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BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MARCH 2016 LONDON — Cinesite (www.cinesite.com) completed over 200 visual effects for Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, the zombie mash-up directed by Burr Steers and based on the celebrated Jane Austin classic. Work on the visual effects was shared across Cinesite's London and Montréal studios. Based on the bestselling book of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith, the plot follows the repercussions of a mysterious plague that has fallen upon 19th century England, which is now overrun with the undead. Feisty heroine and martial arts expert Elizabeth Bennet joins forces with Mr. Darcy to battle the zombies while discovering their love for each other. Cinesite's Simon Stanley-Clamp served as VFX supervisor, getting involved at the pre-production stage. Filming took place late in 2014 at a range of National Trust properties within the M25 London area. Production designer David Warren and prosthetic makeup supervisor Mark Coulier were closely involved with visual effects both before and during filming to ensure consistency of style and approach. Cinesite's visual effects covered the creation of a range of environments, digital make-up and prosthetics, flashbacks to London burning during a zombie attack, crowds of computer generated rampaging zombies, decapitation and limb removal. In the world of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, the zombies are kept enclosed in London behind a Great Wall and a defensive barricade known by production as "The Meat Muncher." The gateway to Hertfordshire County, which adjoins the Muncher, was built as a set piece, surveyed and tracked with a 3D environment built from production artwork. The Meat Muncher, which forms part of this 3D environment, is a combination of large, conjoined, barbed metal wheels which form an imposing wall, slowly grinding at the ground to stop the zombies from escaping under or over. Other environments, including the Bennets' house and several rural properties around England, required the addition of defensive towers and fortifications. At the climax of the film, where zombies are converging on the last defense against the plague, Hinckley Bridge, the structure is destroyed in a dramatic explosion. The 100-foot bridge set was originally constructed at Shepperton Studios' backlot. Cinesite's team extended the set digitally, adding to the pyro- technics with its extensive library of SFX elements and bespoke CG FX for the flames, explosions and debris. Enhancement of digital zombie make-up also made up a major part of Cinesite's work. Minimal prosthetics were applied to the actresses and later modified extensively with digital make-up, along with re-projected exposed skeletal detail and gore. The film was released on February 5th in the US and Canada, and on February 11th in the UK. VANCOUVER — A heroic action-thriller, The Finest Hours is the true story of one of the great small boat rescues in Coast Guard history. With VFX supervisor Seth Maury and producer Felix Crawshaw working closely with director Craig Gillespie and production VFX supervisor Kevin Hahn, MPC (www.moving-picture.com) completed approximately 900 shots across 10 months of post production. MPC's work primarily consisted of recreating an immersive nor'easter storm, including ocean swells, turbulent seas, blowing rain and snow, and a sequence where a 36-foot Coast Guard boat must cross a digital version of Chatham bar, with 30- to 50-foot waves rolling, swelling and crashing around them. Shooting began in the fall of 2014 in a 120-foot-by-80-foot-by-12-foot-deep water-tank built for the shoot at a warehouse in Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA. The filmmakers built a large gimbal set of the Coast Guard CG36500 rescue boat, a full-size mock-up of the Pendleton hull, and a replica of the Pendleton engine room that could be flooded with six feet of water. A number of scenes were also filmed at various locations in Cape Cod and four period rescue boats were restored for production. The visual effects work started early on in production with the team creating some full CG shots in order to understand what would be required to create a storm of the magnitude required to tell the story. MPC's team completed around 300 large-scale water simulation shots, 300 weather and environment shots and 300 shots of the ocean behind actors shot on bluescreen. Digital doubles of the crew, as well as digital versions of the Pendleton T2 tanker and CG36500 Coast Guard boat were also built by the MPC team. For the large-scale, full-CG water simulation shots, MPC built a library of ef- fects elements and CG renders that were needed to create the ocean, consist- ing of the base ocean, a foam pass, a mist pass, a fine spray pass, a bubble pass, a water texture pass and refraction and reflection passes for water surfaces. A constantly-blowing CG mist pass that the filmmakers named Speed Mist was added to the real footage shot on location in Cape Cod and on set in Quincy to accentuate the storm. For the shots that were panoramic enough to show inter- action between the practical or CG boat and the water surface, there was also a suite of elements rendered to connect the boat and water, such as splashes, sprays, bow wakes, tail wakes, and engine wash of bubbles, turbulent water, foam and spray. The most challenging work involved a sequence where the CG36500 Coast Guard boat crosses the Chatham Bar in 30- to 50-foot waves. The waves were in various state of swelling, crashing, and spilling. MPC developed systems for creating each of these waves, and additional systems for adding layers of waves into the same scene. Many shots in this sequence were crafted as single-solu- tion waves, such as looking down the barrel of a crashing wave, or being pushed along and backwards by a wave that had already crashed. CINESITE CREATES VFX FOR PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES MPC CREATES DRAMATIC STORM SEQUENCES FOR DISNEY'S THE FINEST HOURS