Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1527843
and 50, depending on how available the stunt guys were. We used traditional crowd replication techniques, and we shot with blue screen so we could do split screens and top-ups as well. In the end, 90% of it is elements of plate. We did add in some digital doubles, but they were always for a speciœc reason: story develop- ment, a bit of extra humor, and the usual sort of Marvel—I wouldn't say Easter eggs—but that little bit of everything linking together and having a reason. The shoot was quite intense because shooting multiple plates, exterior, in British wintertime, was very challenging. It was bitter and miserable out there in Pinewood in the middle of December. Every- one was being a real trooper. The crew were fantastic. You could see their trust in Swen. They were so comfortable with the visual eŸects requests and requirements. I was very lucky to be on set and invited along for that period and see all that preparation that they put in come through. We were very lucky that we were shooting what we'd seen on storyboard and on the previz. They were churning out all those costumes, and there was a constant train of Deadpool variants going oŸ to the scanning booth. Everyone really got into the groove and had a great under- standing of what was required. Tell us about your work on Dogpool, the fan-favorite variant who undeniably stole the show. Peggy, which is her real name, was great. She was obviously a massive favorite on set with the crew. We'd originally built a very high-quality digidouble for her because she was expected to do so much, and there's only one of her. She's obviously very unique, so you can't have a series of dogs in case she gets tired. She had to wear a superhero outœt, do stunts, and be in an envi- ronment with hundreds of people, running around pyro explosions. It turned out Peggy did everything. She wore the outœt. She did the stunts. She was fantastic with the special eŸects and the pyro. She was great with all the people running around. She was obviously fan- tastic with Ryan, and all of that interaction was great. We got everything in camera, but there were a few things we thought we could work out a little bit more. There were a few uses for the digidouble, but 99% was her, and she was fantastic. The gog- gles were in the original artwork, but they looked completely diŸer- ent. They only came back a˜er everything had been shot. It was new artwork, newly designed goggles. We did a quick digital version and stuck it on. You lose a bit of her character because she has so much fur in front of her eyes, which is a shame because she has beautiful eyes. We couldn't use the plate eyes because they're still covered. So we used our digital eyes because we've got a great model of her. Then there was a suggestion from Marvel: "Why don't we mag- nify them? Give them that slightly Mr. Magoo cartoon look?" They actually gave us a cartoon as reference. We had to thicken up the glass because we're using a physics-based renderer. We had to do it with real glass mathematics and force the optical refractions. We matched her performance and did tests. We said, "It's going to work, but can you make her look over there?" That opened the doors for the animators to come in. It gave her this massive new boost of character because it meant we could actually make her react to the performances of Hugh, Ryan, and all the other J U LY • A U G U S T • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 C G W 1 1 The Deadpool Corps sequence required over 200 VFX shots.