- Hi, I'm Daniel Kwan.
- I'm Daniel Scheinert.
- I'm Zak Stoltz.
- We directed.
- And I visually effected.
- Everything. - Everywhere.
- All at once. - Whoo.
- Oh, first take.
[Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Zak laughing]
[eerie music]
- [Narrator] Daniel's new movie is about
a Chinese immigrant,
who finds herself in a sci-fi action film.
[weapons smashing]
- We ended up having almost 500 visual effects shots,
but we did that with mostly just five people,
which is kind of unheard of,
you look at any modern movie
and you look at the visual effects credits
and it just goes forever.
- We ended up doing a lot
of music videos together where music videos
have no budget and very tight turnarounds.
Our film is a independent film,
it's fairly low budget for the ambition of the script
and this was the only way that we could pull it off.
It was so creatively fulfilling for us
because we love to be in there in the weeds as well,
'cause that's just how we've always done things.
- [Narrator] Daniel's used a combination of special effects
and visual effects to achieve the look
and feel of their new film.
- Special effects, their team is all
about the practical effects, the onset puppets,
visual effects is all in the computer.
- The movie had a lot of wire removal
and a lot of simple, secret, hidden visual effects
and then a couple sequences
that are just full-blown visual effects, craziness.
- [Evelyn] Across the multiverse, [screaming]
I've seen thousands of Evelyns.
- So Evelyn has to zoom through a lot
of universes to get to the desired one
which is a kung fu universe in which you can fight.
We knew for a while
that this sequence was gonna be in the movie
so I actually got just a little camera,
like a little pocket camera that shoots 4k,
and just everywhere I went
I would just kind of walk around
and just film streets like this shot
of New York was just me going through New York.
The camera had shutter angle and shutter speed setting,
so I just made it super blurry.
- The order of events is, Dan shot a bunch
of stock footage himself.
- We cut it together. - Then we cut that together,
acted it out ourselves to demonstrate it to Michelle
and she had to act,
I think, in slow motion, we tried different tempos.
- [Narrator] Then they placed Michelle
in front of LED panels.
- You know how on the "Star War" shows,
they have this massive LED screen
that is basically a good background?
We had the 99 cents store version of that.
Three panels this way,
three panels this way,
and they're vaguely LEDs,
they're really big pixels,
but enough that we could then send
the video footage through these LED screens,
they're very, very minimal
and Michelle could sit in the middle
and pretend to be flying through it.
- So we had these plates all linked together
and then what we did in visual effects,
was take it and say,
"Okay, well let's add Evelyn to this now
and what does it look like
when we're actually going by that fast?
Where are some of the additional elements
that we're gonna add?"
So we ended up toying around with a bunch
of different streaks that we were doing
anime-style motion lines
that were just barely perceptible,
adding some glass that would shatter
when we went through
and just adding as many things
to it that made it feel like there was
this extra energy to it,
without distracting too much
from what she was actually doing
and being able to see her actually going through this stuff.
- [Narrator] Now, let's look at how
the Daniels did a practical effect.
- The first time Michelle Yeoh does a verse jump
where she connects to another version
of herself in a different universe,
is in an office place, in an office cubicle,
she shoots back in her office chair
and flies through a closet door.
- What's happening?
- And the fun thing about that shot is,
it's a 100% practical in camera,
we didn't change anything.
We basically cranked open the shutter
so you get these really nice streaks
and then we pushed her,
slowly through the office,
she had to act, she was freaking out in slow motion.
- We had hidden a leaf blower behind her.
- Yeah.
- And so, it's just her in slow-mo
getting pushed on a wheelbarrow
and then we just sped it up
and she's actually
in the space flying backwards. - Yeah.
- Which was fun to introduce
verse jumping with something so practical.
- [Narrator] And with the practical effects
came a lot of puppets.
Some more interesting than others.
- So Jason Hammer and the Hammer effects team,
built our raccoon and our hotdog hands.
They functioned like this
but they were made with super-realistic skin
and I think maybe had
some hairs threaded in. - Yeah.
- It was basically just a glove
that the actresses could wear.
- Yeah, basically he molded our actress's hands
and then he just stuck hotdogs
where the fingers were and that's it.
- There's something about things
like that being 100% practical
that just makes shooting it so fun
and makes it so much easier
'cause the actors know exactly what they're reacting to
and they can play
and we didn't have to have someone act opposite
a tennis ball for the raccoon
or act like they had weird fingers.
They just had 'em, you know?
It's such a gift to ourselves and the whole crew.
[futuristic music]
- The core thing that we all realized
as we're doing visual effects on Daniel's film
is that it really does need to stay grounded
in what is going on in the story.
The visual effects should never overtake that.
There are moments
when we have big visual effects stuff going on.
- There's something so charming
about Michele Gondry's work, which we love,
and we were like, "We don't want this to be a movie
where there's waves of blue energy,
coming off of everybody as they punch each other."
This is decidedly not that genre.
We wanted to celebrate the magic
of just editing, of a jump cut,
of something popping and being something different.
- Yeah, it goes back
to one of the first sci-fi movies,
"A Trip to the Moon",
and that's what they did, just mashed cuts
and then smoke. - Mm-hmm.
- So simple, we're just doing that,
but with cheating 'cause we have after effects,
that's the only difference.
It really is all about the story.
500 visual effects shots done
with five guys in their bedrooms during the pandemic
and you watch the movie
and they're not perfect and they're not going for realism
but they work and they're beautiful
and I'm very proud of them
'cause they have their own unique style.
We need to be encouraging
other independent filmmakers to understand this language.
[futuristic music] Because this is how
all movies are gonna be made now,
is there's always gonna be some element
of visual effects,
even when you can't tell,
because the technology
has become so easy and effortless to use.