Digital Up Magazine VISUAL EFFECTS milk Sherlock Christmas Special VFX Challenges For the DIGITAL MATTE PAINTINGS OF VICTORIAN LONDON Milk was briefed to enhance and perfect Victorian London, creating a digital matte painting street extension of Ludgate and adding additional people. The team was also tasked with transforming present day London locations Piccadilly and Baker Street to their Victorian period versions – undertaking a challenging crane shot, a street extension, adding and removing people and an aerial shot hiding present day markings. Milk’s JC Deguara, VFX Supervisor: »We studied old footage of the period for reference. Mark Gatiss also gave us reference imagery which included a caricatured illustration of Ludgate Hill to show the mood and feel they wanted to achieve.« In the SHERLOCK FREEZE FRAME MIND MAP Milk created the sequence in which Sherlock’s mind map reimagines the scene where the Abominable Bride is shooting into the street and examines it from 360 degrees. Milk made the rotating camera viewpoint so that the scene can be visually examined from every angle in Sherlock’s mind. The team blended two plates to create the rotating 180-degree camera move – which had been shot on a camera track around an actor who remained static for the take – revealing an outdoor set version of the lounge area of Sherlock’s Baker Street house. Extensive and intricate tracking work was required to map the shot perfectly, as well as period clean up and digital matte painting set extension work. For MORIARTY HEAD INJURY Milk animated a dramatic head wound for one of Sherlock’s dream sequences. To achieve this, Andrew Scott wore a circular green screen head cap with tracking markers on it for reference. Milk then modeled a skull with a hole in it and created a wound.