With a VHS Recorder
One of these visions involved making the film look like an over-watched video cassette from a rental shop. To capture this special VHS look with the errors of analogue playback, Fido used, among other things, an old VHS player whose playback was transferred to the computer and recorded digitally. The Fido team also based its work on the look Sandberg had developed with After Effects for the trailer—but implemented it in Nuke with around 20 to 30 controls, so the compositing artists could adjust the parameters for the look at any time.
The team also worked on the project with Maya, Houdini, Mudbox, Pftrack, ZBrush, 3ds Max and Photoshop; rendering was done with V-Ray, and colour grading used an exaggerated, colourful, luminous look. The project was organised through Ftrack, the tool originally developed at Fido.
Producing the 400 VFX shots with the limited budget available presented Fido with its greatest challenge. The fact that Sandberg had filmed almost all scenes with a static camera, but ultimately wanted a great many camera movements in the film, also created considerable additional work. Only a single soldier was filmed in front of a green screen for the Nazi soldier troop; for the film, he had to be transformed into an army of several thousand men—the Houdini soldier crowd tool kit and many breakdown videos can be found on the Fido website at: http://www.fido.se/project/kungfury
Outlook
David Sandberg would like to win Hollywood over for a feature film so that the kung-fu renegade cop can soon flicker across the big cinema screen; he is currently working on the new screenplay. More than 20 million YouTube clicks for “Kung Fury” are at least a very good argument for a follow-up project.
All further information about “Kung Fury” on the website.
Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 14, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
