Double Negative

Double Negative otherwise known as DNeg, are one of Europes biggest providers for visual effects in the film industry. They've worked on some of the greatest films within the to this day such as the recent Bond movie Skyfall, The Dark Knight franchise as well as the famous Harry Potter series.

To my surprise.. although they're well renown for their skills in visual effects and have worked on a great line of movies in their time, they state that they "support an invest in low budget British-qualifying productions in the 2-10 million budget range." To me that seems a lot! And even then, looking at the end results of say the recent success of Skyfall, I wouldn't have thought that it was a low budget movie. However, what's considered "low budget" varies from country to country and it also varies depending on the genre of film which was an interesting thing to discover. 

Back to DNeg..

I had the pleasure of sitting in some talks they did at the Bradford Animation festival and I can't believe how good they really are. The majority of their work is not noticeable in terms of, their visual effects look so real it's hard to notice the difference. They also mentioned that imperfection for them was key because that's what the real world is like. Sometimes you see some CGI and you can tell it's not real because it looks way to clean which is something they steer away from by using this principle.

Seems obvious but to find out that reference is key even within the industry makes me, as a student, feel like they're in good practice. The main source of reference for them was going out and taking photographs, whether it be cities or various materials, they spent a lot of time in the research department  This is because, they specialise in visual effects, they create things that don't exist so they need a lot of references to work from and to help build a picture so they know what they're aiming for as the project continues. 

To finish off, I managed to find a DNeg showreel showing some of the movies they've worked on. All in all, I'm really impressed with the titles they been a part of and I really stand by their principles in terms of good visual effects especially imperfection.