The third season of "Snow Country Train" has released a trailer, which is scheduled to be broadcast on January 24. The series continues the film's setting, telling the story of a very small number of people who survived a train seven years after the temperature plummeted and the world turned into a frozen earth. We spoke to Darren Bell, VFX producer of TNT Snow Train, about how he manages a remote team at a lakeside cabin on Acton Island.
Remote collaboration is nothing new when it comes to visual effects, but it rarely becomes the primary way of working. In the era of the epidemic, it has gradually become the way of working for some industries and companies, including film and television production.
Even COVID-19 can't stop the snow train from running in the cold days. The second season of TNT's Snow Country Train (based on Bong Joon-ho's 2013 film of the same name and Jacques Lob's 1982 comic strip novel Snow Train) tells the story of seven years after the world became a frozen wasteland, and the surviving humans lived on an eternally moving giant train with 1,001 carriages, divided into classes. The rich elite dominate the front, the poor nestle in the tail, and the people who have been oppressed all their lives decide to stand up and resist.
VFX producer Darren Bell has worked on the Snow Train series since the first installment, but the second season presents a different challenge: Bell can only perform his duties remotely due to the COVID-19 lockdown. So, in the second season, Darren arranged filming at his Lakeside Forest Villa on Acton Island, a two-hour drive north of Toronto.
Bell said: "We have never seen our customers in person, all working remotely. Luckily, over the past 12 years, I've worked intermittently with Geoff Scott, the VFX supervisor of Snow Train. We're friends and colleagues, so it's easy for me to trust him and he's for me. No matter where we are or what we're doing, all that's needed is cineSync and a phone call. ”
Can you tell us about the visual effects of the second season of Snow Train?
The number of VFX shots increased from 1200 in the first season to 1600 in the second season, co-produced by FuseFX, Mr. X, Image Engine and Torpedo Pictures.
Although the first season mainly took place inside the Snow Country train, the environmental scope of the second season was expanded. For example, Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) ventures outside to find out if the temperature on Earth's surface is rising. In episode 206, we see her at a research station on the hill. In episode 210, Josie Wellstead (Katie McGuinness) climbs onto the roof of the train.
We also have some fantastic shots, like when the car in the aquarium explodes at the end of episode 210. This was not a fireball, but rather a block of ice that rapidly expanded to the point where the metal could not bear it and exploded. It's fun to make icy tentacles and wrap all the turtles and fish together. Everything turned into a big block of ice until the metal reached its breakpoint.
How do you start planning your shoot and decide on the best way to shoot?
The writers of Snow Train are free to conceive of magical environments and action scenes. Geoff and I would read the script, find out the basic elements of the story, the producers, and the studio, and determine what to do with the story while maintaining the budget. Often, you can tell the same story with fewer shots. It's clever editing and storytelling.
All of this is part of the ongoing creative collaboration process. From the beginning of the project to the end of the project, we are involved. We start with storyboards, talk to our suppliers, do rough shot occlusion, get the results, and then go into animation until rendering. cineSync's remote review and lens approval supports us through all phases of the process.
From a remote perspective, is there anything that is difficult to make?
In one shot, several weather balloons take off with cameras and see the snow train circling the earth from the earth's outer atmosphere. We had to make sure that there was enough clarity to see the train from this angle, and that the audience could see details such as the flickering light on the train.
To be honest, the train itself is a character. In the second season, we had more close-ups of trains, so the team restructured the assets to improve render detail. We also had to study how fast the snow was catching and how it helped the audience feel how fast the train was moving. In episode 207, we have a close-up of the whole train turning around, and it's difficult to balance the speed; the back of the train looks different from the front because it's very far behind in the environment. We have to think about all these things, and even more.
CineSync is crucial for all of these lenses. Even if I work from home, I can still connect with the team and work directly and make sure the results meet the client's expectations.
ftrack's software CineSync
How has the way you review and approve footage changed since the outbreak?
I've been using cinsync for 17 years. You can have a client anywhere in the world that can draw or correct colors on the screen in perfect sync with them.
When Geoff and I started the first season of Snow Train, our office was in Langley's studio and our supplier was in Vancouver. So we'd use CineSync, where ten people would sit in a room looking at the screen, have conversations through Polycom, and the vendor would do the same thing on their side. The second season is different, when the outbreak breaks out, we have a communication network instead of direct peer-to-peer phone calls because those 20 people are in different places. So, thanks to CineSync, everything is still managed.
Because of the pandemic, we missed the important thing about the second season of Snow Train, which was working in the same office as the editors. When making a TV series, you'll usually work with three or four editors in the post-production office, and at certain times during the day, you'll sit down with them and talk for 10 to 15 minutes. Get lots of information, share notes, explain what you need to use, what you don't need, and so on. When you're not in the same office, you don't have that opportunity. Fortunately, CineSync helped fill that gap.
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