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C G W M a r ch / A p r i l 2 014 ■ 25 "At times when they shot in the city and in areas around the museum, we removed modern neon signs and power lines, but that was the majority of our changes, for historical accuracy," says Sanchez. "Basically we had to deal with a lot of integra- tion of live action with miniatures and stop-motion animation, and with the stop-motion animation, we needed to do a lot of speed changes to make it flow and feel real." The artists worked primarily in The Foundry's Nuke, occasionally in Autodesk's Flame, and, for matte paintings, in Adobe's Photoshop. Two miniature hotels, a pink version for the 1930s and a concrete gray version for the '60s/'70s, provided the setting for the caper – the theft of a Renaissance painting. "We adjusted textures, added a film-grain pass, and cleaned up the minia- tures to integrate the models and make them feel like they're really in the shot," Sanchez says. "The director wanted the film to feel real, but he didn't want to lose the charm of the miniatures. If we made it look like a real building, we'd lose the feeling of the actual miniature. So that was a challenge." To enhance the lighting with proper shadows, the crew built rough geometry that matched the miniatures to work with CG lighting, which was especially important for a shot of the '60s hotel that the filmmakers wanted to play as time-lapse photog- raphy. "We had one locked-off frame of the miniature," Sanchez says. "But we needed to make shadows move as the sun moved across the building. So we did lighting simulations using simple geometry that matched the surface of the miniature." The biggest sequence that called for Look Effects' involve- ment was a ski chase through the snowy Alps. It opens with the actors composited into greenscreen shots of a miniature observatory built with an operating 360-degree dome. To travel up into the Alps, the characters ride in a miniature aerial tram with frosted glass windows. As they did for the hotels, the visual effects crew used 3D lighting to make the aerial trams believable. "Wes [Anderson] likes his miniatures, but he's also very particular and detailed," Sanchez says. "As the tram moved across the frame, we got a note saying it didn't feel like there was enough depth, that we should enhance the shadow." The artists could have created a 2D shadow with a matte, but it wouldn't have been accurate; the shadow had to travel with the tram. "So we made a simple 3D cube and projected light onto it to get the moving shadows and to put reflections on the glass," Sanchez says. "We rendered them out in layers and gave them to the 2D artists. Wes [Anderson] had no clue I made a CG model of the tram. He thinks it's a 2D gag. I don't think he has done traveling miniatures before." Then, the camera follows the skiers racing downhill through the miniature trees. "That's where stop motion came into play," Sanchez says. "They had miniatures of the actors, a motorcycle, a bobsled. They'd move something and snap a pic- ture. We created matte paintings for the background that were 2D because they were so far in deep space. Then, we had to deal with the miniatures. They had little trees, and a snow pack the stop-motion characters skied on. We needed to enhance and manipulate the stop-motion characters and create falling snow and mist kicked up by the skiers." One major challenge was in the timing. "Since it was stop motion, the timing was correct, but it didn't feel organic," Sanchez says. "There was no motion blur, no soft edges. That made it different from filming a live skier. So we added motion blur and soft edges." Anderson's attention to detail came into play in another sequence. "Wes is involved with every detail of the film," says Sanchez. "He even checks the grain on every shot, he's that involved. There was, oh my God, a shot where the camera is traveling down a hallway as doors opened. When we saw the shot, we thought it looked like a clean take. We got a note that said, 'Looks great. Now, let's adjust the doors.' He wanted to change the timing of when the doors opened. One needed to be slower, another faster to hit the beat. That's an invisible effect we would never have imagined." From CG environments that blend seamlessly into a paint- erly, graphic novel style, to historically accurate reproductions of a war's aftermath, to the fine-tuning of in-camera footage of miniatures and stop-motion animation, visual effects artists working on 300: Rise of an Empire, The Monuments Men, and The Grand Budapest Hotel created "invisible effects" that made the filmmakers' inspirations visible. ■ CGW CONTROL ■ AT TOP LEFT, LOOK EFFECTS ARTISTS painted the far back- ground behind the miniature set. At top right, the hotel is a miniature that the artists integrated with live-action footage. VIDEOS: Go to "Extras" in the March/April 2014 issue box .com .com