will air in four months. It’s intense, it’s insane. But if you look at the end product, it is worth it in the end. Series 4 is going to be all the more magical and wonderful for me than it already has been, all because of the magic that the special effects team puts into it.

Trust me, from someone who doesn’t watch a ton of television,  Merlin is definitely worth watching. Don’t believe me? Check out the trailer for Series 4 yourself.