Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/77744
n n n n VFX•CG Films When Ridley Scott decided, after a 30-some- year hiatus from science fi ction, to follow up his breakthrough fi lm Alien, fans of the sci-fi horror genre that he invented began celebrat- ing. Could he conceive another fi lm as wildly grotesque as the famous scenes in Alien and as surreally beautiful? Th e answer was yes, it seems he could. While critics haven't always applauded Prometheus's story, there is resound- ing acclaim for the visuals and, for those who appreciate such scenes, the grotesque in Scott's latest feature. Richard Stammers of Th e Moving Picture Company (MPC) was overall visual eff ects supervisor on the fi lm, leading the work of 10 studios that created 1400 visual eff ects shots: MPC, Weta Digital, Fuel, Hammerhead, Ris- ing Sun Pictures, Lola, Luma Pictures, Pro- logue, Pixel Pirates, and Invisible Eff ects—the latter two working in-house on comps and cleanups. Th e two leading vendors were MPC and Weta Digital. MPC's 450 shots centered on realizing Scott's vision through establishing the environment for the fi lm: the ethereal planetary landscapes and the stormy atmo- sphere, alien and human spaceships and their travels, and a dangerously epic crash sequence. Weta Digital created some of the most iconic sequences in the movie—the opening se- quence in which the "engineer" sacrifi ces him- self, a gruesome surgery, the trilobites, and the pilot's chair. "One of the things I was most excited about as a fan was the pilot's chair," says Martin Hill, who supervised Weta Digital's postproduction work. Matt Sloan represented the studio on location. "Alien was one of the fi lms that got me into visual eff ects," Hill says, "and that guy in the pilot's chair has always been a mystery: Who was he? To be able to work on that sequence was incredible." Th e sequence aff ected Stammers, as well. "Th e pilot chamber had the space jockey seats from the original Alien," he says. "It was a great moment when we went to the interior set and saw the same presentation of the set we all saw 33 years ago. Th ere was an amazing buzz on set." Th at Scott wanted to fi lm the actual chairs on set represented a method of working through- out the fi lm. "Ridley [Scott] wants to work in camera," Hill says. "He wants to work practi- For Ridley Scott's Prometheus, Weta Digital, one of 10 visual effects studios on the film, creates some of the most memorable sequences By Barbara Robertson cally. But, he knew there were some things that he wanted to do that went beyond prosthetics." In the opening sequence, for example, a spaceship created at Weta Digital lands and the ghost engineer (actor John Lebar) steps out. He drinks from a cup of black, pulsating goo, eff ectively committing suicide. "It de- stroys him from within," Hill says. "It sends black goo through his veins. He crumbles and collapses. His bones break. His spine rips open. He falls into a waterfall at the bottom of a river, and his head falls off ." In the middle of all that action, Weta Digi- Weta artists used silicone castings of cabbage leaves and digital loofahs to give the helmet an organic- looking interior. 48 June/July 2012 tal artists sent the camera zooming into the engineer's arm, deep into his bloodstream, and deeper, into the DNA, until we can see the black goo at a microscopic level tear apart and distort the DNA. Th en, we see the broken bits