Blog  Testimonials

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – Weta Digital

Sunday | 2022 01 30 |

Our work features in the epic third act battle of Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. We created the Great Protector dragon and the Dweller-in-Darkness, as well as the army of soul-sucking demons. We were also responsible for the effects for the ten rings and complex water simulations in the realm of Ta Lo.
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The Stand – Season 1

Thursday | 2022 01 27 |

THE STAND is Stephen King’s apocalyptic vision of a world decimated by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil. The fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail and a handful of survivors. Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the Dark Man.
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Uncharted – Final Trailer

Thursday | 2022 01 27 |

Street-smart Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune amassed by Ferdinand Magellan and lost 500 years ago by the House of Moncada. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother…but only if they can learn to work together.
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The Godfather – 50th Anniversary

Thursday | 2022 01 27 |

No movie changed Hollywood more than THE GODFATHER. From the bestselling novel by Mario Puzo to box-office blockbuster, its influential legacy endures to this day. Starring Marlon Brando in his Oscar®-winning performance as the patriarch of the Corleone family, this first installment in the three-movie saga paints a dramatic portrait of the Sicilian clan’s rise and near fall from power in America. Balanced between the Corleone’s commitment to family and the ugly crime business in which they are engaged, it features career-making performances by Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall. This searing and brilliant masterpiece garnered ten Academy Award® nominations, and won three, including Best Picture.
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Midnight Mass – Season 1 – Rise

Tuesday | 2022 01 25 |

RISE VFX supervisor Benjamin Burr and his team are no strangers to the Steven King Universe. In 2019 he and his team helped recreate the environments from The Shining for Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep. Last year Mike directed a Netflix mini-series called Midnight Mass in which the inhabitants of an island feel rejuvenated after going to church – but RISE helped them feel the burn when exposed to daylight.
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How Does a Camera Work?

Tuesday | 2022 01 25 |

Cameras are everywhere! There are probably 2 or even 3 cameras in your pocket right now. But how do they work? How can they take some of the most amazing pictures ever?

Fyber – Hair Grooming – Sony Pictures Imageworks

Tuesday | 2022 01 25 |

Fyber is Sony Pictures Imageworks’ proprietary, standalone software solution for grooming hair and fur of 3D animated characters. Fyber aims to combine the two traditional workflows of hair grooming by allowing the artist to go back and forth between procedural and artistic sculpting workflows.

Fyber was developed to address the need for a faster, more interactive, and more artist-friendly tool to generate any kind of hair, ranging from a character’s head hair to fully furred animals, with the goal to significantly lower grooming times and an easier learning experience for new artists.

As a node-based software, Fyber offers great flexibility to achieve any look an artist might desire while also providing fast visual feedback thanks to its highly multi-threaded computation graph and integrated OpenGL and Arnold viewports.
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The Lord of the Rings – WETA Digital

Tuesday | 2022 01 25 |

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring saw many technological breakthroughs for Weta Digital and the VFX industry. It features monumental battles with digital characters, fantastical landscapes and CG creatures created with newly developed, cutting-edge software tools.

Our work on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring won  the Academy® Award for Best Visual Effects, the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects, and the AEAF Award for Feature Film VFX.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers saw ongoing technological innovation and the full introduction of Gollum. We made significant advances in character animation and motion capture to create Gollum—one of cinema’s most infamous digital characters.

Our work on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers won the Academy Award® for Best Visual Effects, and the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the epic conclusion to The Lord of Rings trilogy, and the result of almost a decade’s worth of creative and technological innovation. It encompasses ground-breaking technology and techniques. We used a multitude of sophisticated visual effects to create landscapes and creatures of unprecedented scale and complexity.

Our work on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won the Academy Award® for Best Visual Effects, and the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects.
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The Batman – Final Trailer

Tuesday | 2022 01 25 |

THE BATMAN – Only In Theaters – 03.04.22 | Same Day Warner Bros Premieres On HBO Max | Filmed in IMAX – 4DX

THE BATMAN is an edgy, action-packed thriller that depicts Batman in his early years, struggling to balance rage with righteousness as he investigates a disturbing mystery that has terrorized Gotham. Robert Pattinson delivers a raw, intense portrayal of Batman as a disillusioned, desperate vigilante awakened by the realization that the anger consuming him makes him no better than the ruthless serial killer he’s hunting.
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How are Images Compressed?

