Visual effects & CGI

Edward Berger

I told him, I want to destroy the images. I don't want to beautify them. I don't want to sentimentalize. I don't want to make them pretty. I want to destroy it. And this is what he came up with. And the third was, find a sound. You know, this should be a sound that, you know, everything is there to, you know, whatever it is, costume, makeup, production design, camera, VFX, music.

13:36 · jump to transcript →

Edward Berger

Paul will, in fact, get buried alive. Here you see one of the soldiers losing. It's also a scene from the book, by the way. Pretty much verbatim. It's very hard to shoot. We shot it in Barrandov Studios. This is a studio set. Barrandov Studios in Prague. This is one of our only studio sets. One of our very few. This is the VFX, how this kid explodes. Just to...

26:24 · jump to transcript →

Edward Berger

One carriage is real, the one on the left, and the one on the right that you see in the background is VFX, because there is no place in Prague with two train tracks next to each other, and this is how it was in Compiègne. From photos you can see how two train tracks stood across from each other. I'm very, very happy, if I can ever be happy with anything that I did,

1:03:06 · jump to transcript →

transitions from the entity to the crew, we did these little two frame dissolves to kind of soften the dissolves a little bit. So there's a couple in there and you'll see a couple later on. Yeah, it creates kind of a dreamy state. You'll see them later in the film. All of these shots of the exterior were CGI shots. Yeah, done by a VFX company called Bello. By Bello. That was very, very, very trepidatious about the notion of doing CG shots, entirely CG shots.

6:26 · jump to transcript →

I was looking at it and just saying, just take a moment. Just take a moment, kind of show her. I love the first time people see this. They're just like, wait a second. What? How did you do that? Where was the switch? Yeah, how did you do that? Yeah. And again, you're looking at, you know, Vanessa just doing such an amazing job. She's so sensational. And the work that we did with visual effects to keep her eyes brown. You don't see her put in contact lenses. And we just ran with that idea. We left her eyes brown through...

1:44:17 · jump to transcript →

resolution which is 3840 by 2160 and we're using an offline resolution called avid dnx hr lb which allows us to edit in ultra high definition quality and allows us to screen and create trailers and promo reels and you know so we're just working with like phenomenal um resolution and color from the word go which is great and also it means we all our visual effects come in at

1:50:02 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

Take it. Pick it up! Too slow, pal. We had to re-record dear Connor's dialog a couple of times because of his Glaswegian accent, which I, you know, understand just enough. But I think for the average American audience, they were a bit confused. Shit! It was really fun to do that stab. I really like special effects, especially when they have to do with, like, cuts or blood or gore, I think it's really fun. And so this is... And I wanted also much of the blood to be practical. I really hate VFX blood 'cause it looks so fake. And so in this scene, we have mostly real blood, but then VFX to either clean up or to match certain things. But everything we do is like a rig. So when you see the blood spraying out, it's always or almost always real... well, not real blood, but like real red fluid coming out of a pump. And then right off-screen, there's, like, SFX artists, like, pumping away at this can full of, you know, fake blood. Sir.

4:10 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

So, in my film, I really wanted the infected, if they were naked, to actually be naked, because I didn't want to have to shoot around modesty garments or do VFX and... And because Danny and I shot our film so differently, the way the infected look also had to be changed because I couldn't get away with some of the things that he was able to get away with, just because of the style, you know, shooting on iPhones, all that stuff, so... So, in my film, you see infected that are... more of them are clothed. And my reasoning for this basically was that you could say that, one, we're getting closer to civilization maybe, where we are in this part of the film or whatever civilization is left. And two, that one of these towns has just had, like, a big overtaking by the infected. So, you know, a town has fallen essentially and lost a bunch of people, and that was, in my head, why the infected in this movie have more clothes, mixed with some of the ones who are, you know, naked and skinny. Okay, So you just met Samson, who is great, love him, love his whole journey in this film. And then you meet his best friend, Kelson, his soon-to-be best friend, played by Ralph Fiennes, who is an icon of our times and a national treasure. So, that shot before was the real woman, and this is a dummy, obviously, 'cause we can't just be throwing women off of cliffs anymore.

