The character was all CG but included a capture session with Kelsey Grammar. Plus, how the VFX team handled teleportations, how they dealt with Brie Larson’s hair, filming Goose and Flerken scenes (and those kittens!), and the StageCraft LED volume work on the film.
Audiences were delighted to see the return of Hank McCoy (aka Beast) in a fun end-credits scene in Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels.
The character was an all-CG creation from Industrial Light & Magic, but made possible with FACS, Medusa and Anyma scans of the actor who portrayed him in the original X-Men films: Kelsey Grammer.
Here, The Marvels visual effects supervisor talks to befores & afters about that Beast work, plus a range of other complex scenes, realized by several VFX studios including Industrial Light & Magic, TRIXTER, Wētā FX and Sony Pictures Imageworks.
These include dealing with the teleportations between the characters Danvers, Kamala and Rambeau, handling Goose and Flerken shots, making Captain Marvel fly, and shooting with ILM’s StageCraft LED volume.
b&a: From an overall point of view, how did you approach those very fun scenes that required teleportation switching between Danvers/Kamala/Rambeau, in terms of shooting plates, and then crafting the effect when they switched?
Tara DeMarco: We knew that the entanglement effect was going to require special treatment from the very first script read. We also knew that we wanted to have real performances for either side of every switch. Our director, Nia DaCosta, was very supportive of a methodology where we filmed both sides of the entanglement with actors whenever possible.
Complex entanglement scenes, like the opening switch fight, were pre-planned with VFX, Peng Zhang, the 2nd unit director, and the stunts department ahead of filming. Simpler entanglement scenes were worked out with actor blocking at the start of each shoot day. Our grip department was incredibly helpful and made various sizes of green screen that could be brought onto set quickly to support the more impromptu switch-filming.
The entanglement effect happens quickly, it only takes 4-6 frames. The effect was designed to be a very clear travel of one incoming power color and one outgoing power color (i.e – Carol’s gold to Kamala’s pink). In reviews with filmmakers and vendors, we called it the “lava lamp” effect. If the character power colors merged too much, then the entanglement looked a little like a jump cut. We wanted the audience to be able to sense the incoming character by their color, even if it was a short beat.
Originally, there were quite a few entanglement shots where we only planned to show one character. In post, we found that we were missing the switch effect from whoever was meant to be coming or going. In these situations, we added a fully animated digital double.
b&a: For Goose and the other Flerken, what workflow did you follow for going from any on-set cats or stuffies or stand-ins and reference, through to final cats/Flerkens? How was a typical ‘Flerken swallowing up a S.A.B.E.R. crew member’ shot achieved?
Tara DeMarco: We filmed a cat element plate for every shot in the film where we see Goose or her Flerkittens. We had two excellent trained cats on set, Tango and Nemo. They could perform most of the tapping, swatting, hopping, or sitting actions. For scenes like the one where Kamala holds Goose in the Khan living room, our very patient cat handlers would step in and hold the cats in the appropriate position for reference. Tango and Nemo were excellent with performing based on commands or marks, but they didn’t love to be held, so in some special circumstances we ended up doing a separate reference shoot with my own cat. Trixter handled the VFX for these scenes.
First peek stills from our work on The Marvels! ⭐ More to come soon….#higherfurtherfaster #themarvels #trixtervfx #captainmarvel #goose #flerkin pic.twitter.com/6MsSY5W4IJ
— TRIXTER VFX (@trixterfilm) November 24, 2023
We knew that most of the Flerkittens in SABER would ultimately be CG, but we wanted to ground the animated kittens wherever possible. We filmed one or two takes of every setup with our 9 on-set kittens. In post, we quickly realized that we would need a lot of CG kittens for the appropriate amount of chaos in SABER. The amazing animation team at ILM filled in the gaps in action with kitten reference from separate elements shoots, personal kitten videos and internet reference.
The final shots are mostly full CG kittens, with just a handful that are a blend of one or two kitten takes, combined with many, many CG Flerkittens. ILM had to resort to adding crowd simulations as the kitten population grew exponentially, but the close to camera and interaction shots always had bespoke animations. Having the real kitties on-set helped us immensely with realism when getting to the final renders and compositing.
