Published Wednesday 2 February 2022 by Mark Brindle in Post Production

VFX Reel and Colour Grading for My Bloody Banjo Feature

We have been working through a massive list of post production 'fixes' for the debut feature film directed by Liam Regan, My Bloody Banjo.

Liam first contacted us in March 2021 and was looking for a one stop post production house to help finish his film. He said "I made a feature length horror comedy movie around six years ago titled "My Bloody Banjo" and we've been assembling a new edit of the movie to release independently on blu-ray. Unfortunately, as a first time filmmaker, many mistakes were made whilst shooting the movie."

Liam had the new edit at picture lock at 25p (the original frame rate it was filmed at on a RED cine camera) and was getting sound post work started, so the film had to be finished at 25p and then converted to 24p for the Blu ray release.

"We're looking essentially at: 25fps to 24fps Conversion + VFX + tidy up Colour Correction & Colour Grading then BDCMF encoding and blu-ray menu creation / conversion of supplemental material from 25fps to 24fps" said Liam in the initial email.

There were a lot of tidy-ups to do and some new VFX to create with pink particles (pixie dust effects), post fixing the prostetic face of one of the main characters 'Ronnie' in places where it had broken up around the mouth, some added blood (although there was a lot of that already!), removing strong lighting in some shots where the reverse didnt match or trying to match grade both sides properly, removing plastic sheeting from a ceiling in a particularly gory scene.

We were rotoscoping Ronnie's purple suit towards the end in the office scenes so it would fti in to the original grade which was changing blues/purples into teal colours, adding gunshot VFX, removing a nasty pimple from the main characters chin in a few scenes where it didnt match, removing dirt from the walls, fixing a problem with a head explosion that was shot against a white sheet, fixing the heavy makeup colour on some of the characters faces, removing tags from a pair of jeans, removing light swicthes and plug sockets from shots, removing a crew member from a few shot (holding a script to be removed too!).

Ronnie prostetic face - crack around mouth to be fixed in post

It was a lot of work for us but we started with a spreadsheet of 155 things required with timecode and a traffic light system of important, minor and negligble to help plan what could and couldn't be done in the budget. Then we had a few extra requests as the post work went along and found some of the initial shot list were multiple shots so ended up with closer to 200 individual VFX shots plus the colour grading.. but we managed to cope very well with all the fixes and come up with a few compromises on light sockets along the way (it is not a period peice) and still enjoy it!

We did the post work in 4K with the RED files in Davinci Resolve, using various tools and plugins, Davinci Fusion and After Effects with some help from Colin at Colour247 on the particle system.

A scene with very strong lighting that didnt match the reverse

The VFX Reel for My Bloody Banjo will be included on the Bluray but you can watch it in the link above - its a bit gory in places and rated as 'Mature' so be careful!

For more information see on our Post Production Services, then get in touch to discuss any help you need with your next film project.