The 53rd Eid Al Etihad Official Ceremony

This is the fourth year that Boundary Visual Effects has worked on the UAE National Day celebration. My role was compositing supervision, and I was also responsible for the technical pipeline that moved shots smoothly from editorial to our team and back again.

This year was especially challenging. We completed “invisible” VFX work on almost every shot of the show, more than 210 shots in less than 48 hours. That would not have been possible without a reliable pipeline.

Shots are ingested automatically from editorial through a Python API that sends published edit shots to our Kitsu shot manager. Compositing supervisors and VFX producers assign artists, who can then create shots automatically in Nuke using established compositing templates. Once a shot is rendered and approved, it is returned to editorial or colour and updated in the timeline for publishing. Naming conventions, versioning, and automated safeguards reduce human error and let the team focus on the work.

I would like to thank the 12 VFX artists who worked non-stop in shifts to make this happen, as well as Red Knuckles and DONE+DUSTED for their trust.