The Story of India with Michael Wood is a six part series made in HD for the BBC and PBS by Mayavision Int. I worked closely with the production team, Michael, the presenter and Gerry, the editor to produce in programme content alongside the shooting and editing process.
The first clip is a reimagining of the ancient city of Patna, using simple 3D elements combined with archive footage of parades from the 1930's.
The second clip (right) is to of the marriage of Sita and Gita, a famous story and mural. The shot starts from a HD plate of Michael returning to his tent after drinking with locals, and the imaginary world he has been relating unfolds as though he is within it.
This clip is adapted from an aerial shot of the river Ganges, motion tracked and a CG impression of the city of Mohenjodero composited onto it. The camera move was also adapted to allow a swoop into the sea to show a mixture of archive and CG sailing boats.
The Mughal Family Tree. This clip was cut into short segments, as the narrative touched on each character in the dynasty. As we didnt have access to the original paintings of the emporers, I repainted them using Artrage. The scene was painted and then assembled in Blender, rendered using its compositing features.
Mayavision really wanted to show the tradegy of Raja Raja, a Tamil king, but the temple where the illustrations were restricted to hindus only. The guide they had with them entered and took some shot, but they were largely unusable. This shadow play proved to be an effective way of compensating for this, using library images of the paintings, split and relayered with a flickering firelight as lighting.