Thursday | 2022 01 20 |

You’ve probably saved 1000s of JPEG images, but do you know what exactly JPEG does? Our smartphones and cameras save images in JPEG format, furthermore, the majority of images you see on the internet are saved using JPEG compression. This format is everywhere, but do you know exactly how it works? Well in this video we’re going to explore the JPEG compression format. This is a rather complicated video, so it may take watching it a few times through to understand it all.
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The Lord of the Rings – The Rings of Power – Title Announcement

Wednesday | 2022 01 19 |

Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.
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Around the World in 80 Days – Episode 2 – MPC Film

Wednesday | 2022 01 19 |

Around the World in 80 Days is an epic journey that takes place over eight 47-minute episodes. Like its main character, the series, created by Ashley Pharoah and Caleb Ranson, will travel the world. It is produced by Slim Film + Television (UK) and Federation Entertainment (FR), as well as by the European Alliance formed by France Télévisions, ZDF (Germany), and RAI (Italy), and a dozen other productions based around the world.

Under the overall supervision of Jean-Louis Autret, and the leadership of VFX producer Delphine Lasserre and VFX supervisor Hugues Namur, MPC Film & Episodic’s teams in Paris and Bangalore worked on nearly 350 VFX shots, creating visual effects to reflect the historical reality of the time and environments.
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WandaVision – Season 1 – FX Simulation – ILM

Sunday | 2022 01 16 |

Go Behind the Magic for a glimpse at the FX Simulation work that went into Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision”, streaming now on Disney+.

Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision” blends the style of classic sitcoms with the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany)—two super-powered beings living their ideal suburban lives—begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems.
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WandaVision – Season 1 – Compositing – ILM

Sunday | 2022 01 16 |

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision”, we’re thrilled to show you a glimpse at the Compositing work that went into the series. All episodes are streaming now on Disney+.

Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision” blends the style of classic sitcoms with the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany)—two super-powered beings living their ideal suburban lives—begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems.
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Raised By Wolves – Season 2

Saturday | 2022 01 15 |

In season two of RAISED BY WOLVES, Android partners Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim), along with their brood of six human children, join a newly formed atheistic colony in Kepler 22 b’s mysterious tropical zone. But navigating this strange new society is only the start of their troubles as Mother’s “natural child” threatens to drive what little remains of the human race to extinction.
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Cruella – MPC Film

Wednesday | 2022 01 12 |

Collider got an exclusive video from MPC Film that breaks down the VFX work of Cruella, Disney’s successful live-action prequel starring Emma Stone as the titular villain. The new video shows some of the film’s most iconic scenes, explaining how the VFX team used digital models to create Cruella’s stunning visuals.

The new video strips down several shots from Cruella, revealing how the VFX team modified color and light to give the movie its unique tone. More impressive is the addition of digital models to represent Cruella’s dogs and even buildings. The VFX team also did an amazing job removing elements from the frame, with a couple of bird-eye view shots from London showing how buildings were erased for the movie. Since Cruella is a prequel set in the 1970s, the VFX had to transform the whole city to avoid anachronism.

In addition to the video, Production VFX Supervisor Max Wood also explained how some scenes were put together, such as the ball scene where Cruella first shows up as her villainous persona. Cruella burns a paper cloak she’s wearing in the scene, only to reveal a stunning dress hiding underneath. Although the scene only has three shots, the VFX team had a lot of work to put the flaming cloak together. As Wood tells us:

“The three shots were first filmed with Cruella, Emma Stone, wearing the red dress. Then, after a hair, make-up, and costume change, she repeated the action in the white hooded cape for all three shots. We knew that the cape would be CG but these takes gave the Visual Effects team a perfect reference of how the cape would move and how the shiny fabric would look under the on-set lighting.”

Filming Stone with different costumes allowed the VFX team to gather references to simulate the movement of the paper cloak Cruella uses. However, lighting it on fire and making it look realistic was a challenge of its own. As Wood explains the process:

“As it [the cloak] ignites, not only do the small pieces break away, but there is an overall rising effect of the cape to simulate what happens to real flash paper when ignited. Once the cape began to move correctly, flames and smoke were simulated, and a lighting effect was added to the surrounding environment and party-goers to integrate the effect.”

