The first time the work was for someone else's vision.

Hållbart Professionell is a Swedish short film directed by Sebastian Johansson Micci. I was brought in to handle the VFX work — planes materialising across the sky above the subject, generated procedurally and composited into the live footage.

It was my first experience working within a real production — someone else's deadlines, someone else's creative direction, and a final deliverable that had to hold up on screen rather than just render well in isolation.

One particle system, hundreds of planes

The planes were built and animated in Cinema 4D using a particle system — each plane an instance distributed across points in the simulation, giving the shot its sense of scale without manually placing a single object. Redshift handled the rendering, which also meant learning a new renderer under a deadline.

Separating what's real from what isn't

The composite was done in Fusion. Luma keys separated the sky from the foreground figure, letting the planes sit behind her without a hard edge giving it away. The rest was cleanup — small inconsistencies in the plate that became visible once the rendered element was sitting on top of them.

Getting the planes to feel atmospheric rather than pasted on came down to matching the softness and exposure of the existing sky, which varied across the shot as clouds moved through frame.

Learning what a production actually requires

The technical challenges were manageable. What was less obvious going in was how much of the work is about communication — understanding what the director needs from a shot, and knowing when a technical constraint is worth flagging versus worth solving quietly. That's harder to learn from a personal project.