How ActionVFX Stock Footage Benefits Ingenuity Studios
June 12, 2023
David Lugo
Matthew Poliquin discusses how Ingenuity Studios uses the ActionVFX library to create cost-effective, high-quality visuals.
Ingenuity Studios is a full-service VFX studio and customer of ActionVFX. Since 2004, they have served all four of the major markets that depend on VFX: television, film, commercials, and music videos. Their work has attracted renowned clients including Marvel, Hulu, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, and more. Their long-standing client relationships are a testament to their expertise and commitment to excellence.
We recently had the opportunity to interview Matthew Poliquin, the Executive Producer and VFX Supervisor at Ingenuity Studios. Matthew said that at the heart of Ingenuity Studios, their artists are problem solvers, dedicated to helping clients achieve what they couldn't on their own. ActionVFX’s collection of stock footage has helped them achieve this mission. As a studio, their strengths lie in pre-visualization, offering foundational guidance, on-set visual effects supervision, CG, compositing, and everything in between.
ActionVFX's Contribution to Ingenuity Studios' Library
In the interview, Matthew commended the versatility of ActionVFX's assets, acknowledging their significant contribution to their own library. He emphasized how the depth of ActionVFX's collection helps them maintain variety, ensuring that not every burning doorway, for instance, utilizes the exact same element. Matthew recalled how, in the past, he could easily identify which elements were used in fire and building collapse scenes. However, by incorporating a diverse range of VFX elements, including many of ActionVFX's assets alongside their own filmed and CG elements, Ingenuity Studios maintains a high level of visual authenticity.
“ActionVFX elements make up a big part of our library… The depth of your asset library goes a long way in helping us keep everything fresh.”
They also utilized a number of ActionVFX elements in this scene from Season 10 of The Walking Dead:
Additionally, their breakdown from The Good Lord Bird uses several ActionVFX elements:
As Matthew told us, “It’s really hard for me to say which projects and reels really feature Action VFX elements as, most likely, nearly all of them do!” Incorporating ActionVFX elements into their projects has allowed Ingenuity Studios to consistently achieve stunning visual effects that seamlessly blend with their overall compositions.
Crowd VFX: ActionVFX's Solution
Most recently, Ingenuity Studios provided crowd replacement VFX for the show Young Rock. Due to time and budget constraints on the back end of the season, their own computer-generated crowds were not feasible to use. Additionally, they found that the overwhelming majority of sports crowd stock footage was great for B-roll, but unsuitable as background elements. ActionVFX’s Sports Crowd VFX assets provided a solution.
“The pre-package sprite assets, in all their various angles, let us quickly put together custom crowds in a situation where we weren’t afforded the foresight to have production film sprite elements. The ability to quickly and easily change wardrobe colors helped us get the variety we needed, but also kept the crowd in the team colors we needed.”
The flexibility of the Sports Crowd collection was vital for the project. “The variety of angles and wardrobe colors… allowed us to shift the crowd to the University of Miami’s colors, and rotate/select angles that matched the individual shots,” Matthew stated. And ActionVFX’s elements will continue to impact workflows for their future projects.
“The Crowd VFX assets are a great tool to have in our chest. It fills the gap between traditional 2D tiling and full fledged, bespoke CG crowds. It’s nice to be able to have elements for a sprite-based approach when and where we’re not able to film them.”
It is a privilege to help studios like Ingenuity Studios succeed in their mission to tell powerful stories with high-quality visuals. We’re excited to see what they create in the future!
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