Cruella’s cast includes Paul Walter Hauser, Joel Fry, Emma Thompson, Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong, John McCrea, and Kayvan Novak. Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) directs from a screenplay written by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, with story by Aline Brosh McKenna and Kelly Marcel & Steve Zissis. Due to the movie’s success, Disney already greenlit a sequel with Stone set to return as the villain.
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The Lost City – Official Trailer

Monday | 2022 01 10 |

Brilliant, but reclusive author Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) has spent her career writing about exotic places in her popular romance-adventure novels featuring handsome cover model Alan (Channing Tatum), who has dedicated his life to embodying the hero character, “Dash.” While on tour promoting her new book with Alan, Loretta is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who hopes that she can lead him to the ancient lost city’s treasure from her latest story. Wanting to prove that he can be a hero in real life and not just on the pages of her books, Alan sets off to rescue her. Thrust into an epic jungle adventure, the unlikely pair will need to work together to survive the elements and find the ancient treasure before it’s lost forever.
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Hawkeye – Season 1

Monday | 2022 01 10 |

All of the trick arrows up close and personal! Greg Steele, VFX Supervisor of Marvel Studios’ Hawkeye talks to Lorraine Cink about how they created all of the arrows in the show, and how they work with the Stunt and Special Effects department to make the show come together.

Meet Jolt, who plays Lucky the Pizza Dog!
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Around The World in 80 Days – Season 1 – MPC

Friday | 2022 01 07 |

Around the World in 80 Days is an epic journey that takes place over eight 47-minute episodes!

More info: https://www.mpcepisodic.com/news/mpc-…

Like its main character, the series, created by Ashley Pharoah and Caleb Ranson, will travel the world. It is produced by Slim Film + Television (UK) and Federation Entertainment (FR), as well as by the European Alliance formed by France Télévisions, ZDF (Germany) and RAI (Italy), and a dozen other productions based around the world.

Around the World in 80 Days is an adaptation of Jules Verne’s famous novel that tells the story of Phileas Fogg’s (David Tennant) crazy challenge: to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. He will need all the resilience he can muster and the assistance of quick-witted Frenchman, Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma). Joining them on the journey will be Abigail Fix (Leonie Benesch), the journalist who came up with the whole crazy idea.
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Uncharted – Plane Fight

Thursday | 2022 01 06 |

Street-smart thief Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune lost by Ferdinand Magellan 500 years ago. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother…but only if they can learn to work together.
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Moonfall – Official Trailer

Thursday | 2022 01 06 |

In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler (Academy Award® winner Halle Berry) is convinced she has the key to saving us all – but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson, “Midway”) and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley, “Game of Thrones”) believes her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.
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The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild

Wednesday | 2022 01 05 |

In the upcoming Ice Age movie, possum brothers Eddie and Crash find themselves stuck in the Lost World until they are rescued by friendly weasel Buck Wild. From here on out, they’ll need to work together to save the region from dinosaur domination. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild features the voices of Simon Pegg (Buck), Vincent Tong (Crash), Aaron Harris (Eddie), and more.
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The Silent Sea – A valiant mission for humanity’s survival

Monday | 2022 01 03 |

A story 10 years in the making—uncover the beginnings of an epic space expedition and the complex origins of this motley team of explorers in THE SILENT SEA. Director Choi Hang-yong, writer Park Eun-kyo, and executive producer Jung Woo-sung share the unanswered questions that fuel the story and tough decisions that come with the weight of survival in unknown.
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What 16 Movies Looked Like Behind The Scenes in 2021

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

2021 began with a lot of uncertainty about delayed releases and how we would be able to consume blockbuster movies. Regardless of whether you watched at the theaters or from the comfort of your home, there were many captivating movies that took filmmaking to another level. High-adrenaline flicks like “Shangi-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “F9” and “No Time to Die” created in-camera stunts that you may have thought were CG. Young audiences got to see 2-D characters come to life like never before in “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” and “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” And real-life landscapes were constructed in both “Old” and “The French Dispatch” to transport viewers to another world. Here’s what 16 movies of 2021 looked like behind the scenes.
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What The 2020 Oscar Nominees Looked Like Behind The Scenes

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

A lot of work went on behind the scenes to bring this year’s Oscar-nominated films to life. “The Irishman” de-aged its actors using state-of-the-art CGI, “Bombshell” used prosthetics to transform Charlize Theron into Megyn Kelly, and Disney and Pixar continued to innovate with “Toy Story 4” and “Frozen II.” We also look into the process of making blockbusters like “Avengers: Endgame” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
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How “His Dark Materials” Used Puppets And CGI To Create Realistic Animals

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

Award-winning VFX company Framestore produced a number of daemons and polar bears for the HBO/BBC series “His Dark Materials.” The project was overseen by senior effects designer Russell Dodgson. 

