So much of our filmmaking process relies on the latest technologies
in virtual production.
[Orm] Deserters and the Trench had not yet fallen.
The Lost Nation had not yet vanished.
Virtual production is the marrying of visual effects elements
while you're on set filming the movie.
Basically, when the camera is pointed at the blue screen,
on a particular monitor, we can actually see
a version of the background
that will ultimately exist when people see the film.
It's interesting, they show you this pre-vis,
the previsualization of what the scene is,
which looks like a video game.
We had to understand how the characters were going to sit on those steeds.
[Carney] We take those pre-vis assets
and convert them into a mode where we can use them here on set.
We had to design what we call bucks,
which were essentially the proxies that the characters would sit on
that were then puppeteered while we were shooting.
We have arranged around the stage a bunch of motion capture cameras.
They can figure out what exactly that buck is doing.
Then, we're able to replace that buck with a CG version of our shark
and have it marry up to what the camera is doing all in real time,
[Willem Dafoe] They'd say, "Come here. This is what it's going to look like."
And they'd punch that in, and they would lay over this world
so we would have some imagination about what we were going to see.
Surface-dwellers! To arms!
lt takes this burden off of the director
of having to think, "Am I framed up correctly?
"Am I framing for the environment? ls the creature fitting in there?"
Kill them all!
It's slow work, it's complicated work,
and then, of course, it's always sweetened by special effects.
We built lots of sets for this movie with virtual reality technology.
[Benjamin Donnelly] VR is making a big impact in this film.
We can look around sets
in a virtual space to be able to make design decisions.
I primarily have been working on the Manta-Sub,
and VR lets you show people in a really exciting new way,
because you can actually get in there and test it yourself.
I have seen the virtual reality of my submarine, it's really cool.
Oh, this is so cool.
[grunts]
It's pretty phenomenal how through a combination
of high-tech visual effects, as well as more traditional techniques,
we were able to make this movie.
We did a thing which was like a wall of water,
where they came out of the wall of water into a void of no water.
There was a lot of testing, getting it right.
It was pretty tricky because it only stays in a sheet for so long
before terminal velocity breaks it up.
And we couldn't do a lot about that, but I think it worked really well.
The light was a really important part of creating this reality.
The challenge is creating this underwater world in a dry environment.
There's a whole way that light travels through water.
[Mcllwain] Any time you have light
crossing through this air-water boundary,
you're gonna get these natural refractions.
It's what you see at the bottom of a swimming pool
that says water, it really tells you where you are.
So, we tried to emulate that.
We actually have built water trays above us to manipulate the light,
and it makes you feel like you're underwater.
[Brzeski] What we did in some scenes is we created these walls of light.
[drill whirring]
lt added another layer to the reality of it.
‘Unanl Go! "[9Funts]
Every single shot has its own purpose-built gimbal rig
that allows us to be able to pull off what we need to do.
[man] And action, Mera!
Wait, you said we couldn't go over these walls.
-I did! -You said there were hydro-cannons!
[Arthur yelping]
When Arthur and Mera are zipping around,
we came up with the idea that they would need some kind of windshield
to help them be aerodynamic,
but the windshield is made from technology that can harden water
to give that glass-like quality to it.
But, inside the ship, there's also water.
There's a moment in the movie where a car gets hit by a tsunami,
and washes into the ocean, and washes around,
and lands up back on a road.
We had to make the car in the tsunami.
It was a centric spinning car
that's actually getting submerged at the same time.
It spins 360.
And it's quite obscure because James didn't want it like a pig on a spit.
[man] Two, one. Roll!
lthink, ultimately, because James and everyone involved
did such an amazing job of embracing the aquatic technology,
everything is really well executed.