dneg was fast and furious 10's main VFX partner and in addition to some smaller ones they handled
two major sequences in the film The Rome rolling bomb sequence and the Portugal Chase in the third
act involving the cannon car sequence the car jump tunnel grab and the highway chase sequence
an interesting thing about the Rome rolling bomb sequence was that it was shot in a lot
of different locations some were shot in Rome some in Turin and because the sequence has a
certain Pace to it some of the locations had to be compressed distance wise so the final
route the sequence followed isn't actually true to real life they then had to combine these two
locations to create the Rome environments either by altering the plates shot in Turin and adding
Roman features or by enhancing the plates shot in Rome for obvious reasons they couldn't just
drive a car and roll a one-ton ball down the real Spanish Steps in Rome so they recreated the steps
on a Studio Lot in London to shoot the ball and car portion of the action and then shot the live
action portion with the extras on the real Steps in Rome then they composited both shots along with
additional CG pyro elements smoke dust and a CG Fountain Della barcatcher for the explosion they
started by referencing both both nuclear and underwater explosions throughout history and
their final explosion was a hybrid of both from their references they learned that these kinds
of explosions generate a lot of dust and Visually that dust overtakes pretty much everything else
so the building destruction around the explosion became almost secondary and the final look was
really the overwhelming dust that is created by these types of big explosions for the Shockwave
sequence they looked at real-life references of tornadoes and hurricanes that reach up to
150 miles per hour they referenced what would happen to the trees the buildings and the water
and then tried to recreate something similar the six carabinieri police cars had explosive
Rams set underneath them and these were set off in sequence whilst Dom's car was set on a rig
that was designed to lift it up onto its front bumper and then drop it safely back down again
these Rigs and Rams were then painted out and both the explosion and Shockwave itself were created in
Houdini with lots of different passes to determine the different types of debris building destruction
the water simulation spray and waves and the dust from the ground below FX were involved in various
sequences including agent Ames high-tech minimalist briefing room some digital set
extensions for the Toretto house the lift shaft fight sequence that occurs as Cipher is escaping
from her high-rise building Jacob and Little Bees Escape in their canoe plane and the big
fight that happens between Letty and Cipher in the medical lab as well as the medical robot which was
a practical robot in wider shots where you don't see it moving but for the close-ups and animated
shots they built a digital version based on lidar scans and photography of the Practical model they
then augmented it adding new tools and details to create a bit more movement and interest in the
shots and adding a little Hal reference in there too they also worked on the escape from the black
site and the endless icy environment where Letty and Cipher are greeted by a cresting submarine
breaking through the ice the icy environment was created and rendered in Unreal Engine this
enabled them to quickly Block in Mountain shapes and easily Jump Around camera angles making it
easier to find a composition that worked across all shots once they had the base environment they
generated a library of FX simulations of snow dust and other particulate being blown around
that they could mix and match depending on the shot lighting the sequence was more complex they
had a stronger sun-lit directional look for the wide shots like where the submarine is cresting
through the ice and had to balance that with some close-up plate photography that was shot
under more overcast conditions one big focus with the Stark sunlight was ensuring there was enough
detail in an otherwise featureless environment unfortunately a snow-bound environment like
Antarctica naturally looks oddly CG so it was important to pick up interesting Shadows or
specular kicks on the snow so that it didn't read as unrealistically plain the CG submarine itself
was based on an akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine with some artistic license to
ensure it matched with a partial set piece for interaction with gal gadot's character Giselle
ghost VFX was tasked with working on the bridge sequence this sequence occurs on a fictional
bridge over an expanse of water in Rio de Janeiro and since the majority of the sequence was
fictional it required a lot of VFX work including CG explosions and fire simulations digital set
extensions and Sky Replacements CG smoke Embers and dust pyro elements and bullet impacts digital
tire marks and Digi doubles CG helicopters water simulations and of course the bridge itself
after after all why some people really enjoy the Fast and the Furious franchise movies and why
some people hate them and why some people just don't care but one thing we should all do after
seeing the tremendous amount of work skill and planning that goes into making them is respecter