The team worked alongside studio Painting Practice to cast many of the creatures in the series, which were then brought to life by Puppetry legend William Todd-Jones. 

For close-ups, some of the puppets like Lyra’s daemon Pan, were sculpted heads. Other slinky-body styles of puppet were used for quadrupedal or bipedal animals. Some “flappy” puppets were used for daemons that were in flight or had to land on actors’ arms.

When actors needed to demonstrate the weight of daemons, the team made gray furry cushions called bucks. These had weight and shape to make it look like actors were holding daemons or pressing their face to them.  

For the polar bears, a series of large rigs were made. There was the “basher bear” to ram into stunt people and push actors to the ground, a riding rig for Dafne Keen (Lyra) to sit on, a backpack rig for her to get on top of someone’s shoulders, and a four-legged fiberglass standing puppet to show a polar bear’s height. The team also used a “couch bear,” which was a gray buck to lean against. 

Even though the animals look incredibly real, the only “animal actor” on set belonged to Ariyon Bakare’s Lord Boreal and is played by an actual snake.

We caught up with Russell at Framestore in London to explain the process.
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Peacemaker – Red Band Trailer

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

Peacemaker will explore the origins of the character that John Cena first portrayed in James Gunn’s 2021 film, The Suicide Squad – a compellingly vainglorious man who believes in peace at any cost, no matter how many people he has to kill to get it.

The series stars John Cena as Peacemaker, Danielle Brooks as Adebayo, Freddie Stroma as Vigilante, Jennifer Holland as Harcourt, Steve Agee as Economos, Chukwudi Iwuji as Murn and Robert Patrick as Auggie Smith.

Gunn wrote all eight episodes of Peacemaker and directed five, including the first. Gunn, Safran and Matt Miller serve as executive producers on the series, with Cena as co-executive producer. Based on characters from DC, Peacemaker is produced by Gunn’s Troll Court Entertainment and The Safran Company in association with Warner Bros. Television.

Peacemaker debuts exclusively on HBO Max on January 13, 2022. Three episodes of Peacemaker launch in January 13 followed by one episode weekly through February 17.
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Jungle Cruise – Weta Digital

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

Weta Digital’s contribution to Disney’s Jungle Cruise focused primarily on creating environments—including hundreds of kilometres of CG Amazon River, with mist, waterfalls and rapids—as well as the creatures that populate the jungle. We created and hand-animated Frank’s ever-loyal, and fully CG, pet jaguar Proxima, and crafted motion vignettes for the abundance of birds, bugs and monkeys that call the jungle home.
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How Pixar Makes Animated Clothes Look Real

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

In Pixar’s “Onward,” two elf brothers turn their late father into a pair of pants. Their dad had the most technically complex costume Pixar’s ever done (per their production notes). The challenge for the costume animation team was to make something that was appealing, funny, physically plausible, & look like a person at first glance — but ultimately behave like an actual lump of cloth. We focus on Dad’s costume, since he’s at the center of the story & his clothing posed a particular challenge to Pixar’s character tailoring artists. It will be interesting to show how much animation/simulation work & creativity goes into a single outfit for a Pixar character.
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How Netflix’s ‘Klaus’ Made 2D Animation Look 3D

Saturday | 2022 01 01 |

“Klaus,” Netflix’s first animated film, is an origin story of Santa Claus. Because the Oscar-nominated movie appeals to nostalgia, director Sergio Pablos and his team at The SPA Studios in Madrid decided to make the film in 2D. But they also wanted to advance the look, so they developed new technology that adds details like lighting and texture to the characters that make them appear 3D. We spoke with Pablos to find out how they made the innovative film, which earned an Academy Award nomination for best Animated Feature and seven Annie Awards. “Klaus” stars Jason Schwartzman, J.K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Will Sasso, Norm MacDonald, and Joan Cusack.
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