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Black Panther – Wakanda Forever – Cinesite

Friday | 2023 03 17 |

Working alongside production VFX supervisor Geoff Baumann, 2nd unit supervisor Michael Ralla and VFX producer Nicole Rowley, Cinesite’s London and Montreal studios together delivered close to 400 visual effects shots, with the London division delivering a single 10-minute sequence and Montreal a range of sequences across the film. Cinesite’s VFX supervisor for London was Ben White and Jennifer Meire for Montreal. Read the full case study here https://www.cinesite.com/wakanda-fore… #vfx #vfxbreakdown #visualeffects #vfxshowreel #wakandaforever #blackpanther #marvel #wakanda #blackpanthermovie #marvelstudios
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Black Panther – Wakanda Forever – How Namor’s Wings Work

Friday | 2023 03 17 |

Langston Belton talks with Geoffrey Baumann, Visual Effects Supervisor for Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Ryan Meinerding, Head of Visual Development for Marvel Studios, about the collaborative process of designing Namor’s wings and creating a realistic flight motion for Namor, which was inspired by both birds and professional athletes.
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Nope – MPC

Friday | 2023 03 17 |

MPC’s team was led by Production VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron, MPC VFX Supervisor Jeremy Robert, MPC Executive Producer Frederick Lissau; with the visualization led by Art Director, Leandre Lagrange and Head of Visualization, Patrick Smith.
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Knock at the Cabin – Cadence

Thursday | 2023 03 16 |

Knock at the Cabin is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest psychological horror film set in rural Pennsylvania. A family’s vacation is suddenly interrupted by a group of four people who hold them hostage at a remote cabin.

Cadence Effects worked on over 240 shots across the entire film. We were tasked with creating lightning, storm clouds, CG weapons, and CG planes. Additional effects consist of enhanced blood spurts and gore, blue screen work through the cabin’s windows and doors, tv inserts and more.

Knock at the Cabin was theatrically released on February 3, 2023 and starred Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldrige, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, and Rupert Grint.
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Extrapolations – Trailer

Thursday | 2023 03 16 |

Check out the trailer for Extrapolations, an upcoming series starring Yara Shahidi, Kit Harington, Daveed Diggs, Matthew Rhys, Heather Graham, Sienna Miller, Tahar Rahim, Meryl Streep, David Schwimmer, Neska Rose, Judd Hirsch, Cherry Jones, Edward Norton, Michael Gandolfini, Indira Varma, Diane Lane, Adarsh Gourav, Gaz Choudhry, Keri Russell, Gemma Chan, Marion Cotillard, Forest Whitaker, Hari Nef, Eiza González, Tobey Maguire, Ben Harper, Murray Bartlett, and MaameYaa Boafo.

Extrapolations is a bracing limited series that introduces a near future where the chaotic effects of climate change have become embedded into our everyday lives. Eight interwoven stories about love, work, faith and family from across the globe will explore the intimate, life-altering choices that must be made when the planet is changing faster than the population. Every story is different, but the fight for our future is universal. Are we brave enough to become the solution to our own undoing before it’s too late?

The series comes from writer, director, and executive producer Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “The Report”). Told over a season of eight interconnected episodes and produced by Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res, Extrapolations will make its global premiere on Apple TV+ with the first three episodes on Friday, March 17, 2023, followed by one new episode every Friday through April 21, 2023.
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King Kong – The Practical Effects Wonder – Documentary

Thursday | 2023 03 16 |

In this documentary, Katie Keenan details the intricate work that went into 1933’s King Kong film, including the pre-production process, practical effects work, and its overall significance for all of time. With photos and diagrams, audiences are able to understand what went into this movie and how Willis O’Brien transformed real life and miniature sets into single incredible shots, proving the timelessness of the film.
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How Avatar’s VFX Evolved Over 13 Years – Insider

Thursday | 2023 03 16 |

It took James Cameron 13 years to make the follow-up to “Avatar” (2009). That time was spent making the sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022), even more technologically groundbreaking than its predecessor. While the first movie’s water-based scenes were actually shot on a dry set, the director and his crew built a performance-capture stage that actually worked both underwater and above the surface.

But to get the clearest reference footage possible, the cast had to learn to hold their breath for extended time periods. That way, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet could act out scenes underwater without worrying about breath bubbles obscuring their faces. The crew could also translate Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, and Stephen Lang’s performances to their Na’vi counterparts with even more accuracy thanks to a helmet with two cameras attached to it that was first developed for “Alita: Battle Angel” (2019).

