Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1192296
w i n t e r 2 0 1 9 c g w 1 9 The Last Stand. So, it's no wonder Marvel Studios turned to Lola to de-age (and age) characters in two major blockbuster films this year: Captain Marvel and Avengers: End Game. (Christopher Townsend was overall VFX supervisor for Captain Marvel, with additional supervisory help from Janelle Croshaw; Dan DeLeeuw was overall VFX supervisor for End Game.) For End Game, Lola artists worked on more than 200 de-aging and aging shots. Most of the Avengers needed to appear four to six years younger, and in the case of Captain America, young Cap had to appear with the current Cap. "Those were, I guess, the easy ones," says Trent Claus, visual effects supervisor at Lola. More difficult was removing 30 years from actor John Slattery's character Howard Stark, and changing 70-year-old Michael Douglas's character Hank Pym into a 25-year-old. (They also aged Captain America.) "That was our largest age range," Claus says of Michael Douglas's character. "It wasn't just wrinkle removal and eye-bag liing. It was almost a complete facial recon- struction because his facial structure and proportion changed so much in 45 years. It was a huge challenge." For Captain Marvel, the artists changed ac- tor Samuel L. Jackson throughout the length of the film to bring a 30-year-younger version of the character Nick Fury to the screen. "It was a big step for us," Claus points out. "We worked to have the actor look consis- tent shot by shot. It's easy to get one shot approved, but to have all the other shots in a sequence and in the next sequence and through the whole film to be consistent is harder. We always wanted the character to look like Sam [Jackson] and always like Sam in 1995, no matter which angle, or lighting, or which artist worked on the shot." No Head Cams, No Volumes Actors in these films did not wear head cams or work in volumes. "Our approach has always been to allow the most freedom possible for the actors on set. They're in costume and makeup, and act as they always have. We like to have tracking dots on their faces, but we don't always do that. The actual de-aging (or aging) is all done in 2D by compositors." Most of the artists at Lola work with Auto- desk's Flame soware – 90 to 95 percent, Claus estimates. The studio also has Found- ry's Nuke, and typical 3D soware programs Autodesk Maya and SideFX Houdini. "We do some work in 3D," Claus says, "but that's mostly for things like set extensions and vehicles. We get questions like, 'Can you guys do a greenscreen?' and the answer is, 'Yes, we can handle that.' But, when it comes to aging and de-aging, our goal has always been to make it as realistic as possi- ble with the least impact on filmmakers on set and to maintain the actor's performance as much as possible." While visual effects artists are oen known as digital nomads as they move around the world from studio to studio and project to project, that's less the case at Lola. "Our hero de-aging and aging artists have been here 10 to 12 years in many cases," Claus says. "They have a lot of experience and have learned what changes happen in anatomy over time." On Set If, as in the case of Samuel Jackson, the art- ists' task is an extreme age range, the crew usually has a double on set waiting in the wings while the hero actor performs. The double then mimics what the hero actor did as closely as possible to give Lola's artists reference for lighting and camera angles. Once the crew has the footage – the plate – and reference shots with the double, they track the work in 3D. They also take a 3D scan of the actors when possible. "We use the 3D scan for tracking," Claus says. "The high-resolution scan can be a guide to make sure registration points are accurate. And, the compositors use it as a surface to project onto, track onto, and apply elements to manipulate." For example, they might project a wrinkle onto a 3D scan that is tracked to the plate, and the wrinkle sticks to the photographed face. "The scan is never visible," Claus says. "It's always there for elements to stick to, but as you're working on a shot, you don't see it. You're painting on the footage as a painter naturally would, manipulating LOLA TURNED CHRIS EVANS INTO AN ELDERLY CAPTAIN AMERICA. LOLA ALSO DE-AGED SAMUEL JACKSON THROUGHOUT CAPTAIN MARVEL USING 2D TECHNIQUES. End Game and Captain Marvel Images ©2019 Marvel.