EIRA - teaser trailer

Last year a classmate of mine, Ingvild, told me about a story concept that she had written called "Eira". I was compelled by the idea and very inspired by the story she had created; she had written the story of a young woman named Eira, who accidentally awakens an ancient, godlike power. The story had roots in old, norse mythology and was inspired by the punishment of Loki in the lore. In her version, Ingvild had taken the creative liberties around the old tale, and created a scenario in which Eira awakens Loki and he returns to bring ragnarok upon the world.

This spring Ingvild and I decided to team up with the goal of exploring the concept and how the world of Eira would look visually - in other words, bring Eira to life.

The Project

We quickly decided to make a teaser trailer. Due to both of us working as interns full time on the side we limited the scale so that finishing would be possible.  During the pre-production we decided on the things we wanted to explore: none of us were familiar or had ever used photogrammetry, so in addition to filming and editing the trailer and do compositing on it, we decided that we wanted to try to create the statue of Loki using photogrammetry.

In order to make the teaser trailer we had to decide how we wanted to angle it and what story elements we wanted to tease. We quickly settled on the most pivotal scene in the story - where Eira stumbles upon a statue and awakens the power of Loki.  In the story the statue is going to transform into a person, and another classmate of ours named Karina wished to be a part of the project and test out this effect.

Storyboard

We started with a storyboard and assigned each other two shots each. 

Photogrammetry

Together with Ingvild I began exploring the world of photogrammetry. Long story short: it was time consuming and demanding to try to make a photorealistic statue good enough to be a hero statue on the short amount of time we had and with no fundamentals in place. We put hours of effort into it, and in the end we did get something to show for, although it was far from great. The end result is a puzzle of different meshes, and I ended up making the face in FaceBuilder in Nuke. Later we would test what changes and improvements we could do in Nuke to try to get some details back.

Filming

We went out on location and filmed our plates, which ultimately ended up being quite similar to the storyboard with only a few minor changes. For the filming it was the three of us serving as supervisors, light, camera and make up artists.

Editing and compositing

I edited the trailer in Premiere and all of the grading and sound mixing happened there. A personal goal of mine during this production was also to practice editing and how to build a suspenseful teaser using image and sound. Once the trailer was cut, I conformed and exported all of the plates so that they were ready to work on.

We had two shots each, but I will only be breaking down my own. Ingvild and I collaborated on the statue, but all of the compositing we did separately on our assigned shots, but obviously we communicated often to make sure they were all consistent and played well together. I was not responsible for the final outcome of the other shots and vice versa.

Both of my shots included much of the same: roto, integration of statue and other elements. The first shot also required some cleanup and mattepaint. The roto on the second shot is still a bit too hard. I think the finished shots would look better if the statue had been more high poly, but as we're not 3D artists I'm happy that we got something we could use either way and it was truly a welcomed challenge!

Final product

During our time with Eira we got to test how photogrammetry is done, integrate it in our own live action plates and got to work in a team where the ultimate goal was to create a consistent trailer in which all of the shots play well together and seamlessly tells a story.

The narration is in Norwegian, english CC available.

(The teaser is not associated with Netflix in any capacity. The name is only used because the streaming service is one of the pinnacle places for television these days and it is just wishful thinking. The association will of course be removed if deemed necessary. The trailer is unlisted. )