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www.postmagazine.com 25 POST AUGUST 2014 VFX IN FEATURE FILMS and leg movements." When the production moved to the beaches of Puerto Rico, Pixel Magic faced a different challenge. "We added about 10,000 people to a strip of beach- front on hotel row," says McIntyre. "There was no cloning involved since it was all moving camera shots from a helicopter. We created digital humans and used Golem software for randomizing people and the density of the crowd." Golem is a favorite tool for crowd shots, he says. "It can deal with random- izing clothing, in this case bathing suits, skin color, animation, people density and placement and more." Most of Pixel Magic's work was done in its Louisiana facility, where Jordan Al- phonso was lead CG artist and Victor Di- Michina was VFX coordinator/production supervisor. "Even if a movie isn't shot in Louisiana, if it meets the minimum spend requirement, we can offer a tax incentive on the back end," says McIntyre. Maya is Pixel Magic's basic 3D package, with Chaos Group's V-Ray for rendering, Adobe After Effects and Nuke for compositing, The Foundry's Mari and Pixologic's ZBrush for modeling and textures, Andersson Technologies' SynthEyes for 3D motion tracking, and Imagineer Systems' Mocha and Mocha Pro for planar tracking and rotoscoping. SCOUNDREL VFX Scoundrel (www.scoundrelvfx.com) was the primary VFX house for Deliver Us From Evil, about New York police officer Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana), who joins forc- es with an unconventional priest to com- bat a series of possessions terrorizing the city. The company's office in Kingston, NY, which opened about a year ago, served as the creative and management hub for the film. It partnered with other VFX vendors, such as Tippett Studio for creature effects and Sony Pictures Imageworks for some key make-up ef- fects. Scoundrel partner Raoul Bolognini served as VFX producer for Screen Gems on the project. "We worked with Screen Gems and Jerry Bruckheimer to work within cer- tain budget criteria and tap into global resources without ramping up a huge amount of resources at one facility," says Bolognini. "We managed all the I/O distributing shots to the vendors, all of whom had encrypted networks to pro- tect footage outside our facility." Each facility was hand-picked because of its robust pipeline, which helped immense- ly with the tight schedule. He teamed closely with the picture's VFX supervisor, Curt Miller, and Robert Habros who cap- tured VFX plates on-set. Nick Lund-Ulrich, one of Scoundrel's founders and the in-house VFX super- visor, says, "Our challenge was to make sure the VFX were subtle. There's a very fine line between going over the top and keeping things realistic — we were al- ready dealing with the supernatural, but we wanted to make sure things felt real and grounded." In one scene, a character who falls out a window and lands on Sarchie's car needed to look more mangled than practical effects could achieve. "They shot the actor's face and a stunt double in position, but she had to look twisted beyond that," Lund-Ulrich recalls. "We did face replacement to turn her neck backwards, rebuilt limbs to split bones and did blood enhancements. It became almost a full-CG shot because we rebuilt so much of her." About a dozen shots feature CG cockroaches, which Scoundrel modeled and animated, calculating their path with editorial. The company added digital rain as a scenic element to a chase sequence and enhanced the blood pool around a deceased character, comping in element shots. The final exorcism was digitally enhanced, too. "There were lots of nice We added about 10,000 people to a strip of beachfront on hotel row. There was no cloning involved since it was all moving camera shots from a helicopter. WE CREATED DIGITAL HUMANS and used Golem software for randomizing people and the density of the crowd." — Raymond McIntyre Jr., Pixel Magic For 22 Jump Street, Pixel Magic filled out this strip of beach by creating digital people. The studio employed Golem software. "