- We're gonna break down how we lit
Machine Gun Kelly on fire.
- Let me come show you guys how I got like this.
(laughing)
(dramatic music)
- My name's Ivan Moran.
I'm visual effects supervisor
for "Project Power" for Netflix.
"Project Power" tells the story of some shady group
that manufactures a drug, which is tested on individuals.
It gives the individuals super abilities or powers
for five minutes.
- It doesn't just give you this awesome ability,
it also has a consequence to it.
But his body depletes constantly as he takes it.
- [Crew Member] 1001, 1002, 1003, stand up.
- We did a camera test, just somebody's feet
walking through frame.
We devised little flaming footprints,
embers that came off the floor.
We then did the repeated stunt fire test.
When it was all put together with some CG fire added,
it looked fantastic.
The one problem that remained,
and it's the hardest thing of all, is the lighting problem.
Solve the problem of how to illuminate the actor
from what would become the fire on his body.
We came up with this LED suit,
which was strips of LEDs that could be programmed.
- This is the first time they actually cast me
without needing to read or audition for the movie.
And funny enough, this is the first time
I didn't ask any questions
and wished I would have asked a question. (chuckling)
- This is particularly groundbreaking
and a bit of an industry first
because it's a programmable LED suit
that's actually embedded in full screen prosthetics.
It's meant to be on camera.
The problem was that we wanted to do full body prosthetics.
So the problem became, how do we attach these LED panels
'cause it's not just the panels.
They have wires, they have battery packs.
So we actually embedded the wires and the panels
within the layers of the prosthetics themselves.
The idea is not that we're changing an actor entirely,
we're always wanting to keep
as much of Machine Gun Kelly's body
and face, most importantly,
to really harness that wonderful performance that he gives.
- Five hours of makeup every day.
(fire crackling)
- And the LED lights,
once they've warped and changed a little bit,
they kind of look like crispy coals on a fire,
which was the idea that we wanted for him.
- The scene I'm shooting this week is basically,
this is my home, Jamie Foxx comes to visit me
'cause he's trying to figure out
where the power pill is coming from.
And then he shoots me with a shotgun.
- The pills have amplified the subatomic vibrations now
to such an extent that superheated boiling steam,
is actually happening inside his body.
(dramatic music)
(shotgun fires)
(fire whooshes)
The shot where he's in the chair
was meant to be a highly explosive element
so we chose a mannequin
and we exploded it on fire.
On top of it, we build a digital version
of each of our characters
so that we're able to augment them.
And so this was one of the few shots
where the character that you see in the chair
is purely digital, a purely digital version
of Machine Gun Kelly,
and then various CG elements have been added
in terms of fire and explosions and embers
to really give it that sort of terrifying feeling.
(fire whooshing)
So this is one of my favorite shots
principally because of the performance
from Machine Gun Kelly himself.
It's so violent and powerful and terrifying.
What we did is we shot him with his LED suit.
We made sure even with him on set,
that we had little bits of real fire on the wall
that we could build up.
The first pass that you see is essentially
the digital version of Machine Gun Kelly on top
with extra fire elements added.
As we're wiping between these layers, what you'll notice
is that there's two patches of real fire
on the wall and behind the chair
that were actually for real onset.
The next layer, which features the CG fire,
you can see that they match each other.
(dramatic music)
(fire whooshing)
(grunting)
(dog snarling)
One of my other favorite shots is Machine Gun Kelly dropping
through the holes that we presume he's actually made
in order to navigate this building.
We don't really know.
You can see in the plate, it is actually Machine Gun Kelly.
He's on a wire harness that gets painted out.
We then match his performance
from an animation and lighting standpoint
with the digital double.
And once we have that step,
then we're able to add all of the elements
that we have in our library in visual effects.
Interactive lighting,
more lighting onto the body of the character
and all of the various fire, steam and smoke
and ember elements.
Once we had those matched,
we then took a little bit of creative license
to move the fire.
We really wanted it to be a character.
So it moves around his body.
And by slight happy accident,
one of the visual effects artists had too much volume,
for lack of a better description, on his fire setting.
And when it was rendered,
it looked like the digital double character
was almost like a blowtorch.
It looks a little unrealistic, but it was quite fascinating
and the directors really wanted to employ it somewhere.
So where we employed it,
is the shot where Machine Gun Kelly reignites
after taking the three pills.
- Doot, doot, doot, doot.
Hah. Hoo.
- He puts his hands on the walls, and then when he ignites,
he ignites in this incredibly ferocious
human blowtorch kind of way.
Almost a desperation level to get his phone.
(fire whooshing)
(water splashing) (fire sizzling)
- [Art] Where'd you get this shit from?
Who's making it? Tell me the source.
- Science in this moment is that he's essentially OD-ing.
- I ain't telling you shit.
(punches landing)
- The bathtub sequence at the end
was particularly compelling,
but also particularly challenging.
Could we have him in the suit and add the water?
Probably not.
So then I was back to the,
how do I get the interactive light on the actor problem?
So we had LED strips around the bathtub
that we could program.
We start with the original footage
where we can see the strip lighting
from the LED lights in the bathtub
which gives us that all important interactive lighting.
And we begin to layer up
the various visual effects elements.
So we have steam, we have embers
and we have the fire itself
that we can turn off and on
to give us this stop-start spurty feeling
that we like from the bathtub R and D.
There was one particular moment in one of the bathtub shots
when one of the artists managed to produce
what became known as the Firebird.
(fire sizzling)
- [Newt] Help me, Agent!
- And so all of this fire started
coming out of the digital double's mouth
for no particular reason.
- He took too much.
- And when we looked at it, we were like,
"Oh, we have to do that."
- It's Biggie. - Speak up, son.
- [Newt] I still have to go there.
- Where's he at? - I don't-
(Newt gagging) (fire sizzling)
- [Art] How many did you take?
(water bubbling) (fire sizzling)
- This particular shot is really, really fun,
but funnily enough, it's actually one of the most
challenging ones we found in visual effects
because the fact that it's shot overhead
means that every kind of explosion that we tried,
every fireball, every burst of steam,
covered the camera, you couldn't see anything.
So it became this incredibly crafted art-directed moment
in visual effects where there is an explosion,
There is an explosion of steam,
all the elements are in there,
but they're all crafted so that you still see our actor
thrashing about and you still catch a few frames of his face
just as he's about to explode.
And I think that's what makes it terrifying.
So I'm really proud of this shot.
It was very difficult, but it's awesome.
- I'm very excited to add this character to my resume.
(chuckling)
(rubble clattering)
- Thank you so much for watching.
Please check out "Project Power" on Netflix.