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www.postmagazine.com 2 POST NOVEMBER 2017 EDITOR'S NOTE hor took his hammer to the box office this month, crushing it with a $120M open- ing weekend. Post dedicated nine pages to our Thor: Ragnarok coverage (Iain Blair talks with director filmmaker Taika Waititi and Linda Romanello connects with VFX supervisor Jake Morrison), but that's simply not enough to cover the scope of the Marvel blockbuster. Well over a dozen studios contributed visual effects services to the film, so our cover- age continues online with insight from Rising Sun Pictures and Framestore, among others. Nearly 200 artists at RSP contributed to sequences that include "Val's Flashback" and "The Palace Fight." At postmagazine.com, reps from the studio go on the record, sharing their insight into the challenging sequences. Framestore produced more than 450 shots for the film, including The Incredible Hulk, the rock-based Korg, the giant wolf Fenris and the Titan of Fire, Surtur, all of whom ap- pear in the film's climactic final act. Head to our Website to hear from VFX supervisors Alexis Wajsbrot and Kyle McCulloch, both of whom detail the studio's work on the film. We've got lots of non-Thor-related content on the site, too. For example, in our "Music Video" column, I connect with director/animator Chris Ullens, who recently completed work on a new stop-motion project for recording artist Fergie. Love is Blind is off the "Double Dutchess" album and involved a two-week, stop-motion shoot to bring the pop star's story about 'men who've wronged her' to life. Ullens talks about the shoot and post, and the tools his team used to make the often-tedious stop-motion process efficient. In our "Careers" column, Asa Shoul, senior colorist at Molinare in London, looks back at some of the 50 features he's graded over the course of his 20-plus-year career. And for our "Editing" column, Post's Linda Romanello chats with Mick Audsley, who recently cut the new film version of Agatha Christie's Murder On the Orient Express. Head on over to postmagazine.com for lots more! ig box office blockbusters are pretty much expected for the holiday season. To that end, Marvel released its most ambitious effort yet, Thor: Ragnarok, on November 3. In its opening weekend, the God of Thunder brought in some super impressive numbers — grossing more than $122M in the US alone. It's not likely anything else will threaten to dethrone it, that is, until Justice League hits theaters on November 17. While plenty of other films are certainly making their rounds, it seems that the superhe- ro trend is alive and well, with Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Spiderman: Homecoming taking three of the top five movie spots of the year, thus far. "I think the reason why we have so many of these fantasy, adventure, superhero films, to some degree, is because we couldn't do before what we can do now with the visual effects," says Jake Morrison, VFX supervisor on Thor: Ragnarok, who worked on Marvel's two prior Thor releases, as well as Ant-Man and The Avengers. "The tools just weren't there…but to have the tools to actually be able to realize [a complicated effect] is relatively a recent thing in cinema. I think we're all getting better at doing it." Morrison discusses his work on the new Thor film in our cover feature, on page 14, and how creating the nearly 2,700 effects for the project was a collaborative effort among at least 18 leading visual effects houses. He also discusses at length how the film's rock monster Korg (played by the film's director, Taika Waititi — featured in this month's "Director's Chair," page 9) was "the most complicated piece of understated character animation that has been done." Morrison credits advancements in technology for making the character so believable, as well as the talents of Luma Pictures. "I think Luma deserves some sort of an award for that one!" Let's see if Oscar takes note! 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