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DEPARTMENT www.postmagazine.com 28 POST JAN/FEB 2019 With such an epic canvas for VFX, previs was essential. "The dry-for-wet [live-action plate] photography for the aquatic environments was completely dependent on previs," McIlwain points out. "Previs was the blueprint that allowed the different departments to understand what was happening in a shot. "We relied on mocap cameras and virtual production, which allowed us to look through the camera and see on a monitor the actor against a bluescreen set and against a virtual representa- tion of the world," he explains. "But none of that would have been possible without the careful planning of previs. The Third Floor did the major- ity of the initial previs and created all the assets for virtual production." The dry-for-wet technique, in which complex rigs were built to essentially puppeteer the actors as they performed in digital underwater environ- ments, was new to McIlwain. "The special effects and stunt team in Justice League came up with rigs for one sequence with Aquaman and Mera, but we needed 60 to 70 percent of Aquaman shot dry-for-wet. So, the rigs were heavily modified and pushed way beyond what they were capable of doing in Justice League." The entire shoot took place at Village Roadshow Studios in Australia's Gold Coast (Queensland) apart from plate unit and 2nd unit photography in Newfoundland, Morocco and Sicily. The ground and aerial Sicilian shoot was especially complex. "We extensively documented the mountaintop village with photography and lidar-scanned it so we could build an Italian village digitally," says McIlwain. "In Australia, we had one large set of the village square with multiple rooftop-tile sets, but everything below that was digital." The production "tried as much as possible to have the VFX vendors' own data wranglers and supervisors or their representatives on-set so we could consult on set ups and process," he notes. "That was a key component in effective production." ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) offices in Vancouver, San Francisco and Singapore complet- ed 670 VFX shots for the film, the bulk of them underwater sequences. A particularly big task was hair simulations for the actors in dry-for-wet photography whose own pulled back hair had to be replaced with tresses that appeared to float artistically through the water. "We've done a lot of above-water and animal hair in the past, but long, flowing human hair underwater was a challenge and stressed our hair tools a bit," says Jeff White, ILM's VFX supervisor. "The hair had to not only be physically accurate but also look cool. There was a lot of back and forth with James to review just the hair — it was so important to help sell the characters." With ILM's Haircraft tool "we traditionally simulate guide hairs and the computer interpo- lates the millions of other hairs," White explains. VFX work included environments and CG characters. Hair simulations (above, right) were a big challenge. Lead VFX houses were ILM, MPC, Scanline and Method. Director Wan (center) on set. Most of the shoot took place at Australia's Village Roadshow Studios.