Visual-effects supervisor Frazer Churchill gives us behind-the-scenes scoop on the technology used in the film.
MTV:
It was all pretty tricky." That's how "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" visual-effects supervisor Frazer Churchill describes the film's inimitable look — part manga, part 16-bit video game, exploding on every frame with bright colors and pulsing graphics. That's also a crazy understatement.
Each of the film's fight scenes offers a master class in the very latest in moviemaking technology, from the use of cutting-edge CG software to on-the-ground practical effects work. "Tricky" is putting it lightly. It was damn hard work, and although "Scott Pilgrim" performed disappointingly at the box office this weekend — opening to just $10.5 million in ticket sales — what director Edgar Wright and his team managed to pull off on the screen is deserving of wide acclaim.
Last week, Churchill called up MTV News to chat about the film's six fight scenes — each one a battle as Scott (Michael Cera) attempts to defeat the evil exes of his true love, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) — and reveal the secrets about each one's creation (Beware of spoilers below).
First Fight: Matthew Patel
Of the six fights, this one was the most challenging. It begins when Pilgrim's band is playing a concert only to be interrupted by a very angry and acrobatic Patel. From a technical standpoint, the difficulty came from merging so many elements: kung fu choreography, a CG Bollywood dance routine, women hurling fireballs and more.
"It's the most piecemeal in its construction," Churchill said. "Lots of blue-screen photography, matte painting, stunt work and CG. When Scott jumps off the stage into that manga-esque vortex, that's made up of motion picture photography done on-set, digital still photography, and graphics and speed lines drawn by hand from what Edgar's brother, Oscar Wright, who was the concept designer, gave us. I shot with the second unit DP for an entire day just to get the scrolling backgrounds."
"When you put it together, you have these very high-tech images with a very low-fi feel, which is part of the appeal of 'Scott Pilgrim' and its camp, manga, 16-bit feel," he explained.
Second Fight: Lucas Lee
Throughout the shoot, Wright placed an emphasis on stage craft, always wanting there to be a physical manifestation of an effect that would be added in post-production. Perhaps at no time did that emphasis become more intricate than during Pilgrim's battle with Lee (Chris Evans).
"That was such a complex set of challenges," Churchill said. "We were shooting with actors and a lot of stunt performers. We shot a lot of high-speed stuff in front of a blue screen. Whenever the image flashes in the finished shots — every punch, sword clash or something — those were actually flashes that we had on-set with photo flashbulbs. We got through over 7,000 bulbs — you can only use them once — and then we add our own flash with CG. When someone dies and bursts into coins, we'd empty buckets of silver Mylar so the actors had something to react to. You get that marriage of digital and physical effects."
Third Fight: Todd Ingram
Todd (Brandon Routh) is a rival musician whose superpowers emanate from his vegan diet. In the graphic novels on which the film is based, those powers are represented by just a series of rings. That sort of simplicity wouldn't work for the movie.
"We needed something more sophisticated," Churchill explained. "Our reference for it was that old logo for RKO Pictures with the radio transmitter. We made the rings feel uneven and have these optical aberrations with color bursts."
"There's also this complicated shot where Scott gets thrown through a brick wall," he continued. "One pass is shot with a camera close to Todd and then the action is shot again with a wide shot, so that when Scott is thrown and the shot snaps back from tight to wide, that's actually a morph from two different camera positions. Michael is there on a rig being thrown across the room, and then we take over with a digital version of Michael to go through the pre-made hole in the wall, and then there's a stunt person on a rig flying through the wall, and we add digital debris."
Fourth Fight: Roxy Richter
Roxy (Mae Whitman) is a ninja capable of disappearing into thin air. The trick for Wright and Churchill was to make those disappearances visually compelling.
"When she disappears, we bring in a blue screen so then we can erase her in the shot," Churchill said. "We add in black CG smoke and we also wanted something more, so there's white smoke too, which was a practical effect that we did on-set, as well as those flashbulbs. Plus we did a lot of lens flares and movement graphics. We spent a whole day just flashing different lights at the camera so we'd have a lot of stuff to work with."
For her fight scene, Whitman didn't have to mess around with any dangerous weaponry. "She's actually fighting with a pink ribbon," Churchill said. "She learned to ribbon dance. Then we replaced the ribbon with a CG razor belt."
Fifth Fight: Kyle and Ken Katayanagi
The fifth fight again takes place during a concert, as Scott's band and the Katayanagi twins battle with their music: Sound waves cause physical destruction and giant monsters eventually appear to help in the fight. To get those effects right, filmmakers actually had to create an entirely new computer program.
"Wherever the band plays, there's visualized music. We wanted that to feel like it was happening in time to the music," Churchill explained. "Our CG supervisor, Andrew Whitehurst, wrote this piece of software that we called the Wave Form Generator. Nigel Godrich, the music supervisor, would break down the tracks into their separate components, give us the rhythm, the bass, the drums, the vocals, and we would use them to drive the animation. The software would convert these sound stems into animation data, so when the band is playing, the graphics and the dragons are moving in time with the music."
"For the dragons, I had these weather balloons on-set so that people would have something to react to," he added." I'd raise them up however high they needed to be. Whenever we did the fights, we'd have music playing back on-set. It was like a music video."
Sixth Fight: Gideon Gordon Graves
This climactic fight, which takes place in a nightclub with a "Super Mario Bros."-style brick pyramid in the middle, was an exhausting affair.
"Oh my god — we were on that pyramid for weeks," Churchill said. "The heat rises. It was intense. Again we had physical manifestations of the digital effects — a lot of photo flashes, and Scott's sword had red LEDs and we added flames and the sword. All the stuff that looked like manga was shot on a blue screen. There was a ton of choreography and stunt work. There are just all these additional layers of craziness."
The fight ends with Scott triumphant and Gideon flickering as if caught in some kind of computer glitch. While Wright storyboarded each scene well in advance, this flickering effect was something he came up with in the editing room.
"That wasn't planned. That came up in post," Churchill said. "When Edgar was cutting the scene, he wanted a suitable end for Gideon. He came up with this idea of him glitching and malfunctioning. He's breaking down."
"The thing about the film is each fight is completely different," he continued. "It's not like you establish one thing and then you redo it over and over. Each fight required us to create a whole new set design, a whole new look, a whole new way of doing things."
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