Mix it up
Combining VFX and SFX
Creating Lucy Pearman’s pilot show Please Help, called for inventive thinking, making it the perfect project to blend SFX and VFX.
The short pilot episode of 15 minutes was packed full of FX gags, as we follow the story of a young single girl (with super powers) as she navigates life living with her nan, while looking for a boyfriend.
Levitation rig
Bleeding hands element shoot
Super strength rig
Lexhag built a range of physical tricks, including super-strength rigs, levitation devices, prosthetic hands that heal, and several other unique gags. Typically, a range of departments would be employed to contribute and do their part, but because time and money were scarce, Tiger Aspect allowed our creative teams to let loose.
First up was a levitation device. These exist in the rigging world and is not dissimilar to a camera crane. However, when it called for levitating the hero of the show in the smallest cafe in Chipping Norton, we had to build a rig that could be used in that space.
After a coupe of iterations, we built a parallelgram with a Uni-cyle seat, that sat inside a chopped retreat chair. At unfortunate moments Lucy would gently levitate out of her chair ending up on the table in awkward positions. The other limitation we had was the location was only available for four hours, and a whole load of other scenes needed to be captured before our trick shots.