Tools created specifically for “The Way of Water” allowed the crew to see rough CG renderings of a given scene while they were filming it and helped Wētā FX more convincingly place CG and live-action elements in a scene than ever before. The VFX artists could also create even more nuanced emotions in CG with a brand-new system that allowed them to animate deep below the surface of a character’s face.

These new systems would not have existed without developments between the new “Avatar” films on Gollum in the “Hobbit” movies (2012 to 2014), Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” trilogy (2011 to 2017), and Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “Avengers: Endgame” (2019). It’s no wonder that on “The Way of Water,” Wētā was able to create 2,225 water shots while tracking 3,198 facial performances.
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How a 5-Person Team Made an Oscar-Winning Movie’s Effects – WIRED

Thursday | 2023 03 16 |

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (also known as DANIELS) sit down with visual effects artist Zak Stoltz to talk about the special and visual effects used in their astonishing new movie. The Michelle Yeoh sci-fi vehicle is capturing audiences and critics with its distinctive take on the action genre. Stoltz and DANIELS explain how their small budget forced them to get creative to create something truly unique.
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Thirteen Lives – MPC

Wednesday | 2023 01 25 |

From Amazon Studios and Director Ron Howard comes the biographical survival film, Thirteen Lives, a story of a coach and 12 boys trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. MPC provided cinematic visual effects for the film, including the underwater and cave environments.
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Troll – Netflix

Wednesday | 2023 01 25 |

Norwegian Hollywood director Roar Uthaug has had trolls on his mind for 20 years. In this “Making of” you get an exclusive look at how director Roar Uthaug, with producers Espen Horn & Kristian Strand Sinkerud of Motion Blur, created TROLL – using state of the art VFX. Giving life to something that has been part of Norwegian folklore for hundreds of years.
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Troll – Gimpville

Wednesday | 2023 01 25 |

Gimpville, a leading production company specializing in visual effects (VFX) for film and television, is pleased to announce its collaboration with acclaimed Norwegian director Roar Uthaug and Motionblur on the feature film Troll, set to premiere on Netflix.

With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Gimpville has built a reputation for delivering high-quality VFX work that enhances the storytelling and immerses audiences in the world of the film. The company’s talented team of artists and technicians is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what is possible with VFX and bringing the director’s vision to life on the big screen.

Troll is a highly anticipated film that follows a ragtag group of people who must come together to stop an ancient troll that was awakened in a Norwegian mountain and prevent it from wreaking havoc. With a captivating storyline and stunning visuals, the film is a thrilling and immersive experience for audiences.

Gimpville is excited to work with Roar Uthaug and the rest of the Troll team to bring this vision to life and showcase the company’s expertise in VFX. The film premiered on Netflix 1st December 2022 and became the most streamed non-English feature film on Netflix only 11 days after the initial release.
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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – Spin VFX

Tuesday | 2022 12 20 |

The extremely talented team at SPIN under the guidance of VFX Supervisor Wesley Sewell, entered the madness of the multiverses and brought to life some breathtaking environments and shots. The complexity of the stellar vortex required a visual balancing act. Story-wise, we were challenged with bringing all of these elements to a crescendo to underline the imminent danger our characters were in. We had highly detailed foreground asset destruction of the wall and pillars, choreographed brick destruction, black strands of vortex energy, and multiple layers of debris; all of which had to blend into the motion of our hero vortex setup, which in itself was made up of multiple high-resolution volume sims. Getting all of these elements to play together in a cohesive way without being visually overwhelming or introducing continuity issues required extensive planning and flexible effects setups that could be art-directed with quick turnaround times.

The second challenge was creating the “Multiverse Map” simulations. Doctor Strange summons this map from an ancient book which creates a sprawling three-dimensional visage around him. Each “orb” represents a time/place/universe that Doctor Strange can examine. The orb look was realized with multiple levels of procedural volumes, simulated volumes and particles, and internal lights to cast volumetric rays. ID passes were also critical to allow our compositing team to tune the renders per orb and per component to achieve the desired look. The “orbs” that we created were so successful that Marvel shared them with all the other VFX vendors for a beautiful continuity throughout the film.
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Transformers – Rise of the Beasts – Trailer

Sunday | 2022 12 04 |

Returning to the action and spectacle that have captured moviegoers around the world, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ‘90s globetrotting adventure and introduce the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film arrives in theatres June 9, 2023.
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Top 10 Practical Effects of All Time

Monday | 2022 11 21 |

From the first time Georges Melies shot the moon’s eye out with some over-powered artillery, the visual effects of movies have helped filmmakers like Geroge Lucas take us to new worlds, helped Stanley Kubrick visualize our most far-reaching dreams, and helped filmmakers like James Cameron, and John Carpenter bring our greatest fears and impossible creatures to life.

