Water sims, incredible body tracking and matchmove, and insane comp.
This week on the befores & afters podcast, we’re chatting to DNEG visual effects supervisor Mohsen Mousavi about the Netflix film NYAD. It’s a film that tells the true story of ocean swimmer Diana Nyad’s attempts to cross from Cuba to Florida. Diana is played by Annette Bening. DNEG worked with production VFX supe Jake Braver on the film, and I was lucky enough to speak to Jake for an article you can read here.
In this podcast, DNEG’s Mohsen goes into detail about the first two attempted ocean swim crossings by Nyad. I have to say if you didn’t know any visual effects were done on those sequences, you might think they were actually shot for real on the ocean. But of course that’s not something that was safe or able to be done. The workflow was that they filmed Annette Bening and a boat on a tank to get her performance in the water. Indeed, they would keep her performance but then replace the water to give it the ocean look, and the currents and movement it needed to tell the story of Nyad being out in the open ocean.
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Check out the podcast below, plus some before/afters from DNEG in this image gallery, and a breakdown.
