Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/837213
www.postmagazine.com 16 POST JUNE 2017 SUMMER MOVIES "As for the lasso, three companies had to touch on it — MPC and Dneg did the most, Weta worked on it a little bit for a flashback scene. We kind of played the lasso as a little more than a rope. We didn't want it to just be like a Lariat that a ranch hand tosses around. It actually will arc around and, if she's throwing her wrist, it can arc towards the target for her and tie itself around places. That was all hand animation. We also had an LED rope on-set that would give lighting reference, so basically, what she had in her hands to illuminate her costume." There was also an extensive amount of train- ing involved for the film's star to pull off many of the action sequences. "Gal is fairly athletic to begin with," says Westenhofer. "Since Patty really wanted to tell this from her point of view, it was really important that our work would allow Gal to participate and look like she's participating in just about everything. We didn't want to have stunt doubles with faces turned away all the time. We had plenty of face replacements to do early on. Then, as the character gets stronger, we start doing things more a la 'man of steel,' with digital takeovers on leaps and things like that." Westenhofer also describes some of the film's other key VFX sequences. For instance, Diana's home island of Themyscira in the opening act. "We have a lot of nature work in the first act for Themyscira," he says. "We wanted to ground that in some reality, so we chose an ancient city in Italy called Matera. People have been living there for 8,000 years in caves. It's amazing. It's almost bib- lical in the way the city looks — buildings on top of buildings. We used that as a starting point to which we added the motif for the island. We add- ed some Asian mountainscapes, areas of Vietnam were inspiration. There's a lot of natural arches and this white cliff look that was actually from a location in western Italy that was all built into a design that we came up with in concert with pro- duction designer Aline Bonetto (Oscar-nominated for Amélie and A Very Long Engagement). "In that early work, we have real plates that we augment with digital extensions to build up the island of Themyscira — there's a beach attack early on that was the first contact for Diana with men on the island. That was shot on a beach in Italy. There was a location that Patty really liked, but it was practically impossible to shoot, so we added in the cliffs and turned that beach into the beach you see in that scene. Along with the nor- mal things, you have crowd extensions, digi-dou- bles and some face replacements on the key hero stunts. Most of the set extensions and the city were done by Dneg; the beach battle in the open- ing act was done by MPC." Also, another segment of the first act fea- tures a flashback scene that offers some back- ground on Steve Trevor, involving him attacking a Turkish base. That was completed by Pixomondo. According to Westenhofer, the crew had a real location — a fort in London called Tilbury — that was the basis for the fort, and "then we used aeri- al plates I shot in Italy for the extension of the Turkish landscape around that," he explains. From there, the story moves to London, with which Westenhofer says there was plenty of source material to work. "Good news for us was that a lot of the same buildings from World War I [the time period in which the story takes place] still exist in London," he explains. "We just need- ed to get rid of whatever was modern and we had plenty of buildings that worked. A lot of the period work here was completed by UPP. Also, when they first arrive in London, we see [the main characters] floating down the Thames. Dneg did this work. We actually went out on a barge and went back and forth, up and down the Thames, past the Tower Bridge — lots of great stuff from World War I that were period legit. So, we defi- nitely got to keep the bridge and just augmented or changed the color of some of the paint work that's been changed, added some ships, added more period buildings here and there. Once we get into London proper, UPP did a lot of digital set extensions of some period areas. There are some docks where we see them get onto a ship — Pixomondo added the ship and the crowds of soldiers getting on and off." When asked about a favorite scene in the film, Westenhofer immediately refers to "No Man's Land." In this case, it's the space between the two trenches — the German and British sides — in one of the key battle scenes. "This is where you Jenkins (left) and Gadot on-location in Italy. Dneg created the bracelets' effects. A real trench was built for the 'No Man's Land' battle.