Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1100392
www.postmagazine.com 17 POST MAR/APR 2019 VISUAL EFFECTS fully powered as it were, it should look? The visual challenge was to try and figure out how to create something that doesn't look just like fire and doesn't look just like electricity…that also had a familiarity so that from an audience point of view, you can accept it and not question it, but at the same time is spectacular and amazing. "We looked at a lot of references of electrical energy of the Tesla coil, oil on water, flaming lighter fluid and jet engines. All of this to determine how to create this aesthetic that's not just, 'Oh yeah, she's on fire.' We were con- stantly referring to real-world situations, real-world examples and also what's out there that's aesthetically in other movie languages to figure out how to make this a little different and stand out." Right, because you want it to be something that's unique to the character? "You do, absolutely, and I think one of the challenging things with Marvel films is, this is the 21 st Marvel movie of a superhero, so trying to find new and exciting ways to do things is always extremely difficult. You're always thinking, that's just like so and so, or, we did that in that movie. "The interesting thing with these films is that they have to stand on their own, but also, they are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so you have to be sort of conscious while designing these effects so that they are unique but fit in a little bit with that visual language that's been established in the last ten years." What are some of the key visual effects in the film? "It's a huge body of work, as is usually in these kinds of movies. We touch just about everything — full set extensions and full CG environments, but I think some of the highlight stuff is, the things we talked about — the youthening for Sam Jackson particularly — he's in 500 or so shots, which is a huge amount, and people change day to day and depend- ing on what we've eaten or how we slept, or how much exercise we got, our faces change throughout the day and they change with lighting and different camera lenses and so on, so the hard thing is trying to find some consistency for a character and for that many shots. He's in two-thirds of the film, so for that body of work, the level of consistency was one of the biggest challenges. "Then the binary, trying to create something not only with her binary look, all lit up and energized, trying to create something that is interesting and unique and doesn't distract or detract from her performance, was very challenging and also the photo blasts that fire out of her hands. How to create something that's unique is a signature there. "And the cat — the cat was far harder than we expected. We did some early tests and we went to Trixter in Germany, who did the work for designing, build- ing and animating the cat…We said we want you to build this exact cat and they showed us some tests and we showed to the directors and the directors said, 'We're not really sure what we're looking at…What is this?' And we said, 'This is our cat.' And they said, 'What? This isn't real?' (laughs) So I thought we nailed it, very early on in the process, but it proved to be one of the hardest things in the film, because we ended up intercutting back and forth between a real cat and a CG cat, and not only the one real cat, who we modeled, but three other cats that were brought onset as well. It was incredibly difficult. It wasn't just creating a cat that looks like a cat, but creating a cat that we could cut with a real cat, back and forth, and hopefully done in such a way that the audience never questions it. That was way harder than I ever anticipated." What vendors contributed to the VFX? "We had around 14 different vendors. Some of those include ILM, which did a lot of the third-act sequences and created the look of the binary, and did a lot of exploration of how she looks in the suit; Trixter designed the cat and also designed the photon blast — the energy blasts coming out of her hands; Lola completed a lot of the youthening on Sam Jackson and Clark Gregg; Digital Domain did shape shifting between the Krees and the Skrulls, and transforma- tions. Rise Visual Effects created some alien environments...Framestore also created alien environments." Final thoughts? "I think it's a good film and certainly we're very proud of the work we put into it. I'm really excited to see how female audiences, particularly, see the film. What Brie Lawson does as Captain Marvel…I think she's an incredibly strong actress and strong woman and very smart, and she brings that intelligence to the role and I think that's pretty inspiring." VISIT POST ONLINE AT POSTMAGAZINE.COM FOR THE FULL STORY. More than 14 vendors contributed to the film's VFX. CG or real?