Oscar Selection: Variasies op 'n Tema
Variasies op 'n Tema (Variations on a Theme) is South Africa's official submission for the 99th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category. We're proud to have supported it with invisible VFX: cleanup, paint and fix, and sky replacements with weather enhancement.
Earlier this month, Variasies op 'n Tema was selected as South Africa's official submission for the 99th Academy Awards. Directed by Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, and shot in the mountains of Namaqualand in the Northern Cape, it follows a 79-year-old goat herder who becomes the target of a financial scam. It won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam before the Oscar news. We were lucky enough to work on it, so here's a look at what we did.
The brief: support the story, stay out of the way
Our job was to make sure nothing in the frame pulled the audience out of the world: cleanup, paint and fix work, and, where the weather didn't give the film what the story needed, sky replacements and weather enhancement.
Weather that matches the mood
A location shoot doesn't get to order the weather. Take a wide of the village on its hillside: the sky on the day was a clear, flat blue, pleasant but with no tension in it. The story needed weight. We built a storm front rolling in over the hills, then made sure the landscape agreed with it, with warm, raking light on the rocks while the clouds pull the rest of the frame into shadow.
Shot 100: hillside village
A dusk shot on the rocky ridge had the same problem in a different key. The plate was a quiet, empty sunset. We gave it a full storm: heavy cloud, rain shafts hanging off the cloud base, and warm light breaking through the gaps. The foreground is untouched. The aim was always for the sky to feel like it had been there all along.
Shot 103: dusk ridge
None of it is meant to be noticed. A sky is just a sky, until it's the right sky for the scene.
How we did it
A tight budget and a quick turnaround meant we mixed modern tools with traditional compositing. The artists kept hands on every frame, from tracking and grading to making sure every sky sat properly in the plate.
Congratulations to the film
A huge congratulations to Jason, Devon, Kraal Stories and the whole team on the Oscar selection. We'll be cheering for Variasies op 'n Tema through the shortlist on 15 December and the nominations on 21 January.