Evelina Åström is an acclaimed VFX artist and longtime new—land collaborator. Known for her sharp eye and dedication to her craft, she was the obvious choice when it came to building the immersive narrative worlds of 'Explore Your Story'.
The campaign for Coach involved shooting two identical films in two countries: one in London featuring Elle Fanning, Storm Reid and Paige Bueckers, the other filmed in Seoul featuring Shan Yichun, Soyeon and Lilas Ikuta.
Talk us through the beginnings of this project. What was the discussion like with Marcus, and what were your first thoughts on how to approach it?
Marcus opened our first call by saying he wanted to shoot the VFX in-camera. It instantly made me very excited since I’ve always had a soft spot for practical solutions. So we decided to move the post pipeline into pre-production and started crafting custom backdrops for 7x4m LED-walls.
Since Marcus had such a clear vision from the start, it allowed me to translate his ideas into something that would work both technically and visually. We built environments with a projection-based workflow in Nuke (VFX software) based on digital matte paintings, where we layered photorealistic 2D elements in 3D-space for each scene. I think I created about +2000 different assets, narrowing down to 12 final shots, which took about a month to prep.
How different was it being involved in the post-production already from pre-production?
It made all the difference since we had to completely flip the traditional production chain. By moving post into pre, VFX became an important part of the cinematography. It was such a lovely, but very unusual, feeling that all the heavy lifting was done at the same moment as we wrapped on set.
"There was a slight thrill and fear, burning in the VFX on set with no way to change it later. But that was also part of the charm since it forced us to be intentional. "
What is the key to merging your approach as a visual artist using computer-generated tech and old-school camera techniques?
I think we just have to adapt per project and meet the needs of the idea. Be open to reversing the workflows and mixing techniques and tools, but always keep the handcrafted teamwork at the core. The most compelling scenes rarely come from a perfectly rendered (or nowadays autogenerated) shot; they come from the friction created when digital craft meets the happy accidents of in-camera work.
Are there any key takeaways from this project that you’d like to take with you into future projects?
Apart from taking the “pre-post” mindset with me (my new crush), the biggest takeaway was how collaborative this process became. The LED scenes involved far more than just VFX: production design, props, SFX, lighting, camera and the technical LED team. It created a truly special dynamic for me. Often in VFX, we end up hiding by ourselves in the dark, working quite isolated at the end of the process. But this project felt like the opposite of that; seeing everything click into place in real time was such a joy.
Coach
Explore Your Story