For over a century, special effects have helped Hollywood realize impossible visions. Now, computers, pixels, and CGI have become the dominant force in vfx, but in this movie list, we’re talking about the old-school art of practical effects. This is for sure going to be a long one. So get ready for a fascinating VFX breakdown or two or ten, because we’re going to take a deep dive into the behind the scenes magic of some of your favorite action movies, sci fi movies, and horror movies with CineFix’s Top 10 Practical Effects of All Time.
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Prey – MPC

Monday | 2022 10 17 |

MPC provided almost every VFX scene in Prey. This included digital augmentation to the Predator itself, as well as heightened gore, CG arrows, and various environmental enhancements. The team was also tasked with creating a small zoo’s worth of CG North American wildlife, including a grizzly bear, mountain lion, cougars, and a wolf, to name but a few.
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The Electrical Life of Louis Wain – One of Us

Monday | 2022 10 17 |

The real beauty of this film lies in the combination of traditional VFX (matte painting on canvas and analogue video techniques) with digital VFX as an innovative way of portraying Wain’s unstable mental health, and the cinematic representation of his unique style of painting. One of Us, led by VFX Supervisor Rupert Davies, had a crucial role in this process, adding digital visual effects as a way to blend art into reality and create unique surreal aesthetics.
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RRR – Crowd Simulation – Makuta VFX

Monday | 2022 10 17 |

Makuta produced over 740 digital visual effects for multiple scenes in SS Rajamouli’s epic “RRR” such as the Police Station fight sequence (Ram Charan’s introduction), the Komaram Bheemudo song, intermission fight and explosive climax in the jungle.

T-Junction Master shots with TyFlow Crowd Simulation plus live crowd multiple layers we used to composite this episode.
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8 Stunt Tricks Used Over And Over In Movies

Sunday | 2022 10 16 |

Hollywood has many tricks to make impossible and dangerous stunts into a reality. Movies like “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Baby Driver,” and “Elf” used a Texas switch to allow an actor and their stunt double to switch places on screen without having to cut. “Avengers: Endgame” and “Men in Black: International” used wire rigs known as ratchet pulls to make it seem like characters were being hit by a serious blow. Meanwhile, a tuning fork can make characters like Maleficent and Captain Marvel look like they’re flying, and a tarp known as a magic carpet gave characters in “Underworld” superspeed.
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How a 9-ton Dinosaur Was Made for “Jurassic World : Dominion”

Wednesday | 2022 09 28 |

The animatronic Giganotosaurus from “Jurassic World: Dominion” (2022) was the largest practical head built for any “Jurassic Park” film. The practical and digital effects teams worked hand in hand to bring the Giga to life. Live-action-dinosaur supervisor John Nolan led a team to create a Giga puppet that looked and moved like a real dinosaur could. The head was placed on a rig that weighed around 9 tons and could move up and down and interact with Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern on set. While only the Giga’s head and neck were created, visual effects supervisor David Vickery and his team at ILM built the CG body to perfectly match the puppeteered movements on set.
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RRR – Komaram Bheemudo – Makuta Visual Effects

Tuesday | 2022 09 27 |

Continuing with the wealth of VFX work for this film, we changed our pipeline to primarily Blender for asset work, lighting and rendering, complementing it with our established FX pipeline based around 3ds Max and TyFlow for crowd which we utilised in the Police Station sequence, and rendered using the Cycles For Max port of Blender’s Cycles renderer.

Due to the rock-solid rendering and shading, we were able to create multiple extension duplicates and material variations that we wouldn’t have been able to do with our previous pipeline.
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RRR – Intermission Fight – Makuta Visual Effects

Tuesday | 2022 09 27 |

The first time that fire and water come together in conflict needed to be iconic and art directed digitally for the sparks and fire formation, plus the digital water for the spinning shots to ensure a balance between the forces, culminating in a major fist-fight on the balcony which had digital props and environment. This was also digitally extended and rebuilt totally for key stunt shots and sweeping camera moves.

