How the Latest VFX Techniques Immersed the “Masters of the Air” Actors in Battle
Masters of the Air, starring Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan, is the latest celebrated WWII epic from Band of Brothers and The Pacific executive producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman. The intense drama inspired by the 100th Bomb Group is the most detailed on-screen depiction of B-17 planes ever. The visual effects teams ...
How the “Wednesday” VFX Supervisor Created Thing, Nevermore, and More
The “mysterious and spooky” Addams Family gets revitalized in Tim Burton’s hit series Wednesday, which stars Jenna Ortega as the emotionally reserved child, complete with pigtails, black attire, and a deadpan affect that suggests this youngster is the oldest of souls. The story, from creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, is directed by Tim Burton ...
Best of Summer: “Nope” VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron on Creating That Spectacular Alien Creature
As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. Jordan Peele’s ...
“Nope” VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron on Creating That Spectacular Alien Creature
Jordan Peele’s extraterrestrial spectacle Nope has a secret you may not know about: the sky itself is a digital recreation. And among the roughly 700 effects shots in the film, VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron (1917, Life of Pi) admits it’s one of the most rewarding as “most people don’t realize they’re looking at a giant ...
Breaking Down the Astonishing Technology Behind Ava DuVernay’s “One Perfect Shot”
The cathedral wedding in John M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians. Diana Prince boldly crossing a World War I battlefield in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Lisa stuck on a zip-line suspended above a raucous crowd in downtown New Orleans, in Malcolm D. Lee’s Girls’ Trip. Cathartic, lovely, or almost distressingly hilarious, these scenes are indelible. What ...
How the “Moonfall” VFX Team Tapped Physics to Destroy the Earth
Don’t look up! The moon is on a collision course with Earth. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich, who brought us Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, returns with another global disaster movie in Moonfall (premiering February 4) that has a colossal twist. This time it’s up to NASA executive Jo Fowler (Halle Berry), astronaut Brian ...
“The Matrix Resurrections” VFX Supervisor Dan Glass Takes The Red Pill
In The Matrix Resurrections, there is an action sequence where Neo and Trinity jump off a skyscraper together in order to evade agents closing in on them. They float in the air for a few seconds as the sun rises behind them and we’re left wondering if they’ll fly off together. While speaking with visual ...
The Future of Immersive VFX Arrives With Dark Bay at Studio Babelsberg
The future of visual effects may be moving from post-production and right onto the set. At Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany, a new stage recently started helping filmmakers make the switch. The 109-year-old studio complex’s new Dark Bay Visual Production Studio is an LED-enabled stage that allows VFX to become part of production while shooting ...
How the Emmy-Nominated “WandaVision” VFX Team Made Magic
Laden with special effects, big-name stars, and an audacious high concept, WandaVision represented a big swing for Marvel Studios when it debuted in January on Disney+. The bet paid off. Creator Jac Schaeffer’s series quickly became one of the season’s most talked-about new shows and it’s now validated all that buzz with a whopping 23 ...
“Dickinson” Visual Effects Supervisor Lotta Forssman on a Sumptuous Season Two
Dickinson wrapped up its critically acclaimed second season this past February. The show’s premise, you might conclude from its title, is that we’re getting an up-close look at one of the most notoriously private American geniuses this country has ever produced. Only Dickinson, created by Alena Smith, takes the legendary poet Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) and dismantles the ...
Oscar-Nominated Visual Effects Supervisor Pablo Helman on De-Aging the Iconic Actors of The Irishman
We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on December 6. In 2015, visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman was working with Martin Scorsese on Silence, a stirring film about the Christian faith during 17th century Japan. The two ...
Oscar Watch: The Lion King’s VFX Supervisor’s Groundbreaking New Techniques
Earlier this year, Disney’s live-action remake of The Lion King landed as both a critical and box office hit. Pride Rock looked stunning. The animals appeared real. No creatures were harmed in the making of the film, and Beyoncé herself played Nala, protagonist Simba’s level-headed love interest and future queen. Alongside a star-studded cast, The ...
De-Aging the Iconic Actors of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman
In 2015, visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman was working with Martin Scorsese on Silence, a stirring film about the Christian faith during 17th century Japan. The two ended up having a conversation that ignited a technological advancement within the visual effects industry—one that will likely become a new standard in how images can be captured ...
How a Global VFX Effort Animated the Lovable, Lunatic Aliens in Men in Black: International
From Sony Pictures Imageworks headquarters in Culver City, California, visual effects supervisor Dan Kramer helped coordinate a worldwide array of CGI artists to produce some 2000 VFX shots for the aptly named Men In Black: International. Kramer, who previously animated Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania before switching to live action on ...
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World‘s Creators on the Trilogy’s Epic Conclusion
Director Dean DeBlois always knew How to Train Your Dragon would be a three-part series where fans would see its main character Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) grow up and bond with a loveable dragon named Toothless. Now in its final chapter How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World illustrates how the animation has matured in ...
VFX Artists Explain How They Made Venom Marvel’s Freakiest Character
For a superhero movie, Venom boasts an unusually strong cast of heavy hitters including Tom Hardy in the title role along with Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed. But in this Marvel Comics-based story, it’s the visual effects that drive the spectacle by transforming Hardy’s ordinary human reporter Eddie Brock into a tentacle-sprouting “symbiote” freak. To ...
How The Shape of Water‘s VFX Producer Turned a Monster Into a Romantic Lead
In the final part of this two-part interview, visual effects coordinator and frequent Guillermo del Toro collaborator Luke Groves reveals how he worked with the filmmaker to craft some of The Shape of Water’s most awe-inspiring sequences and reveals how he and the visual effects team at Mr. X walked the line between CG magic ...
The Shape of Water‘s VFX Producer on Creating the Year’s Most Unique Leading Man
For all its ambitious underwater sequences and that stunning central creature, it’s oddly easy to forget the technical majesty at work in Guillermo del Toro’s meticulous, Oscar-nominated The Shape of Water. Not for its lack of quality, in fact, quite the opposite. The work, which makes every inch of del Toro’s beguiling fantasy possible, is so ...
How the Oscar-Nominated War for the Planet of the Apes VFX Supervisor Reversed Human Evolution
The Planet of the Apes reboot has been a massive success, and its impact on the film industry is hard to overstate. It began with Rupert Wyatt’s 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes and carried on with Matt Reeves Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014 and his riveting coda, War for the Planet of the Apes, ...
How the VFX Team Created Rotting, Terrifying Ghost Sharks for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
What does it take to create the visual effects for a film as massive as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? Try hundreds of dedicated artists working on set and in locations around the globe. Moving Picture Company deployed some 700 visual effects artists, as well as an on-set crew, to create some ...
