The Travel Writer is Heidi Ewing’s second narrative feature: a travel writer sets off to a remote Sicilian village in 1985, and the story moves between the island and New York.
Delivered across three weeks, each shot finished and cut into the film inside a five-month post schedule. Object removal, set extensions, and generative coverage where a reshoot wasn’t possible — Runway ML and Adobe Firefly among others.
Knowing the story is what let me specify the shot. The VFX team was in Malta and unsure they could get movement into the background, and what Ewing wanted was easier to show than to describe — so I generated the version the scene actually needed and put it in front of them. We built the assets from there, and it is the shot that is in the film.
The car removal was an editorial decision before it was a technical one. Ewing wanted the scene earlier in the film, but the Fiat parked in it is a plot device the story introduces later — moved as shot, the scene would have given it away. Taking the car out made the scene portable, and it went where the cut wanted it.
The generated POV was a story problem too. A wine barrel recurs across a whole movement of the film, and the shot that registers it the first time never got made — location moves took the day. It was buildable because the room was already covered from other angles and sizes in other scenes: enough reference to reposition the camera and generate his eyeline on the barrel. The prop arrives where the story needs it.