

performance was so badass, and it was good to be able to bring the effects out to support her. Simmonds: My favorite was a fairly complicated effects scene when Mera is in the wine shop and smashes all the bottles, then weaponizes the wine and shoots it at the Atlantean soldiers. Is there a particular scene in Aquaman that really encapsulates the experience of working on the film for you? A favorite sequence, perhaps? They had to create the entire set for that sequence.Īt the end of the day, it ended up being this incredibly beautiful sequence, and it also had a gigantic creature in it. It was more than just the hair, though, and we had to consider the fabric of the costume and how that was moving, and then all of the underwater cues that came together - whether it was particulate matter, the underwater plants, and all of that stuff that sort of gave you the overall impression of being underwater. Kim Locascio: There was a research and development period that was started to develop the look for the hair underwater, among other things, and I think Craig Wentworth came up with an excellent plan that ended up being quite successful. How did you approach that effect and working within that environment on the scenes you were involved with? Method also worked on some of the underwater stuff, as you mentioned earlier, including the ‘Well of Souls’ sequence.
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We had to free up the camera and blend multiple, real, on-set cameras with some CG cameras in between in order to make it work.

That was probably our most challenging shot of the sequence, because you’ve got multiple set pieces that you have to bridge, but also have a completely realistic surrounding village.
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Probably the best example is when Mera is being chased and you’ve got two sort of lines where one of the Atlantean soldiers is running through walls in the building underneath her while she’s up on the rooftop, and you’ve got the camera shifting out of windows and back up and around her as they both run. We went through lots of iterations of how some of these things would work. Simmonds: At the end of the day, you’re trying to make it feel as though this thing could have been shot for real, and yet we’re using these huge, sweeping camera moves that most camera rigs around now couldn’t pull off. What about the process of merging all of those individual chase elements together as Mera and Aquaman are each being pursued through various levels of the village? The camera goes in and out of the buildings and above and under them, and it all blends together so well. It was like having a very detailed set of Lego pieces that you could put together, and our pipeline did a great job of making it a manageable process. So what we had to do was to find a way to blend those practical spaces and the coastline that was shot in Scopello. They built hundreds and hundreds of buildings and props and set pieces and foliage and rocks. It was our environment team that managed to bring all that together, headed by Alex Popescu. So we had a lot of amazing reference to work with. They flew off to Sicily - which I was very jealous about - and did an extensive photo shoot. We knew from the start we were going to have to build a huge amount of this seaside village, from the piazza down in the town to the ruins at the top.ĭavid Nelson, another VFX supervisor here at Method, was involved very early on in the project with Kelvin McIlwain, who was the studio’s VFX supervisor. By the time we got it, we were looking at it and sort of scratching our heads about how we would blend it all. There was also an extensive process for it as well, which was handled by another company. He’s got an amazing eye for action and vision to so seamlessly blend all of those parallel sequences. Simmonds: Full credit for all of that choreography goes to James Wan. That rooftop chase sequence has a lot going on, and it’s happening on several levels and across multiple layers of action, following Arthur (aka Aquaman, played by Jason Momoa), Mera (Amber Heard), the Atlantean soldiers, and Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ). Even so, it’s always kind of fun exploring these techniques and taking a stylized approach to what normally is a fairly straight-up elemental thing. Of course, we ended up having to do a bunch of liquid effects for that sequence anyway. Josh Simmonds: We went through some early testing on underwater stuff, but then it ended up that our primary sequence was going to be the Sicilian rooftop fight, and we all breathed a little sigh of relief that there wouldn’t be so much water. When you took on the project, was that a bit daunting? There was plenty of the latter in Aquaman. Digital Trends: Visual effects artists often say that the two elements most difficult to create digitally are fire and water.
