Me Vs a Professional VFX Artist #vfx #digital #digitaleffect

This is my husband, Erik. So dramatic! And he's done VFX on some of the biggest movies in the world. And today, I was challenged to compete against him in a topic I never saw coming. Football! In partnership with Lenovo and Intel. But in spite of this, and a lot of challenges along the way, I think this is the worst shoot I've ever been on. I actually ended up creating my best work yet. Okay, so here's what's happening. I'm not only competing with Erik, but also with three other creatives. Cox and Wax challenged us all to this epic competition where we're going to represent our country. And in only one month, we're all meeting up in Mexico to reveal our art pieces. So I better get started, because these guys are not joking around. But I'll be fine, because I'll be creating now on the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition, imagined with Intel. Which will empower me and the other creators to really push our boundaries. But what exactly am I going to make? Well, football isn't just a game. It's memories. It's kids kicking a ball around with their siblings, parents sharing from the sidelines, and friends laughing together without a single worry in the world. And that right there is exactly what I want to capture. With all this in mind, I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to create. So I headed out to shoot in one of my favorite places, the mountains. The spot is pretty far up, so to avoid hiking the whole way, like in my previous video. It's never ending. We decided to be lazy and drive up instead. That could have been us. And after a bumpy ride and a few minutes of walking, we were met by this stunning view. So let me explain the idea. The story is about a football that suddenly erupts into a light beam, which then slowly turns into a bunch of memories, showing the journey of the boy who once owned it. And to represent my country, Norway, I'm going to make the memories look like northern lights and of course, film with this huge mountain in the background. We started filming straight away. And if you're wondering why Erik, my competitor, is the one helping me, it's because no one else was willing to come to this freezing mountain. Well, except for my mom. Hello! But I didn't want the whole video to look and sound like this. And now she's frozen to death, that little bird. Now for the rest of the shots, we just had to wait for the sun to set. The last time we were here, we took our wedding photos and then it was summer and sunny. Now it's winter. So yeah, it's a bit weird being back. But now the sun was almost gone. So we started preparing for the next shot. So after I touched the football, I get like thrown back. And to do that, I need one of these mattresses. It's massive. This is gonna take all day. I'm gonna try it out. Are you ready? I need to make it a bit softer. And now it was finally time for the real job. This is so scary. Oh, there's an actual hole. Okay, one more. You have one more shot. No, I can't do it. Yes. We desperately tried pumping enough air in for a second jump. And as you can see, I really didn't want to jump again. Ow. Are you okay? Okay, I'm not doing that again. Okay, we got it. That literally was me destroying myself on the ground. Before I show how the rest of this shoot went, which, spoiler alert, was quite eventful. I'm gonna make this shot a little more epic. Okay, so let's start by removing both me and the mattress by masking us out and replacing us with a clean plate. I then rotoscoped myself out and added myself back into the shot again and moved me up a bit. Next, I added this light to the football and made it flicker using noise. I then drained this dark acid of a shockwave, made some small adjustments to it, as well as adding some glow. For more depth, I added a second shockwave along with some dust and smoke. But something looks off. As you can see, the ground and myself aren't affected at all, which is why we need to brighten this up. That's way better. Now that the shockwave is done, it's time to add in the light beam. I bought a pack of light beam acids, picked out my favorites, and added them to the scene. I then adjusted their timing to fit the footage, as well as changing their colors. This is probably one of the heaviest shots of the video. So seeing the Lenovo laptop handle it so easily is just insane. I just feel like I can really push boundaries with this device, which is why I also added a lens flare, lens dirt, and some camera shake to tie it all together. And it was done. Sick! You're showing me this to make me nervous. So the shot of me reacting to the light beam needed some practical lights. And luckily, my Teletubby-looking mom came to the rescue. I then added a bit more light in post. For this panning shot, I reversed the light beams so they went into the sky. I then layered a bunch of shockwaves on top of each other, changed their colors, and animated a mask along the edge of the shockwaves, so it revealed footage of the northern lights. When compositing, it's important to use a bunch of different layers, as it gives a lot of depth and complexity to the image. For example, here's the difference between one shockwave and four. For the light trails, I wanted to reveal them in a bird's eye view, which is why we started preparing the drone. But there was only one problem. It refused to take off. And suddenly, I knew exactly what had happened. You see, earlier that day, I flew the drone to get some landscape