Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469382
a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 2 c g w 2 3 The Batcave Production designer James Chinlund established the look of the Batcave under Wayne Manor, where Bruce Wayne is currently build- ing the Batmobile. A practical 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 first time he comes in there early on in the film, where you're panning with the motorcycle 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 aer, 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 workshop 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 anima- tion supervisor Dennis Yoo soon realized, more and more detail kept appearing as the process progressed. "Usually for animation, it's better because it hides a lot of our mo- tion," says Yoo of the darkness. "In this particular case, we just start off [thinking] everything 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 creating and placing the thou- sands 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 problem while animating for us." The studio used Massive soware 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 environment that Weta created. The ground floor and second level were created practically inside a Gotham's massive City Hall set was built inside a former blimp hanger and extended digitally by the Weta team. Weta created 320 shots for the film, including the Batcave, Gotham's City Hall, and a fiery car chase sequence.