Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1464279
n Gotham City, crime and cor- ruption are at all-time highs. The renewal program that was designed to improve quality of life — now in its 20 th year — hasn't delivered, and frustrated city residents are heading to the polls to elect a new mayor. A new hallucinogen called 'drops' is also wreaking havoc throughout the city. Delivered via eye drops, the drug has turned many of the city's residents into zombies while also corrupting Gotham's government and police department, who are doing more to enable the problem than combat it. Batman is doing what he can to keep the city from spiraling further out of control, and in the new film, The Batman, finds a unlikely partner in Catwoman, who has her own motivation for toppling those behind the corruption. At the same time, a new enemy is emerging. Riddler has amassed a dedi- cated following of those who feel disen- franchised, and they've set up a series of explosives along Gotham's sea wall, with plans to flood the city on election night creating further chaos. Matt Reeves directed The Batman for Warner Bros., which runs nearly three hours. Robert Pattinson stars as Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman, with Zoë Kravitz portraying Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Jeff ey Wright is Commissioner Gordon, a key Batman ally, while Paul Dano plays Riddler. John Turturro is crime boss Carmine Falcone, who is behind much of Gotham's corruption, and Colin Farrell is Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot (Penguin). Andy Serkis plays Bruce Wayne confidant an butler Alfred Pennyworth. The film is set in cur ent times, though visual effects are key in creating Gotham City, which closely resembles Manhattan, with its own version of Times Square, 'Gotham Square Garden,' and other fa- miliar landmarks. ILM, Weta FX, Scanline VFX and Crafty Apes all contributed to the feature, with Dan Lemmon serving as the film s visual effects supervisor. New Zealand's Weta (www.wetas- tudios.com) created 320 shots for the film, including a long car chase in whic Batman pursues Penguin. The studio was also responsible for creating the Batcave and City Hall, where a memorial service is being held. "We've got a long relationship with the filmma er — Matt Reeves — but the overall visual effects supervisor was Dan Lemmon, working for Warner Bros., and so obviously, he's ex-Weta," explains Weta VFX supervisor Anders Langlands. "We fir t started talking to them mid- 2019 (and) had our fir t discussions, and then obviously things got slowed down a little bit in the middle, but yeah, we were talking to them from very early on." The Batcave Production designer James Chinlund es- tablished the look of the Batcave under Wayne Manor, where Bruce Wayne is currently building the Batmobile. A prac- tical section of the cave was built on a stage at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the UK — mostly of the workshop area — with the rest being extended digitally. "The only time you really see it in all its glory is this one wide shot, the fir t time he comes in there early on in the film where you're panning with the motor- cycle as he rides in from the tunnel and then stops in front of the workshop," says Langlands of the Batcave. "That actually ended up being pretty much fully-digital because…the stage at Leavesden just wasn't big enough for Matt to put the camera where he wanted it. We had to replace basically everything in order to move the camera down to get the angle that he was after, so that ended up being pretty much a full-CG shot in the end." A strategically-placed column within the cave was used as the transition point from CG to live action. Much of the work- shop detail was projected onto surfaces in a 2.5 approach, eliminating the need to build it out for simply one shot. Initially, the cave's darkness was seen as an asset in which detail could be obscured, but as animation supervisor Dennis Yoo soon realized, more and more detail kept ap- pearing as the process progressed. "Usually for animation, it's better be- cause it hides a lot of our motion," says Yoo of the darkness. "In this particular case, we just start off (thinking) very- thing would be dark and silhouetted. Then, later on, we're like, 'We're actually seeing a lot more than we bargained for!' So the Batcave ended up being a little bit of a nightmare for us." Yoo also recalls the challenge of cre- ating and placing the thousands of bats that reside in the cave. "There was this massive cheat of these foreground bats, which were way too close to the camera," he explains. "And the ceiling was about another 30 feet up, so the scale of the bats was a big prob- lem while animating for us." The studio used Massive software to create the crowd of bats, all based on a single model. "We can change the scale of each bat within the scene itself," says Yoo. "And that particular shot, I think it was in the thousands, for sure." City Hall Gotham's City Hall is another environ- ment that Weta created. The ground floor and se ond level were created practically inside a former blimp hangar, but even that massive space was not enough, so Weta was tasked with ex- tending both ends of the set and adding THE BATMAN BY MARC LOFTUS WETA COMPLETES 320 SHOTS FOR THIS WARNER BROS. BLOCKBUSTER I VISUAL EFFECTS www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAR/APR 2022 Dennis Yoo Beck Veitch Anders Langlands