shots, and when trying to land it, I just couldn't catch it. So while Erik was laughing at me, I challenged him to try doing it himself. Yeah, and it turned out that this actually broke one of the wings. So we had to get creative, and that fast, because the light was almost gone, and we had still over half of the video left to film. So we ran to the biggest rock we could find. And after the relief of seeing it actually work, suddenly this happened. I fell deep through the snow, and it turns out... Yeah, there was water underneath. Like it wasn't freezing enough already. I think this is the worst shoot I've ever been on. But there was no time to complain. We had to keep going. For the light trails, I decided to use this geometry node setup that I've actually used a few times before. I spent some time customizing it, and for some extra spice, I copied the curve and created a new geometry system made out of particles. Next, I needed to prepare the footage. But since we didn't have the drone, we couldn't achieve the exact height that I was looking for. So I hopped into Photoshop and used AI to extend the frame, and then went to Nuke, tracked the footage, and voila! I then went back into Blender, added the light trails, animated them, and finally hit render. And since the Intel Core Ultra processor makes this process go so fast, I didn't even have time for a social media break before it was finished. I then added them to the footage, along with some distortion and glow. I did the same to the other shots, along with adding northern lights in the background, and later both me and the ground. And now it was time for the biggest effect of them all. This is my cousin Samuel, who for a piece of candy, agreed to be in my video. But it turns out that filming with a six-year-old is a bit of a challenge. And you can see the exact moment he regretted saying yes to being a part of this. But after some further writhing, I finally got the shots I needed. The first memory is of him receiving the football. And to create the memory effect, I started by rotoscoping them out, and then added a ghost effect by fading off the previous frames. This already makes it look way more like a memory. But to truly bring it to life, I used some noise to color them in warm colors. And then to get the northern lights look, I added some glow, chromatic aberration, and light rays. Now we're talking. I then added this to my plate, as well as some subtle northern lights around it. Finally, I added some northern lights to the sky as well, and rendered out some light trails for the background. And it was done! Next up was the most complex shot of them all, where you see the kid's whole life through football. But before tackling it, if pen intended, I wanted to talk to someone who's actually been through this journey himself, to really understand what it feels like. This is Sasha Kleshten, a football player from the US who spent 17 years playing at the highest level. So I'm wondering, do you remember your first ever football? I don't remember my first football, because I've been told that it was put in my crib from the day I came home from the hospital. My dad was obsessed with soccer, and so I became obsessed with soccer. And as soon as I could walk, I was dribbling with it, and it was always just around the house. This immediately brought me back to my own childhood. As he was surrounded by footballs, I was surrounded by cameras. Wherever we went, my dad always had one with him. He has this way of capturing the beauty of nature so well. My grandpa had a whole shelf of old cameras he'd used over the years. And looking at his photos feels like watching scenes from a movie. He probably got it from his own dad, my great-grandpa. And his images are like windows into another world. They've all been a huge inspiration to me. And somehow I always knew that the camera would be a big part of my life too. Being able to do this for a living now is honestly a dream come true. But it's taken a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifices. And with that comes pressure. When you can enter a zone in the game and you're just playing, it's like you're a kid again. I'm getting goosebumps right now as I say this because I remember those moments where this could have been the biggest game in the world, but it just felt like I was playing on a pitch with my friends and having so much fun and enjoying the game so much. And then the whistle ends and you realize, wow, I just did that in front of 50,000 people and we won. As long as you're passionate about it, you can do everything, really. I agree with you. On that note, it was time to get back to work because in only two weeks, I will be traveling to Mexico to reveal my work. For this shot, I needed a kid actor, a teenager and a grown-up, but I had no idea who to ask to be the teenager. So I thought I'd just figure it out later and convince my friend to play the adult. So this is our friend, Jonathan. Hello. He's the main character today. After filming some basic running shots, she's so talented, it was time for some real acting. So now we need some emotions you have to add. All right. So you need to pretend that you're winning. I don't know if you're familiar with winning, but it's a very good feeling. So you're just going to win and then like, and like run, like, Move like this. I don't know. Or you scored a great goal and you're like, yes. Yes, okay. And he was dedicated. And in the middle of the shoot with Jonathan, I suddenly noticed this kid practicing