8:57 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

So that was a mix of VFX blood and, like, rigged, like, real fake blood that comes out of this, like, sort of tube around his neck, which is really cool. And then you see, little little on the bottom right, Jimmy Ink walking towards the Bone Temple.

31:31 · jump to transcript →

She's actually a hair person. She did most of the hair work on this show as far as, like, for the fake bodies and, you know, all the eyebrows and eyelashes and beards and things that go on a fake body. That's what she did. She's sleeping. But, yeah, it takes a team. You know, the great thing about the digital, which there are a lot of effects in this film that we did digitally, and when I mean digitally, meaning we scanned...

1:25:11 · jump to transcript →

We sculpted, we digitally printed the molds, and then we did traditional casting from all the digital work. I would say about 35% of the effects that we did for this film, we did digitally. And again, I just explained what I meant by that, but they are practical effects. But because we did them digitally, it really gave me the ability

1:25:39 · jump to transcript →

a few digital effects. So we applied the wounds and, you know, basically did like a reverse heal and reveal effect. Applied the pieces and then they digitally close them up.

1:58:17 · jump to transcript →

Efficiency was crucial. No talking. Do you think that's because of two directors or? Yeah, I think so. Twice the oversight? That definitely helped because there was a whole, just to speak for myself, there was a whole bunch of stuff and it really related to the actors that I just didn't really have to think about. So I'd be thinking about camera and I'd be thinking about SFX or VFX or...

37:01 · jump to transcript →

i wish simon was here to talk about like i don't know if he used the actual map and then they or did it simon was our vfx supervisor so he and he he did a great job building that and also doing the set extensions on the set we had a whole street but there were a couple of blue screens and he would create the extensions of those streets yeah but like that map that you're seeing is like is is actually the actual like like that water tower if you're in ramadi

1:17:04 · jump to transcript →

I love the VFX, with the smoke coming out the window. Some of the finer VFX smoke I've ever seen. This is great. The car goes flying and it is painful. That's a real car. Flips over and smashes. I was not in the trunk when they did that. You wanted to. We were like, "Bob, you can't." Bob's like, "No, I want to do it." Method all the way. - I wanted to feel it. - And we had to restrain Bob from getting in the actual accident. It was pretty crazy. It hurts. You know, one of the things we talked about, Ilya, and you know I was concerned about is a lot of action leads and a lot of action characters, they go through real hell and they don't really seem to register it much. And I wanted to play the pain and sort of the concussion that he just had just now. I wanted to go at least somewhat close to it. And so it's just one of the things that drove us in an attempt to make something that might be, texturally, a little different from other action films you've seen where he would come jumping out of the trunk and ready to go with more fighting. In this case, he's hopefully, at least for a few seconds, exhibiting some of the shock and confusion that you would feel if you went through that trauma. Short story long, I used to be what they call an auditor for those three... I want to tell him who I am and that... 'Cause he wants to... He's got to speak. He's gotta share. Yeah. I think it's a pretty typical of... If we're still looking at it from the perspective of the alcoholic who hasn't drunk for 20 years and now he's drinking, he's gonna share that story. Shit. This is him. - And now I'm back to what I was. My family's at home in the basement. That basement moment is a lot of fun. I think that's where the movie trips over into another kind of movie. When the wife sees that behind the panel, lights switches, is the secret panel with a code that secures the basement entirely. Somewhere in here, he calls his dad and tells him to look out. Here come some bad guys, played by... Here comes the Hitchcock moment.

52:27 · jump to transcript →

Tim Burton

or anything, or soul psych. I mean, we did everything that we could. We have a little bit of digital effects sometimes, but one thing that both Michael and I talked about, and I said to enter the studio, I go, I'm just, you can do anything with anything, CG. You can do anything, but we don't want to do anything. We just want to do it. Even if it doesn't look real, the practical effects were important. So we did it with everything. We really did. Except for the sandworms, which was stop motion.

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