LORRAINE CINK: Marvel Studios' Moon Knight
has some otherworldly action, which
is why I'm breaking it down with VFX Supervisor Sean Faden.
Hey, Sean.
Hey Lorraine.
Now let's kick off with episode two
where we see Mr. Knight facing off
against that invisible jackal.
How did you and your team first start to approach that scene?
There was a lot of weight on this scene,
and making sure that it landed well.
It actually starts in the alleyways.
You've got Mr. Knight being sort of blown through this fence.
We spent a lot of time pre-vising this scene
because it was-- he had the complications of having
to have an invisible opponent.
The jackal is only visible occasionally
during the sequence.
We had a lot of storyboards that we
got from one of our main storyboard artists, Phil
Langone.
It wasn't for every single sequence,
but when we did get them, they were extremely helpful.
In the end, how we shot it was we
had a stunt person in a gray suit
pushing and pulling our stunt Moon Knight,
or Oscar and Layla around.
For me, the most important thing to capture for real
was leaping, or landing, or running.
We did shoot, when possible, references.
I think that if you end up doing too much CG
throughout every single shot, you end
up losing some of the reality.
So we always tried to shoot with real stunts.
While we're talking battles, we
have to talk about the end of the series
where we see your techniques taken to new heights
quite literally with a huge god versus god battle in Cairo.
How did you go about approaching that scene
and bringing it to life?
SEAN FADEN: It was a combination of a lot of pre-vis,
some storyboarding, a lot of back and forth
with our stunt team, trying to figure out what the best
flow of fight choreography was going to be for these moments,
and making sure that we were seeing Khonshu getting to be
heroic and seeing Ammit use some of her crocodile related fight
moves.
We actually did a lot of work within the Chamber of the Gods,
because we have a scene that takes place there
where Khonshu and Ammit are normal size, which means
they're actually 9 feet tall.
We had pre-vised all this stuff, and then
we went and we shot a lot of background plates
within our set, which sometimes are just looking at a column,
and the rest would be blue screen.
They created costumes for Ammit and Khonshu.
Real costumes that moved like the real thing, that
look like the real thing, that could be
lit like the real thing.
So it wasn't just guys in gray suits running around.
We actually had a lightable Khonshu and Ammit in our scene,
and they were able to act against each other.
The scale of the two characters mainly became an issue
when we were dealing with other actors that
needed to interact with them.
So if Oscar was talking to Khonshu, than Karim, who played
Khonshu on set, would be wearing an eyeline pole
to make him look 9 feet tall.
It was literally two ping pong balls
on the end of a composite rod that was attached to his--
like a lightweight vest that our props department made.
The gods are already quite tall,
but then they grow even larger.
How did you create this scene at such an epic scale?
So they're almost as tall as the pyramids,
and they're bashing around and wreaking havoc.
Weta created a full CG Giza plateau based on some lidar
that we had gotten from Disney archives.
We had a lot of work that went into figuring out just how
much dust or how much light should be hitting
these characters to make them feel big,
and what we found was the less light we put on them, the more
that we sort of played the light falling off on them,
the bigger they felt.
This is really just a tiny drop in the bucket of all
of the action in this series.
Looking back, are there any moments that you
think fans might have missed?
The series is jam packed with lots of cool details.
I don't think you're going to catch it on the first viewing.
I really think it's one of those things you have to watch
a few times to really appreciate all the detail
and heart that went into these moments.
All right, well I guess I'm going to have to go
start my rewatch right now.
So Sean, thank you so much for talking with us.
Well, I appreciate it.
Thanks Lorraine.
And everyone, be sure to go watch
Marvel Studios' Moon Knight.
All episodes are now streaming, only on Disney+.