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10 cgw | e d i t i o n 1 , 2 0 1 8 Souls says. "Okoye tumbles through the air, reaches up, grabs her spear, jabs it into the ground, slides down, and kicks the debris off. Nakia slides next to her, and they give each other a little look. It's a funny moment." The shot begins at full speed, slows down when the car is hit, continues in slow motion until the end, and then speeds up. "At first, everything is full CG," Souls says. "The car, the actors, and the overhead shot with debris. Then Okoye is a plate except for her arm from the shoulder up when she grabs the CG spear. When she lands, it's a full-CG shot with her face projected onto the CG character. Then, the last shot is a plate with a CG environment, CG car, and CG destruction. It ends with a plate of Okoye and Nakia sliding down a hill. Matching CG to plate and plate to CG was complicated." Eventually, Klaue crashes his car, T'Chal- la (Black Panther) rips the sonic destruc- tor gun off Klaue's arm, Ross interrogates Klaue, and that's when Killmonger shows up and makes his intentions known. For that scene, Luma artists painted out Klaue's (Andy Serkis's) arm and replaced it with empty cloth, adding a subtle cloth simulation to make it believable. "We got to do such a fun sequence," Souls says. "It was 20 minutes of screen time with set extensions, elaborate recon- struction of a fight scene, a car chase, full- CG builds, massive destruction, a CG Black Panther attacking live-action Klaue in a virtual environment, and then the cloth sim – which was harder than you might think." Killmonger's arrival sets up the third act, during which he makes his play for the kingdom. He wants to send vibranium and Wakandan technology out into the world and arm a global uprising. He begins by challeng- ing and fighting T'Challa, and wins by tossing T'Challa over a Scanline-created waterfall. Nakia, Shuri, and T'Challa's mother es- cape to Jabari land, an environment created at Rise in Munich and Berlin. For reference, the crew used aerial photography of the remote Rwenzori mountains in Uganda. "Ryan [Coogler] was fascinated that there are beautiful mountains covered in snow and glaciers in Africa," Baumann says. "Although Rise ended up augmenting the photogrammetry, it was important. It grounded the environment in reality." The refugee women decide to return to the city and fight Killmonger, who by now has attracted support among Wakandans. The fight takes place near a small hill that had been pushed up by the meteor crater. "Method built a world based on multiple locations in Africa," Baumann says, "a hybrid of trees, foliage, grasses, and rock forma- tions found throughout Africa. And, we have CG rhinos storming across the battlefield." Using concept art and photogrammetry shot in Africa, the Method artists sculpted terrain out from the base of the hill to create the battlefield environment. "We have a savanna with Acacia trees toward the east, a vast jungle toward the west, mountains in the background, and we can see the city 15 kilometers away," says Method Visual Effects Supervisor Andy Brown. "We modeled the terrain in Maya, imported it into [Side Effects'] Houdini for erosion filters, and populated it with plants. We also created digital extras, crowds, and the armored rhinos for the battle." The battle moves back and forth from the fight on the ground and in the air to Shuri's lab, and then into the vibranium mine where Killmonger battles a revived T'Challa, both wearing power suits now. The shots involved multiple vendors: ILM, Method, Ghost, Rise, and Cantina sharing environments, ships, and hologram ele- ments during the dogfight, ground battle, and in the lab. Method sent Killmonger and T'Challa down a CG mine shaft, and then Double Negative handled the fight scene on the vibranium-powered tracks – one, that unlike many earlier sequences in the film, was obviously created with visual effects. Hollywood is already aware that visual effects films bring box-office bucks. The mil- lions of people seeing this film might at last convince Hollywood that there is profit in di- versity, as well. At the end of Black Panther, T'Challa calls for unity among all the tribes on the planet, a message that hopefully will vibrate as strongly as vibranium. Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast. net) is an award-winning writer and contrib- uting editor for CGW. Once T'Challa ingests the special, glowing, heart- shaped herb, he falls into a dream state, during which he meets his father. On set was a small bit of ground for the actors. ILM created the environ- ment surrounding. "It's an African plain with an orange and blue aurora through the sky," says Craig Hammack, visual effects supervisor at ILM. "Surreal, but in an African-grounded way. In the Acacia trees are black panthers that represent the ancestors. It's all CG." Later in the film, T'Challa revisits the dreamscape. This time the colors in the sky have changed, and the ancestors appear in their human form. A D R E A M