on the field by himself. So I walked up to him and asked if he wanted to be a part of the video as the teenager. And he said yes. And I still can't believe he was only 10 years old because he was completely smashing it. Eventually his friends came along too. And after calling all their parents for permission and trying my best to explain what we were up to without sounding creepy, we filmed the rest of the shots. Lastly, we met up with our friend Luke in the city and filmed the last shot where Jonathan is supposed to hold a huge trophy, which was interesting. Even this dog had to look away in embarrassment. Now with all the memories ready, it was time to put everything together. I started by rotoscoping out all the different memories using After Effects AI Rotobrush. And with the Lenovo's laptops AI integration, the process was super smooth and fast. I love this Intel processor. I then added a memory effect that I made earlier to all of them and rendered them out. I tracked the whole shot, which took ages, and made the sky darker and added northern lights. I then tracked the ground and added the memories one by one, as well as some glow. When filming, we pointed these orange lights at me and the ground. So when the memories were eventually added, it would look more realistic. But I still needed some extra light on the ground. So I added that as well. Finally, I wanted the first memory in this sequence to get revealed by a light trail. So I rendered one out from Blender, threw it in, and used these shock waves to reveal the memory in the same way as it had revealed the northern lights earlier. Now with all the memories added, I did pretty much the same process for the next shot. For the final memory, where you see the big victory, Jonathan was supposed to hold a huge trophy. But since I didn't have one in real life, I found his photo and used SmartShare Tattoo Launch to transfer it to the Lenovo laptop, which was so handy. I then imported the photo to Nuke and tracked it to his hand. It looks awful here, but with the effect added on top, it blends in just fine. Lastly, we filmed a scene where all the memories get pulled back into the ball. Now we have two shots left. And as you can see, it's all dark and we like just barely made it. In Nuke, I added some glow and distortion to the ball and animated it for a glitch effect. I then added the memories and northern lights to the background. For the shot where the memories get pulled in, I animated a scale of them all and added an extra trail effect with distortion and glow to make it more dreamy. Now with all the shots finally done, it was time to do some color grading to tie it all together, which actually could not be more magical considering the Lenovo Yoga has an amazing tandem OLED display, along with PureSight Pro, which makes the colors super accurate. And after a whole month of work, the video is finished. So yeah, let's go to Mexico and finally reveal it. After seeing the amazing pyramids and enjoying some great food, we went to Mexico City and met up with the other creators, aka the competition. I've been watching their stuff for ages, so seeing them in real life was just so much fun and a bit terrifying knowing what would happen very soon. What are you saying about this, Maria? There's a lot of people. We then arrived at the set, which was way bigger than I thought and there were like 40 people on it that were going to document us showing our work. I'm not used to the scale of production and at least not an audience, so this would be interesting, but eventually it was my turn. So as I walked up very nervously, suddenly everything came back to me. This has easily been one of the most intense, cold and stressful videos I've ever made. We had only an hour and a half to pull off nearly 30 difficult shots, and even with five layers of wool on, I was freezing to death. But somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, this became one of the most memorable projects I've ever worked on. Not because everything went perfectly, but because of the people who showed up. Like Eric helping me film the most challenging shots, freezing just as much as I did, but still pushing through. My mom being the best assistant and taking care of me when I was completely drained. Laughing and joking with my family between takes. Jonathan taking a break from his exams just to help us film, and really giving everything for the shots. And these incredibly talented kids who spontaneously joined in without really knowing what this project was about. And that's when it hit me. Football isn't just about goals or winning, it's about showing up for each other, sharing the highs and lows, and realizing it's okay to lean on someone else at times. And honestly, that's what this project became too. And now it's finally time to reveal the results. I know you could have made like a 20 second video and then that would be good. What a crazy journey this has been. Meeting the other creators was such a fun experience. And honestly, it stopped feeling like a competition pretty quickly. And instead, it felt like hanging out with friends. It inspired me in so many ways. Their work is just next level. So make sure to check them out and decide for yourself who you think won. We'd love to hear it in the comments. And if you're curious about the device I used to bring this project to life, you can learn more at lenovo.com slash Lenovo Aura Edition. Huge thanks to Lenovo and Intel for supporting this project. It truly means a lot. Sorry.