You simply can't make a superhero film without relying on the work of visual effects artists
to some degree, but the level of reliance in the modern age has reached heights that
it can be difficult to really understand unless you see the original footage with your own
eyes.
Christopher Nolan is known for taking a practical approach to effects whenever possible, but
even he turns to the VFX team from time to time.
Visual effects co-supervisor Dan Glass revealed that the movie had nearly 600 effects shots.
One of the most challenging jobs that Glass and his partner Janek Sirrs faced was making
the Batmobile look convincing, which they achieved through a mixture of trick shots
and miniatures.
The "miniatures" they created weren't actually that mini at all: they made a three quarter-scale,
five-foot Batmobile.
Glass explained:
"The key with miniatures is scale, and Janek pushed hard to use large miniatures.
Some were 35 feet tall."
UK-based visual effects house Double Negative completed half of the 600 effects shots in
the movie, and it was nominated at the Visual Effects Society Awards for its efforts.
“So, what do you think?”
“Does it come in black?"
Keanu Reeves' relationship with the Hollywood press has always been love-hate.
2005's Constantine was one of the hate moments, as the majority of movie critics bashed the
supernatural DC flick.
The film suffered from a fundamental changes deep into production, according to Deak Ferrand,
Hatch FX co-founder and lead matte painter.
He explained:
"We began working on Constantine in April of 2004, the original delivery was set for
the end of July.
However, in mid July as we were finalizing the final composites, there was a drastic
change in direction, which resulted in starting a new concept phase."
Fans of Green Lantern first started to worry about the adaptation when they discovered
that Hal Jordan's suit was to be made entirely from CGI so that the VFX teams would have
some "flexibility" with the design.
Ryan Reynolds wore a tracking suit, and all the effects were added in after filming.
"So how they did that was using a motion capture suit, which has all these dots and you look
like a crash test dummy.”
In the end the suit itself was passable, but the unnatural-looking mask wound up ruining
the overall effect.
While many people pointed to the substandard CGI, Reynolds blamed the script for the film's
failings, revealing that it hadn't even been written when he signed on to star.
He told Yahoo!:
"When we shot Green Lantern, nobody auditioning for the role of Green Lantern was given the
opportunity to read the script, because the script didn't exist."
In the end, most audiences had the same reaction.
"Ah!
Green!"
Three years after debuting as the Man of Steel, Henry Cavill was back in the red cape and
facing off against Ben Affleck's Batman.
According to Scanline's VFX supervisor Bryan Hirota, director Zack Snyder came to him with
an idea for a montage that showed Superman saving people all over the world, which he
wanted to intercut with news stations debating whether or not the Kryptonian was welcome
on earth.
Henry Cavill was digitally dropped into numerous dangerous situations and natural disasters,
one of which was a huge flood.
While the finished product looks pretty convincing, it turns out it was shot on an asphalt backlot
in Michigan.
Hirota told Art of VFX:
"In post we used our flowline software to simulate the river and debris going around
the houses.
We extended the environment with added extra houses, trees and distant mountain ranges."
After that, it was a simple matter of dropping Superman into the mix, and just like that
you have a disastrous flood.
It bombed hard with critics, but DC's anti-hero ensemble Suicide Squad still made a ton of
money.
A lot of visual effects went into the film, so much that the load had to be divided between
17 different VFX houses.
One such company was MPC, whose workload included Harley Quinn's elevator fight scene.
MPC visual effects supervisor Seth Maury told Art of VFX:
"Plates were shot of Harley fighting with a practical actor...Our goal was to replace
the heads on these practical actors so that the eyes on the head were alive and blinking
during each shot, and so that the head breathed and pulsed."
Maury revealed that his favorite part of the sequence was "blowing up" these heads, every
one of which was unique down to the last detail.
The DC Extended Universe was given a breath of fresh air with Wonder Woman.
The film looked great, thanks in no small part to the work of effects companies like
MPC, who contributed around 500 visual effects shots.
Led by VFX supervisor Jessica Norman, the MPC team helped create the epic beach battle,
the no man's land sequence, and several other action scenes.
The company's website reveals:
"The beach battle sequence was shot on the west coast of Italy, across two beaches.
MPC's environment artists extended the beach and added cliff backdrops...Cliffs and islands
were lit and rendered by MPC's lighting team."
MPC also developed, quote, "new controls for hair simulations to be able to maintain the
shape and style of Wonder Woman's hair in these action packed scenes."
There was a time when an actor's hair was the responsibility of makeup alone, but in
the age of superhero blockbusters, every strand is subject to scrutiny from the visual effects
department.
While it might not have lived up to the standard set by Wonder Woman, Justice League still
fared better with the critics than the first three films in the franchise.
The movie seemed destined to fail after Zack Snyder left the project before the shoot was
done.
Marvel stalwart Joss Whedon stepped in to finish the film, but the result was a hodgepodge
of styles that didn't work as well as Warner Bros. might have imagined.
The film's visual effects would become a huge talking point, especially when it was revealed
that Warner Bros. was forced to digitally remove a mustache that Henry Cavill had grown
for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, because Paramount refused to let him shave it for
Justice League reshoots.
"It comes and goes."
Some of the GCI on Cavill's upper lip was downright awful, with his mouth looking particularly
deformed in the film's opening moments.
An unnamed Justice League VFX artist said:
"It shouldn't have been approved internally let alone gone all the way to make it into
the film."
Well, you know what they say about mustaches:
"Easy to lose, but if you dig around, it's usually close by."