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www.postmagazine.com 15 POST JUNE 2017 t took more than 70 years for DC Comics' Wonder Woman to get her own live-action fea- ture film, but director Patty Jenkins and Warner Bros. have finally brought the comic book hero to the big screen, just in time for summer! Gal Gadot stars in the title role of Wonder Woman, a film that explores the superhero's origins and follows the story of Diana, princess of the Amazons. When a pilot crashes on her home island of Themyscira and tells of conflict in the outside world, she leaves home to fight 'a war to end all wars,' discovering her full powers and true destiny in the process. "The time is absolutely right to bring Wonder Woman to movie audiences," says Jenkins. "Fans have been waiting a long time for this, but I believe people outside the fandom are ready for a Wonder Woman movie, too. Superheroes have played a role in many people's lives; it's that fantasy of 'What would it be like if I was that powerful and that great, and I could go on that exciting journey and do heroic things?'" Joining Jenkins behind the camera were director of photography Matthew Jensen (Chronicle, Fantastic Four, HBO's Game of Thrones), Oscar-winning editor Martin Walsh (Chicago, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), composer Rupert Gregson-Williams (Hacksaw Ridge, The Legend of Tarzan), re-recording mixer Chris Burdon (see related article that follows) and two-time Oscar- winning visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer (Life of Pi, The Golden Compass). "The credit to Patty is, this is really a character jour- ney between [lead characters] Steve Trevor (played by actor Chris Pine) and Diana (Gadot), and we're the supporting act," says Westenhofer, who Jenkins describes as a "VFX wizard." "With the exception of our third act battle, where there was a lot of full-on effects, this is a little different from, say, Justice League or BVS [Batman V Superman]. There's a lot more practical stuff in Wonder Woman. And what Patty wanted was, to feel Diana's journey. She starts off not really knowing her powers and then, through most of the middle of the film, she's doing superhero things, but it's a little more grounded in reality." Wonder Woman was shot on film, at locations throughout the UK, France and Italy, as well as Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden in southeast England, on predominantly Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras, along with Arriflex 235 and 435, with Panavision Primo lenses. According to Westenhofer, who got involved with the film in March 2015, Jenkins "really wanted to keep things grounded" when it came to the film's visual effects shots. "It's a superhero movie, but everything is through the eyes of Diana — if Diana was walking across a frame, Patty wanted all eyes to go to her. She didn't want any- thing to over power her. Towards the very end we get there, but Patty wanted to feel it building to that point. She didn't want the effects to be too over the top." In total, Westenhofer says there are about 1,800 VFX shots, created through the combined efforts of VFX studios Double Negative (Dneg), MPC, Pixomondo, UPP, Platige and Weta, which came in at "the 11 th hour to pick up a few shots at the end of the film." "We had a pretty decent in-house team as well," stresses Westenhofer, who adds that previs and postvis work had been handled predominantly by The Third Floor, with several scenes completed by Proof. "The Third Floor's Vincent Aupetit was our previs supervisor — they did a great job for us." Westenhofer breaks down the VFX work, starting with Wonder Woman's powers, bracelets and lasso. "You see her [bracelets] for the first time in Themyscira, when she's fighting Antiope, her mentor/aunt, and she's trying to show her mom that she's trained and good enough to go be a warrior. She's on her back and about to lose the fight, when she accidentally bangs her wrists together and creates what we call the 'boosh' — her power force when she clangs her wrists. Dneg did that effect. We have a particle simulation and refraction field as the wave flies through and there's also a glowing effect that we apply to the bracelets. When that happens, she wreaks some devastation and she scares herself, so she doesn't want to use it again. And, she doesn't, until the absolute final battle when she takes on Ares — that's kind of when she's arrived. I