For the SABER corridor, we worked with the 2nd unit director Peng Zhang and the stunts team to block “consume” actions that could be achieved with pull-rigs and crash mats. In post, the stunt performances were taken over with digital doubles for the beat where the Flerkitten mouth sac surrounds the human. Again, the team at ILM increased the chaos with their own wild full CG “consume” ideas. When Kamala holds her kitten for the final consumes, we filmed her several times. Once with a real kitten – Snuggles, and several times with a kitten sized bean bag.
b&a: Scenes featuring Danvers flying were fantastic. What elements made up flight shots, ie. what kind of wirework or other shooting did you undertake, how did you deal with the actor’s hair, what kinds of discussions did you have about Danvers’ glow and energy effects, and what were the challenges in coming up with the right kind of flight animation?
Tara DeMarco: On set, we utilized both traditional wires and tuning forks for flying shots. Carol’s powers can be quite bright, so we would often do reference passes with the actor wearing golden LED wristbands. Some of her brightest effects also required added golden light coming from off-screen.
Carol has an established look to her powers and her flying, so we tried to stay faithful to her look from the previous films. However, we did execute quite a lot of CG hair for Carol in this film. Sometimes the CG hair was necessary due to the direction she was flying or falling. Other times we utilized CG hair to add binary glow or to add anti-gravity to the shots where she’s flying in space.
Carol’s flight animation is often an expression of what she’s feeling as a character. We tried to express urgency in her flying on Tarnax and general badassery for her flying on Aladna. The important thing across all the Carol flying animation, was to keep her the hero. She’s the character that Kamala looks up to and she’s striving to be the hero in every situation. This was a challenge for all of our vendor animators because Carol needed to get from A-to-B, but convey a specific intention.
b&a: How was any LED Volume work utilized in the film? What assets/elements needed to be produced ahead of time? How did you feel that aided in crafting sequences?
Tara DeMarco: We used the volume in two different ways on this film. The SABER command center, and more specifically, Nick Fury’s office, was designed to have views of Earth. We had many meetings with Nia during prep and decided that SABER would be at the same orbital height as the International Space Station. This gave us an incredible amount of reference for scale and distance to Earth.
We worked with ILM StageCraft to create 8k digital matte paintings for a very specific flight path. These views were art directed for day over New York and night over areas where we wanted the space station to seem more remote. As the situation on SABER gets more dire, the lights on Earth go out, and SABER drifts towards the poles and the aurora borealis. The massive LED wall outside the 2-story window was comprised of 3800 AOTO panels. The matte paintings were pre-rendered with a few adjustable layers, city lights, clouds and auroras.
We treated the pop-up volume for Carol’s ship differently. We created virtual art department jump points, matte painted nebulas, and drifting stars. The same LED panels were re-configured in an oval around the 88’ ship set. We worked with our DP, Sean Bobbitt, to introduce additional lights on the actors as they moved through each colored jump point. The StageCraft team and the gaffer rigged and saved triggers of predetermined lighting animation that worked in sync with the imagery on the LED panels to achieve the exact look that Sean was after.
We also stitched footage from a helicopter array flying over the sea in Italy, and added CG clouds for the Marvels to fly through. Nia wanted a true sense of awe from Kamala as she enters new environments, and the volume work supported that sense of adventure in filmmaking.
b&a: How was Hank McCoy brought to life for that awesome end-credit scene?
Tara DeMarco: The studio had a very specific vision for bringing Beast into the MCU. Andy Park from the visual development department provided a concept frame for the costume, face, and hair. The base likeness is of Kelsey Grammar, but the character had a broader forehead, a more beast-like nose, and those protruding teeth.
The execution of a full CG Beast was a major collaboration with Pietro Ponti and the team from ILM London. We wanted to capture Kelsey Grammar in a very specific way, for the best possible lip sync with his dialog. We did a comprehensive FACS session at OTOY in downtown Los Angeles. We then captured the dialog two ways, in a pop-up Medusa booth and also in an Anyma capture volume with facial tracking markers and a head-mounted camera.
The team at ILM took the scans and created an unbelievable CG asset. First, they recreated the actor’s likeness matching the OTOY output. Once the actor likeness was achieved, they modified the base model with blended shapes from the VisDev concept. This allowed the model to be grounded in the actor’s proportions. Proportion was key for the animation phase as we wanted to map actor performance to Beast’s features.
We then really pushed fidelity in the skin texture, always using the OTOY reference shoot as a starting point for skin. For the groom, we recreated the hair style as close as possible to the comics, trying to find the balance with realism and what we saw from the iconic style of Beast.
The final VFX challenge was believing the lip sync on very complex lines of dialogue delivered through protruding teeth. Extensive shot work was required for the final dialog, making sure the characteristic actor mouth shapes were not lost in translation as we remapped the performance onto the digital Beast.
