SciCast Notes:

Chroma-key (cutting people out of a plain-colour background and pasting a different background in) is hard. It’s particularly hard when you start compositing shots from multiple layers, as here. There’s lots of planning involved, and then editing your film afterwards always ends up more complex than you’d hoped.

Credit to this team, then, for planning in enough detail for the whole thing to come together. It’s also a very brisk film — there’s lots in it, but it doesn’t feel rushed, which is good.

One danger of chroma-key is that it’s easy to become a slave to it — the effects become the point of the film, rather than secondary to it. This film avoids that by keeping the effects jokey, but also making sure they have a point. The heat source for the wax is terrific, for example.

Personally, I’d have liked to have seen more of the wax doing its thing. It’s a rather lovely experiment, and I could happily have taken longer to admire it. But that’s a minor quibble, really.

So: well judged, well made, and well paced. Great work!

— Jonathan.