Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542296
68 C I N E M O N T A G E TECH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 58 permutations before we finally found what works best," Cote said. It was then that Cote first met visual effects producer James Ledwell, production manager Mitchell Callisch, and lead visual effects coordinator Alexandra Rebeck — all now reunited on "Alien: Earth." Cote s h a re d , " We a l l b o n d e d o n t h at s h ow. Picture editor Jeffrey Ford came in and took over. We devised a new hybrid workflow that was more feature-film-based because we all primarily had feature experience — something Marvel was looking for. So, I've stuck with that model ever since." Cote went on to do "Moon Knight" with Rebeck, and then "Werewolf by Night" (a Marvel special presentation directed by composer Michael Giacchino) with Ford. Next came "The Creator." Cote said, "Gareth's team was nice enough to set up my system at Fox exactly as I had it at Marvel for 'Werewolf by Night.' Editor Hank Corwin, despite his lengthy and storied career, had little experience with visual effects-heavy shows, yet he quickly grasped my process and let me run with it. 'The Creator' looks great, and we got nominated for a couple of Oscars. What more could you ask for?" Just as "The Creator" was wrapping up, Cote received the call for "Alien: Earth" from Ledwell. "It had been a while since we did 'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.' Now, we had the opportunity to put that effects team together again. It's really the Team Ferrari of visual effects. These are folks who've done big Marvel shows. James and Mitch were coming off of 'Dune: Part One.' So we all have quite a body of knowl- edge," said Cote. The team's experience proved invalu- able in tackling complex visual effects shots, such as the Maginot crash scene. Cote explained, "Finding the right speed for the ship was difficult because if you mathemat- ically followed the laws of physics, it didn't work. It wasn't dramatic. It just looked weird because it was going so fast that we wouldn't be able to clock what's going on in some shots. So, for dramatic purposes, we slowed it down and sped it up depending on what angle we were viewing it in." T h e a l i e n c r e a t u r e s a l s o r e q u i r e d numerous iterations to get right. "It's chal- lenging to develop a new creature, to figure out how it's going to move, its coloration and texture, and how that reacts to light. For instance, the tick's color seemed to change because of its translucency. The reflectiveness of different textures on the creature would react to the lighting in very different ways. We had to tweak every shot based on the lighting to make it look correct. Also, the way it moved took a lot of care and time. Patricia Binga, the animation supervi- sor for Zoic Studios, was very patient with us changing directions a few times to see what would work best," Cote said. Then there's the Ocellus (a.k.a. "eye midge"). Its unique characteristics made the team wonder: should it move like an oc- topus? a squid? a spider? "That was another tough one, but it very quickly became our favorite character to work with," said Cote. "The most challenging of all, however, was Morrow's cyborg arm. There was extensive R&D with Noah, Jonathan, and the talented team at FIN Design + Effects on this. We wanted to be able to see the inner mechan- ics under the skin's translucent surface." Cote explained that actor Babou Ceesay wore a sleeve on set that had the impression of some features underneath. But it limited his range of motion, and he couldn't move his hand naturally. "The initial idea of the sleeve was to get away with as many shots as possible without needing visual effects to touch them. Of course, that didn't work out. We ended up having to touch everything, sometimes replacing the entire hand or arm, or having our in-house visual effects artist color-correct it to match all the other shots, but that only worked when you see just a little bit of it in the frame," he said. "By and large, we did replace the bulk of the cyborg arm shots. That particular R&D was done entirely in post and took the longest. Once that was dialed in, FIN ran with it. They cranked out tons of shots with the arm with very few iterations necessary." D e s p i te c re a t i n g h u ge a m o u n t s o f visual effects shots on a strict schedule, Cote noted there were no major bumps in the road on "Alien: Earth." He concluded, "Multi-tasking during vendor reviews is a key benefit of working remotely. The down- side is that when everyone is not in the same physical space, it diminishes the ability to 'read the room' and respond accordingly. The tight post schedule and a delay caused by the sudden shutdown of our visual effects vendor MPC made remote working not just an advantage but a necessity on 'Alien: Earth.'" ■ Jennifer Walden is a freelance writer specializing in post-production technology.