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www.postmagazine.com 17 POST JAN/FEB 2024 CityBuilder-like approach to procedurally gener- ate the layout and dressing for about 24 square miles on the Arête's structure. They also built an entire city surrounding the Arete that was loosely based on Seattle. For all the character work, Weta worked closely with Framestore and the other VFX houses. Battle scenes also starred in Ridley Scott's Napoleon, which seamlessly blended MPC and ILM's CG work with practical e©ects. The film's highlights include the massive digital armies created by MPC and their VFX supervisor Charley Henley using some 700 actors and stunt men, which were digitally multiplied in post (see Marc Loftus' feature in the November/December issue). Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One also scored a VFX nomination, a first for the fran- chise, which was also nominated for Achievement in Sound. The seventh film in the series is stu©ed full of spectacular VFX, and Oscar-winning writer/director/ producer Chris McQuarrie and his team did a lot of previs and postvis. Some sequences, such as the car chase in Rome, only needed a minimum. "We had to previs the Spanish Steps bit, owing to the hugely-complex problem of how to destroy the steps without ever physically touching them," reports McQuarrie. By contrast, the train wreck was previsualized extensively, as the final result mixed a real train plunging o© a VFX bridge with VFX simulating explosions. The motorcycle jump Tom Cruise makes o© a mountain top was also one of the most di¬cult VFX sequences to create, as it involved the star riding a real motorcycle on a ramp before he para- glides o© the mountain. "The nature of the camera move and the fact that the ramp had to be smooth, yet the terrain had to feel natural, made for an insane number of frame-by-frame complications — compounded by our insistence that no digital-doubling was permitted," he explains. "Despite countless itera- tions, there were still a few frames that I was not satisfied with. Finally, [editor] Eddie Hamilton and I added a simulated a camera bobble, a barely perceptible 22-frame bump." VFX included countless graphics shots, all "pre- cisely honed down to the millisecond, conveying non-stop story that has to be conveyed in shots often as short as 13 frames," he notes. Ultimately the team created over 2,500 VFX shots, with ILM doing the bulk of the work. Other vendors included BlueBolt, Rodeo FX, Lola, SDFX, Yannix, BeloFX, Alchemy, One of Us, Cheap Shot, Atomic Arts, Untold Studios, Blind Ltd. and Territory. "We had a great deal of VFX work just remov- ing camera rigs and safety gear, and the under- water submarine shots are entirely CGI," he adds. "I drove the VFX people crazy, but their work speaks for itself." And the winner is…..stay tuned! Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 features more than 3,000 VFX shots. Anatomy of a Fall received five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. The Creator employed a non-traditional workflow for its VFX.