Abstract
- The 2006 “Battlegrounds” episode of Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Tales of Stephen King follows a hitman who faces off in opposition to a military of toy troopers after he murders their creator.
- The VFX artists at Hall Crew are impressed by the brief, praising the digicam work, scale-matching, and compositing concerned in inserting miniature toy troopers into a bigger world.
- Nightmares and Dreamscapes solely ran for 1 season, however a TV anthology present could also be a greater match for a lot of of King’s works, a few of which are not translating properly into feature-length movies.
A bunch of VFX artists react to the “Battlegrounds” episode of Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Tales of Stephen King. King is among the many most tailored authors in historical past, with motion pictures and TV reveals primarily based on his works nonetheless remaining immensely common at this time. Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Tales of Stephen King was a TV anthology sequence primarily based on a wide range of King’s brief tales, airing for only one season on TNT in 2006.
Now, on a brand new episode of Hall Crew‘s “VFX Artists React” sequence on YouTube, Niko Pueringer, Wren Weichman, and Jordan Allen analyze the “Battlegrounds” episode of Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Tales of Stephern King, which includes a hitman (William Harm) going through off in opposition to a military of toy troopers in his condominium after he kills their creator.
Whereas the action-packed TV brief does not function any CGI, it does function loads of intelligent visible results work to deliver the toy troopers to life, together with some unbelievable compositing. Try feedback from Niko, Wren, and Jordan beneath:
Niko: “That is rad.”
Wren: “It is a comp shot to be able to pretend that basically shallow depth of discipline you get once you movie small stuff. Wait, that is really actually good.”
Jordan: “It doesn’t have any proper to be so good.”
Wren: “So, clearly, there’s numerous unbelievable comp work occurring right here, however I feel the unsung hero right here is the digicam work. They’re capturing every part on set right here with a digicam that’s perhaps three toes off the bottom. So then they’re filming all these military males on a blue display screen that matches the on-set perspective completely. And it’s a must to scale that digicam transfer down in a manner that’s not the simplest factor to do. It’s really easy to mess up.”
Jordan: “The matching of the lighting, the matching of the digicam, the scale-matching. All extremely properly finished.
“They filmed all separate plates, comped all of them collectively, added the depth of discipline on the again to match the focal airplane. What’s actually cool about this, all of the props are full-scale. These jeeps that they’re lifting? Full scale. And so they rubberized them in order that they regarded the half since you want the smaller model to match the larger model.
“That is when visible results will not be an afterthought. That is when it is part of the method from pre-production on, and that is what it may do.”
Nightmares & Dreamscapes Deserves One other Shot
Some Stephen King Tales Do not Want A Characteristic-Size Adaptation
Yearly, a handful of King’s tales are tailored for both the large or small display screen. Sadly, an important a lot of them find yourself lacking the mark. The truth is, of the final six King variations, just one – 2019’s Physician Sleep – has managed to attain larger than 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. Whereas there are a bunch of the reason why a few of these variations do not work, a persistent drawback is that King’s brief tales and novellas are tailored into feature-length movies when the supply materials could also be higher suited to a shorter TV particular.
Nightmares and Dreamscapes was a short-lived sequence, evidently not boasting the viewership required for a season 2 order, however the format allowed for King’s shorter works of fiction to be tailored pretty faithfully. 2020’s disappointing Kids of the Corn, for instance, solely boasts 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is doable that, had King’s brief story of the identical identify been condensed right into a 50-minute episode of TV as an alternative of a 93-minute film, it might have been more practical.
The success of Netflix’s Black Mirror suggests that there’s an urge for food for anthology-type horror reveals, and King’s identify alone stays a draw for audiences. What’s extra, a revived Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Tales of Stephen King would probably do higher on a streaming service than on TNT, with streamers permitting for extra flexibility by way of episode depend, size, and price range.
Supply: Hall Crew/ YouTube