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j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 7 c g w 9 ans of Director Luc Besson's extraordinary film The Fih Element, and there are many, have waited 20 years for Besson to create another science-fiction film with the same outrageously delightful visuals. Lucy had its moments, but none were quite as memorable as, for example, the taxis in Fih Element. Now comes Besson's latest film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, based on the legendary French science-fiction comics "Valérian and Laureline." Happily, the new film is closely linked to The Fih Element: Jean-Claude Mézières, who helped design The Fih Element, is the artist who created the award-winning "Valérian and Laureline" comic book series. The Fih Element taxis first appeared in the comics. "That gives you an idea about how linked the two films are," says Martin Hill, who su- pervised effects work done at Weta Digital, the lead studio on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Industrial Light & Magic and Rodeo FX were the two other main visual effects studios. "If you liked The Fih Element, you'll love this film," says Wayne Stables, also a VFX supervisor at Weta Digital on the feature. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Plan- ets takes place in the 28 th century. Special operatives Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are sent to Alpha, an ever-expanding metropolis where species from a thousand planets have come together. The two operatives must find and defeat a mysterious dark force that threatens to wreak havoc on the peaceful City of a Thousand Planets. Besson directed and produced the Eu- ropaCorp film, which STX Entertainment is distributing, and wrote the screenplay. Scott Stokdyk, who had been a digital sequence supervisor at Digital Domain on The Fih Ele- ment, was overall visual effects supervisor. In addition to Hill and Stables, Chris White and Ken McGaugh were also VFX supervisors at Weta Digital, Philippe Rebours supervised artists at ILM, and François Dumoulin and Peter Nofz led the work at Rodeo FX. Hy- bride worked with ILM on effects. Much of the film is CG – the environ- ments and the characters. The title suggests the scope of the effects work. "When I saw the script and looked at the concept work, I thought, my god, this thing is huge," Hill says. "Between us, ILM, and Rodeo, we had to make so many crea- tures and environments. We had to make an outer-space station big enough to con- tain a thousand worlds. All the creatures had to look like they came from different worlds and different environments. They had to behave differently. But, they all had to be part of the same cinematic world." Acting Out The Previs Filming largely took place on the nine stages at Besson's film studio complex, La Cite du Cinema in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, and in Wellington, New Zealand, on Weta Digital's motion-capture stages. Because Weta Dig- ital's work extended across the entire film, Hill worked with Besson, Stokdyk, and Visual Effects Producer Sophie Leclerc in Paris for six months. "One of the striking things about the production on this film was how much planning went into individual sequences and shots," Hill says. Halon provided previs for a heavily choreographed CG space battle sequence created at Rodeo FX. But, Besson "previs'd" many of the other sequences by working with students at his Ecole de la Cité. "The students became his boards," Hill says. Besson would direct the students in rough sets on stage, shoot the sequences, and edit them together to create the "previs." "The students are immensely talented," Hill says. "Very informed about the film- making process. They brought a profes- sional level to the previs, and some actually went on to work on the film. Luc [Besson] was comfortable working with them. So we got a previs that was much more accurate than doing [digital] previs, which has a slower iteration time. What's remarkable is how close the previs sequences with the students are to the final footage." Besson shot the film in 91 days, much of it on the sets at his Paris studio, oen filming live-action actors and motion-cap- ture actors together. "We rigged up temporary motion-cap- ture setups on each stage when required, moving cameras on the grids to capture F WETA ANIMATORS KEYFRAMED THE DOGHAN DAGUIS CHARACTERS.