Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/724677
MISS PEREGRINE www.postmagazine.com 21 POST SEPTEMBER 2016 FRAZER CHURCHILL, VFX SUPERVISOR With more than 1,300 visual effects shots, Churchill discusses how he, along with contributing VFX vendors Double Negative, Scanline VFX, MPC, Rodeo FX, One of Us and The Third Floor on previs, along with a mix of tools, including Nuke, Maya, Clarisse and Arnold, pulled off some of the film's most complex sequences. What types of VFX were required for this film — character, CG, set extensions, environmental? "It's weird, because you read the first 30 pages of the script and there are barely any [VFX], and then it suddenly explodes into the fantastical world of Miss Peregrine. Really, the whole gamut of VFX work was required. In reading the script, you start to understand it. There's a whole sequence set underwater, so you have to think about how to approach that. And there's a big sequence of skeletons battling people on a pier, and obviously as you're reading it, you realize VFX are involved, but it's the scale of which they're involved that you're not quite sure of. There's a whole range of environmental work — Miss Peregrine's house and the grounds of the house and effects surrounding the characters, such as Hugh and his bees. Emma and her air, Olive and fire, etc." And Miss Peregrine herself can change into a bird? "She does and she also can control time and can make it run backwards. That's also an effect that needed to be consid- ered. There's a whole range of things. It's one of those films where it's not straight- forward, where effects carry over and over. There's lots of different types of effects. Each scene is unique and it's all got that certain Tim Burton flavor to it. Each set piece is kind of unique. You'd be reading the script and suddenly it would say, 'and the loop collapses' and you've got to try and visualize what that means. Suddenly, the circular time loop that Miss Peregrine's created was interrupted and would return to normal, so you have to think, what does that mean visually? It's a very tricky film, effects-wise, because there's lots of design work to do. And that's sort of the kind of film I like doing the most, to be honest. It's complex. But the underwater sequence and the time reset were the toughest things to do." Can you discuss the more challenging sequences? "The time reset, where Jacob is in the house with the kids for the first time and they want to show him that they live in a loop that lasts for 24 hours. Every 24 hours Miss Peregrine has to go into the backyard and she resets the time loop. It's a bit of a show for the kids and they want to show Jacob how it happens. So they're standing in the backyard of the house, during a German bombing raid, because it's set during the second World War, and their house is ultimately destroyed by a German bomb. But the loop is reset moments before the bomb hits the house. So just before it hits the house, Miss Peregrine takes her watch out, pushes a button, slows time down to the point where it freezes, and they watch the rain slow down and the bomb stops and she rewinds her watch and they watch time run backwards 24 hours to the point at VFX ran the gamut, from environmental to fantastical, including this complex underwater sequence.