VFX Analysis In The Industry - Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World - 2010 (Universal Pictures)

Scott Pilgrim uses a lot of VFX to portray the Computer Game feel that was prevalent throughout the comic series it is based on, by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
Double negative handled the majority of the combat and on screen effects

The scene where Ramona Flowers is skating through the snow and the snow is melting as she skates over it, the clean plate had an area of no snow where she would skate. The snow was added digitally with spray simulated for where he skates were. Additionally, the roofs of the houses had no snow on them, but with the scene taking place the morning after a snow storm, they added snow digitally.

In the Matthew Pattel fight, Pattel was filmed on a blue screen in a harness, as a lot of his fighting is the manga-style mid air combat. This also allows him to be shot through the air in all manner of crazy spins that would not be possible otherwise. Physical lights were in place for the connection of hits which would emphasise the combat. Triggers would be placed on set which the actors would punch. This would ensure the timing would be perfect. These were composited out.
In the final composite put together by Ian Copeland there are Handrawn flash frames during the impact flashes, these were provided by Oscar Wright, the film’s concept designer.
In another action shot Patel runs across the stage at Scott during which the proportions of the room stretch and distort as they do in Manga animation, in the finished shot the camera appears locked to Patel’s legs as he runs. To achieve this "we shot Patel on a blue jogging treadmill to capture a “camera locked” aspect on his running legs, we then shot Scott, Kim, Stephen and Johnny stills on the Rockit set with a dolly move ."

Fighting Lucas Lee and his stuntmen required a CG smashing skateboard, comic book style animated impact graphics and visualised sound effects were all added in the final comp. Scott and Lee continue to face off in a Manga-like fight featuring zooms lines and a digital contra zoom, achieved by shooting tracking plates on set, slow-motion plates of the actors running on bluescreen and the addition of CG environments, 2D graphic sound effects, hand-drawn speed lines and flare elements.

The Lucas Lee Skateboard Scene. The final sequence has matte paintings of the Toronto skyline, CG steps, CG trees, CG snow flurries, CG sparks, lens flare elements, 2D graphics, bluescreen stunt performers, bluescreen actors, CG coin explosions, CG & photographic smoke elements. Chantelle Williams created the CG environment using Maya and Renderman. Steve Tizzard oversaw the creation and compositing of the action sequence

Digital Doubles are used when Scott is upper cutted by the Vegan Superman, Todd Ingram. The model used is not very detailed, only having similar clothes placed on it, as the shot is so quick and you don't see Cera's face. The same is used for the impact in the bin bags. The next shot shows a beaten and bruised Michael Cera in the trash.

VFX Analysis In The Industry - Tron Legacy

I will review the VFX process of one of my favourite films in recent years.

First up, Tron Legacy - 2010 (Walt Disney Studios)
The visual effects team had worked on Tron Legacy for about 2 years, but surprisingly, a lot of what you may think are VFX are really practical effects. A lot of the sets were built physically with the help of the director, Joseph Kosinski, who has a background in architecture. Even the costumes with the lights were created. Elements of the film that were created digitally are the establishing shots, which were based around Japanese landscape art, some of the background scenery and the Recognizer - the flying vehicle.

It took two years and ten companies to create the 1,565 visual effects shots of Tron: Legacy. The majority of the effects were done by Digital Domain, who created 882 shots under supervisor Eric Barba.The production team blended several special effect techniques, such as chroma keying, to allow more freedom in creating effects. Similar to Tron, this approach was seen as pushing the boundaries of modern technology.
Rather than utilizing makeup tactics, such as the ones used in A Beautiful Mind, to give Jeff Bridges a younger appearance, the character of Clu was completely computer generated. To show that this version of Clu was created some time after the events of the original film, the visual effects artists based his appearance on how Bridges looked in Against All Odds, released two years after Tron. The effects team hired makeup artist Rick Baker to construct a molded likeness of a younger Bridges head to serve as their basis for their CG work. But soon, they scrapped the mould because they wished for it to be more youthful. There was no time to make another mould, so the team reconstructed it digitally. On-set, first Bridges would perform, being then followed by stunt double John Reardon who would mimic his actions. Reardon's head was replaced on post-production with the digital version of the young Bridges. Barba – who was involved in a similar experience for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — stated that they used four microcameras with infrared sensors to capture all 134 dots on Bridges face that would be the basis of the facial movements, a similar process that was used in Avatar. It took over two years to not only create the likeness of Clu, but also the character's movements (such as muscle movement). Bridges called the experience surreal and said it was "Just like the first Tron, but for real!"

Bradley Munkowitz of Digital Domain recorded himself working on a Unix terminal doing "technologically feasible things". 

He didn't want the "hacker scenes" to be bogged down with the Hollywood idea of hacking, as nmap had been used to death since it's first appearance in The Matrix, which then found it's way into Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4, Battle Royale and so on. He said, "In Tron, the hacker was not supposed to be snooping around on a network; he was supposed to kill a process."

He used posix kill and piped PS into Grep. Using emacs eshell to make the terminal into a more "1337" style. The editor was split into nested panes and ran different modes.

In the battle arena scenes, the scoreboard was created using a line-generator which produces bursts of lines, which would turn at adjustable angles. The Radial Mode arranged the geometry in concentric circles. This would be used in a few different elements.

The design above and then in use in the scene.

Fireworks were simulated where a particle was given an upward force from generation. Gravity would pull it back down, resulting in a parabola (a two-dimensional, mirror-symmetrical curve, which is approximately U-shaped when oriented)

Particle children would be added as well as artistic styles, including what the team called "Egyptian", which is a side-stepping behaviour. This was done to give the fireworks a real firework feel, but also to give it a techno-aesthetic, so it would look as though it would belong in the world of Tron. As an homage to the original Tron, they had the fireworks explode in the shape of the character Bit.

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