Visual Effects making of James Bond’s Skyfall

“Sam knew what he wanted and did not waste time” Talking about the challenges augmenting VFX for the film Jon says, “The Komodo sequence was the most challenging sequence especially when the Komodo is shown in the close up shots, Read More">getting the loose skin around the neck to react realistically and having the feet interactRead More

"Sam knew what he wanted and did not waste time"
Talking about the challenges augmenting VFX for the film Jon says, "The Komodo sequence was the most challenging sequence especially when the Komodo is shown in the close up shots, getting the loose skin around the neck to react realistically and having the feet interact with the ground was challenging. The shot where the Komodo moves in for the leg bite was particularly difficult because it was so close up. The neck is not visible in the shot, as a result there was very little to animate to make the shot interesting; we concentrated on the eye blink and subtle saliva stretching as it opens its mouth, we also used lighting to give a dramatic look by adding a rim light. Sam knew what he wanted and did not waste time trying lots of different paths or variations. I liked the way he would involve the whole crew when talking through a scene with the actors, especially the train crash sequence."

“The lighting and contrast had to be carefully thought through” “The first ever creature to feature in a bond film is a CG Komodo dragon, Jon sheds light on the creative process in creating a Komodo dragon that interacted with Bond in the film, “For the komodo fight sequence, Read More">Sam wanted the action to beRead More

"The lighting and contrast had to be carefully thought through"
"The first ever creature to feature in a bond film is a CG Komodo dragon, Jon sheds light on the creative process in creating a Komodo dragon that interacted with Bond in the film, "For the komodo fight sequence, Sam wanted the action to be low-key with the Komodos lurking in the background waiting to pounce, the lighting was generated by four banks of flickering candle lights and an overhead paper lantern high up in the ceiling. Sam and Roger Deakins, the DP of the film wanted the sequence to have a dark, sinister dramatic atmosphere where the dragons were silhouetted, rim lit and looming out of the shadows; this suited us because we had a creative lighting scenario to work from. In this scene, Bond is trying to evade the dragons as he falls into a pit while fighting an adversary, we modeled the dragon using Maya from which we had a series of reference pictures taken at the London zoo where they have two Komodos in captivity. The 3D model was textured using Mari, Photoshop and Mudbox, thereafter we composited the dragon into the live action plate using Nuke. The CG plate's interaction with the live action plate meant the lighting and contrast had to be carefully thought through to ensure technicalities like the depth of field (DOF) and the dragon's shadows were cast correctly in proportion to the actor in the scene."

“We can control how gravity would affect the falling debris” Shedding light on the VFX of the Merlin Helicopter crash, Arundi says, “We had a meeting with head VFX supervisor of the film Steve Begg, and it was decided that our approach would be to shoot a 1:3 miniature scale of the lodge, the ranch, Read More">Read More

"We can control how gravity would affect the falling debris"
Shedding light on the VFX of the Merlin Helicopter crash, Arundi says, "We had a meeting with head VFX supervisor of the film Steve Begg, and it was decided that our approach would be to shoot a 1:3 miniature scale of the lodge, the ranch, the Merlin helicopter and the Aston Martin DB 5 at Long Cross Studios, London. Within this sequence, we see a helicopter crash into a lodge, within these shots; Steve wanted to show the roto blade of the helicopter to slice through the façade of the building. For this we recreated a CG version of the lodge which broke into pieces, using MPC propriety destruction tool, Kali. It allows us to destroying objects and controls the forces; when the roto blades cut into the building, we can control how gravity would affect the falling debris and how far it would fly out when hit. Kali gives us the control on how materials would behave. This was shot at 50 frames per second (FPS), the action that would follow was to be a bit slower, with this we adjusted the gravity to get the desired effect." Talking about recreating the Scottish Highlands Arundi adds, "Our in-house photographer James Kelly shot panoramic images of the mountain ranges in the upper highlands of Scotland. With the images we got back as references we had over 200 shots to recreate the environment. So we recreated a 360 degree digital environment, in which we built the mountains around the lodge and card layered the mountain in the background. We could scale the mountains as we needed depending on the shots; this environment had to work through the day and night time.

“The visual effects needed to be seamless and invisible” Talking about the working on the end sequence at MPC and the creative aesthetical thought behind the visual effects in the scene, Arundi says, “The whole sequence was shot on the south side of London, Read More">and our mission in MPC was to make the end sequenceRead More

"The visual effects needed to be seamless and invisible"
Talking about the working on the end sequence at MPC and the creative aesthetical thought behind the visual effects in the scene, Arundi says, "The whole sequence was shot on the south side of London, and our mission in MPC was to make the end sequence feel like it was taking place in the Scottish Highlands at a place called Glencoe. The place was made to feel like it was in the middle of a bleak winter, although we shot the sequence in summer so we mainly recreated the environment. The film was shot with ARRI Alexa digital; we started working on the sequence around March right through summer." Shedding light on the quality and the sum of VFX work involved, Jon says, "The visual effects needed to be seamless and invisible; here at Cinesite most of out work was concerned with augmenting the physical effects and stunts. We accomplished a series of visual work like set extensions such as the underground tunnel, CG train extensions, driver replacements, rig removals and the catacomb train crash. The practical train crash stunt was augmented by extending the environment, cleaning up the rig and adding dust and debris. However, the Komodo dragon fight sequence was our primary mission, we made full CG photorealistic Komodo dragons that interact with the environment and the actors."

Known as the longest running film franchise in history, Sam Mendes latest action spy-thriller Skyfall has amassed a mammoth $ 869, 712, 819 at the box-office in just three and a half weeks time since its release. An interesting ingredient that added to the success of the movie was the visual effects in the film, Read More">MovingRead More

Known as the longest running film franchise in history, Sam Mendes latest action spy-thriller Skyfall has amassed a mammoth $ 869,712, 819 at the box-office in just three and a half weeks time since its release. An interesting ingredient that added to the success of the movie was the visual effects in the film, Moving Picture Company (MPC) and Cinesite both London based visual effects companies were two of the post-production houses that worked on the film. While MPC was awarded the end sequence of the film, Cinesite was awarded three sequences of which were in the London underground system and the Komodo fight sequence and a series of other visual effects work such as CG and set extensions. Bollywood Hungama's Philip Bode gets VFX supervisor Arundi Asregadoo, MPC and Jon Neill, VFX Supervisor Cinesite to shed light on the visual effects breakdown, making a CG Komodo Dragon and the challenges of working on the 23rd James Bond franchise, Skyfall.