Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1189824
www.postmagazine.com 39 POST NOV/DEC 2019 Oscar BUZZ deal of design and iterative process that went in there. The team at ILM tried many, many routes to get something that met all of his criteria." Digital Domain also provided head replacement, including sequences inside the auto factory fight early in the film, and inside the C5 cargo bay later in the movie. Both head replacement and full digi char- acters were required to pull off the latter sequence, notes Barba. The cast is trying to escape the pursuit of a Rev 9 Terminator and commandeers a massive C5 military cargo transport, with an open back in which Hummers can be loaded via a ramp and then dropped from mid-air using a parachute. "There's an incredibly-challenging shot, where we come around Mackenzie before she drops into the C5 that Digital Domain did that was high on Tim's list to get accomplished," says Barba of the sequence. Method Studios' Melbourne, Australia, team also contributed to the C5 sequence, focusing on the shots that take place before the plane gets into the air. "The assets that Alex Wang's team at ILM cre- ated for all the head replacements and the bodies were passed on to our partners at Digital Domain and Method," Barba explains. "They had built such great assets. We got great feedback that they were easy to plug into their pipeline to get going. That helped us add those partners." UPP, with locations in Prague and Budapest, im- pressed Barba with their contributions, which were initially going to be some of the simpler shots, but ultimately grew to become more complex. "They didn't miss a beat," he states. "They have a fantastic team there. And we were very impressed with what they were able to give us, even though they hadn't initially signed up for quite as complex work." The creatives at Rebellion served as the film's in-house VFX team and handled a lot of shots that might be consider less complex but were still im- portant. Car shots, for example, that were filmed in front of a blue screen, were much of their work. "That team did a fantastic job making all of those car shots seamless and work all the different times — adding CG sunglasses and different things to make all that stuff work. They did a great job," says Barba. "It was meant to be seamless, so hopefully you didn't notice?" Looking back, Barba says that upon reading the initial script, he thought many of the VFX would be captured in-camera, keeping with the techniques used in the original two Terminator films. "But then as this previs came, and I saw Tim's concepts and ideas for these action sequences," he recalls. "That got me really excited because he was definitely pushing what these big action sequences could be. We did a lot of head replacement and digi double [work] that other films have not had to do, because once you get these older actors, you have to be much more cognizant of putting them at risk. Even getting stunt performers to be them is tricky. So we did a lot more head replacement than I would have originally thought, but I think it all worked out." The Rev 9 Terminator VFX supervisor Barba Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as the T-800.