the original 1984 june film was criticized for being complicated confusing and incomprehensible
this was mainly because the original story was too intricate to be covered in just one movie
even if it was a long one june 2021 avoided this problem by deciding from the very start that the
story should take place over two movies for june the filmmakers wanted to get as much as possible
in camera which meant only doing effects digitally when doing it practically wasn't possible the idea
was to keep everything photo real and natural and to embrace the environment they filmed it
however the film takes place in a dry desert environment with harsh bright sunlight
and this kind of bright light would be very difficult to replicate on an indoor set for shots
of the ornithopters initially they thought about using led screens as a background for these shots
but there was no way the led screens would be able to recreate the bright and dazzling desert lights
so the team decided that if they were going to shoot something that was going to be outside they
would have to shoot it outside for the interior ornithopter work they actually built two 12-ton
ornithopters and took them out to budapest then they picked the highest hill they could find and
built a gimbal at the top of it this gave them a nice and flat horizon with the ability to move and
rotate their 12-ton ornithopter next they built a 7.5 meter high sand coloured ramp 360 degrees all
the way around gimbal this they called the dog collar this collar served two purposes
firstly it bounced the bright sunlight onto the ornithopter from all directions and secondly
when they shot the action focused on the actors the ramp in the background was out of focus
this blurred sandy background could then be blended with the background footage they'd shot
previously with six cameras in a helicopter flying over the deserts of the united arab emirates
even though sets would have been extended and other things would have been added digitally blue
screens and green screens weren't really a viable option and this was for a variety of reasons
one was because the actor gives a better performance when they are immersed in an
environment rather than surrounded by blue screens another was that light reflects off blue and green
screens and actually spills onto things around them giving everything a blue or green tinge
but perhaps one of the main reasons is that the vfx teams really wanted to ground
everything in reality knowing that under such intense sunlight virtually everything
becomes a reflective surface they knew that if they were to use blue screens they would also
appear on these reflections the solution sand coloured screens by using sand coloured screens
they ensured that the actors would still feel part of the environment that any color spilling
from these screens would also be similar to the environment and that any reflections appearing on
armor or people's faces would also be in keeping with the desert environment the clever thing about
using sand colored screens is that if you look at a color wheel you'll notice that the opposite side
of those orangey and yellowy sand colors you have blues so if you shoot a sunscreen background and
then invert the colors you effectively have a blue screen of course extensive tests were done to find
the right color for the sand and they found that depending on where the sun was during the shoot
they would lose a bit of color but on the whole this clever solution worked beautifully and if
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a lot of reference work was done with helicopters in order to get them to throw up dust swirls and
clouds but for some of the ornithopter shots they shot a helicopter directly from another
helicopter and then replaced it with their ornithopter the sandstorm was also based on
reference material of a real-life sandstorm in africa obtained by national geographic
this gave them a front on view of a massive sandstorm this helped him to find the balance
between how tremendously big and menacing it is and also how surprisingly slowly it moves
huge fans were used to blow the sound around during the shots and even though around 18
tons of sand and dust were used the vfx team knew they'd have to add even more digitally later on
it may seem like a bit of a waste of time fanning sound around on set when you're
going to add more digitally later but it's this real sound that really sells the shot
real sand sticks to people it bounces off objects and indeed itself using real sand made it easier
for the vfx teams to extend the effect and having real interaction as a base is key for creating
an effective visual effect even if it did mean that some crew members went home bright orange
perhaps one of the most interesting shots in the film and one no one really noticed
is duncan's outfit change here the vfx team had to change duncan's freeman armor to the white shirt
in the editing phase they realized that from a story point of view
they needed a shot of duncan in an ornithopter escaping from the palace
but they didn't have one however they did have a shot that they weren't going to use
of duncan in freeman armor going to see paul and jessica after the attack on the araki so
they used this shot and digitally changed the armor for the white shirt this shot although
may at first seem a bit ridiculous to do in cgi is in fact a perfect example of why when
and how to use visual effects and what a crucial tool they are in the filmmaker's toolkit
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