After the first Covid lockdown, filming on this scene resumed with a reduced set which needed to be recreated digitally for the hand-to-hand fight sequence. In addition to this, we created the entire palace grounds layout after LiDAR scanning the space for the opening establisher and build-up shots showcased the exterior gate at night along with fully digital sets and characters to populate the crowd not only at the start, but within the entire fight sequence as well.
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RRR – Climax Forest Fight – Makuta Visual Effects

Tuesday | 2022 09 27 |

For the epic final showdown against the British forces, Makuta not only LiDAR scanned, built and extended then entire digital forest for the studio shoot, exteriors and fully digital wide shots, but animated all of the elemental effects of fire and water fx simulations along with all of the digital props. Digital bows and arrows were created for safety alongside several motorbikes for numerous iconic shots in the film. Culminating in the interior destruction of the armoury building with a massive destruction simulation.
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Bulbbul – Redchillies vfx

Thursday | 2022 09 08 |

Bulbbul, a child bride, grows into an enigmatic woman ruling over her household, hiding her painful past, as supernatural murders of men plague her village.

This project is special for us, given the scale of certain effects we utilised in it. From raging forest conflagrations to fields filled with dense ‘Kash Phool (kans grass), Bulbbul was all about the behaviour of natural elements. Working on the inverted foot was an exciting challenge, as it involved delving deeper into human anatomy. Adding to that were scenic day-night conversions, as well as the red moon transitions, particle disintegration effects and a lot more.
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Why The Batman is So Beautiful

Sunday | 2022 08 14 |

Director Matt Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser have created an immersive world draped in darkness and mystery that makes most modern blockbusters look like amateur student films, and it’s an answer to a trend that’s cursed the entire filmmaking industry which is to make every shot look clean. But what makes The Batman dirty then? What’s so unique about how The Batman was shot that makes it so… beautiful? In this video we’re going to dive into the approach Matt Reeves and Greg Fraser took to bring their Batman to life, the lenses they used, their cinematic references, the lighting, color grading, and an interesting new approach to digital cinema with 35mm film. We also do a recreation of The Batman using an anamorphic lens and the Sony A7iv to show how you can apply the principles from The Batman to your own work.

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Now and Then – Entropy Studio

Sunday | 2022 08 14 |

“Now & Then” is a multi-layered thriller that explores the differences between youthful aspirations and the reality of adulthood, when the lives of a group of college best friends are forever changed after a celebratory weekend ends up with one of them dead. Now, 20 years later, the remaining five are reluctantly reunited by a threat that puts their seemingly perfect worlds at risk.
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The Last Duel – MPC

Saturday | 2022 08 13 |

Visionary filmmaker and four-time Academy Award nominee Ridley Scott brings to audiences the tale of gripping betrayal and vengeance set against the brutality of 14th century France in, The Last Duel.

Technicolor Creative Studios Production Supervisors Gary Brozenich and Jessica Norman worked alongside MPC Film VFX Supervisor Sebastien Raets, VFX Producer Skye Radies and teams in London, Montreal, and Bangalore delivering over 180 shots, and with VFX Supervisor Yann Blondel, VFX Producer Kristina Prilukova and the Paris based team, delivering an additional 220 shots.

MPC Film’s artists crafted the visual effects of two sequences: the duel and the Limoges battle. The original brief did not require extensive crowd building, but as the pandemic determined new ways of working, it was essential for the team to adapt the visual effects requirements, and crowd simulation artists were required to simulate both full CG crowds and crowd extensions.
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Black Widow – Digital Domain

Tuesday | 2022 08 09 |

Digital Domain’s Visual Effects Supervisor Dave Hodgins and his team of artists produced visual effects for Marvel Studios’ Black Widow.

The action-packed sequences include the creation and destruction of the Red Room, intense skydiving shots and the final battle between Black Widow and the Taskmaster. Travel through the sky and check out our VFX work for yourself
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Free Guy – Digital Domain

Tuesday | 2022 08 09 |

For Twentieth Century Studios’ Free Guy, Digital Domain Visual Effects Supervisor Nikos Kalaitzidis led a team of about 254 artists, creating 347 VFX shots for the film. From replacing actors with digidoubles to creating entire CG cities, Digital Domain was also responsible for the 87 gameplay shots that take place inside of Free City, along with the exciting, action-packed opening sequence we call “The Oner,” which truly sets the tone for the film.
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