Production visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst from ILM details more on de-ageing Harrison Ford, plus the film’s trip into the time fissure.
When Industrial Light & Magic embarked on its visual effects for James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, several artistic and technical challenges lay in its path. There were the de-aged shots of Harrison Ford, of course, plus extensive synthetic environments for the film’s fantastical third act plane journey through the time fissure.
While ILM developed and utilized several new tools for these tasks, the process to get there often started with look development, some of it carried out directly by production visual effects effects Andrew Whitehurst (who hails from ILM) himself.
Indeed, for the de-ageing work, in particular, Whitehurst made a number of paintings and even sculpted a maquette of Ford to help him and the crew further understand the actor’s likeness.
Here, Whitehurst tells befores & afters more about that artistic journey, along with details on his role in helping to design and craft major visual effects moments in the film.
You can read befores & afters’ previous Dial of Destiny coverage with ILM visual effects supervisor Robert Weaver here.
b&a: For the de-ageing of Harrison Ford, on set, what were some of the things done to help capture reference of the actor, in terms of camera set-up, lighting ref, etc?
Andrew Whitehurst: We used as many approaches as possible to ensure we maximized our coverage of the action. We used the FLUX facial capture rig, which attached two additional cameras on either side of the main taking camera that provided us with additional angles on the performance to help in producing 3D solves of the performance. We also scanned the sets, and shot lighting reference for every set up so we could precisely align all the CG geometry to the set, and accurately replicate the lighting for every angle.
Prior to shooting we had scanned Harrison Ford running through a full set of possible facial shapes, again to allow for more precise facial tracking of the source performance.
b&a: I heard you or ILM may have done some individual hand-made paintings and sculpted maquettes to aid in the process–can you talk about the intention of these?
Andrew Whitehurst: My background is in fine art and I was always taught that the best way to try and visually understand something is to draw, paint, or sculpt it. You have to start with a blank sheet or ball of clay, look at a lot of reference, and don’t trace anything, just draw or sculpt based on observation. The point is not necessarily to create a beautiful finished piece but to really force yourself to look hard at your subject, and the best way to do that is to try and create your own version from scratch.
I did a lot of paintings and drawings throughout the production, and a small maquette sculpt during pre-production, and I learned something about Harrison’s likeness with every one. Some ended up being more successful than others as finished pieces, but you learn a lot from the disasters, arguably more than from the ‘successes’. I really recommend hand crafted visual studies as part of the creative process, even for folks who don’t think they can draw, because the finished piece isn’t the important part, it’s the process of what you learn trying to make it which is invaluable.
b&a: What did you find, for those de-ageing scenes, was the thing that really helped ‘sell’ the final look of a younger Indy?
Andrew Whitehurst: I wish I could say that there was a magic recipe that produced the final result and that it was uniformly quantifiable. In truth a likeness and performance is a very holistic combination where every detail has to work in harmony with every other. If the facial movement is right, but the sheen on the skin isn’t quite there, the result is not going to feel coherent.
Our process was very iterative so we would look back through previous versions, other shots, and reference from the previous films to try and get a handle on what could be improved on the latest version of each shot as we reviewed it. It can be quite hard to put your finger on exactly why something doesn’t quite work, but having all the reference, and the growing experience gleaned from other shots helped us refine and work our way towards pulling all of the elements of the shot together to create a cohesive whole. Sometimes it might just be the addition of an eye light, other times we had to redo animation. It’s not just the face, the neck and hair also required just as much attention. There was a lot of discussion of CG sweaty clavicles on this film!
b&a: As the characters approach the time fissure, there are some incredible cloud formations and atmospheric effects there–what kind of design and look and feel went into these?
Andrew Whitehurst: One of the joys of all Indiana Jones films is that they are grounded in a very earthy reality which sometimes has some supernatural magic added on top. We really wanted to try and capture that for the time fissure.
Initially we wanted the fissure to feel distant and mysterious, and to emphasise the claustrophobic atmosphere inside the planes so we played up the rain droplets hammering against the glass, the water and mist in the air, and banks of cloud that we fly through.
As we approach the fissure we widened out the cloud tunnel through which we are flying as the fissure itself pulls the cloud out into the sky on the other side. Jim (Mangold) often used the analogy of a waterfall to express the kind of motion he wanted to see in the clouds as they get torn apart and blasted through the Portal. We also looked at a lot of cloud tank reference as that has a natural but otherworldly quality that seemed appropriate. Additionally we used a lot of reference footage of extreme weather events to find shapes or movement that we could roll into our simulations to keep the effect just within the realm of the believable.
On the other side of the portal, in ancient Syracuse, the Portal cloud had to remain a visual threat, without getting in the way of the human drama playing out on the beach. We ended up designing a cloud bank that had these huge arms stretching out across the sky on either side of the Portal’s maw to give a visual impression of the cloud reaching out into the world, and to give it a more sculptural, characterful quality. The design for this was done with a series of concept paintings, often painted on top of frames from main unit photography. This allowed us to explore how the shapes would read from a variety of angles. We nicknamed this the ‘Trumbull Cloud’ after the legendary Douglas Trumbull and his beautiful cloud tank work in Close Encounters.
The simulations for the cloud needed a lot of finessing. There is a fine balance between having the cloud churn enough to look exciting, and not move so fast that the cloud doesn’t feel massive. We tried to have larger masses move slowly, allowing wispy smaller tendrils of cloud to accelerate and have more energy, but the balance of that was adjusted on a per shot basis.
b&a: Getting a whole range of shots for the plane sequences – exteriors, crashing, cockpits etc – must have been a challenge. What kind of planning did you do, and what did this lead to in terms of working out what could be captured with shoots and what could be done digitally?
Andrew Whitehurst: As with most of the major action in the film, there was a lot of creative exploration in pre-production. For the approach to the Portal the initial pass was an animatic I made, generated from rough hand drawn boards I did at home during the first Covid lockdown. From this the previs team, led by Clint Reagan, began to explore more and to flesh out interior and exterior shot angles. Gabriel Hardman also produced more detailed boards for sections of the sequence that didn’t require previs.
We knew the exterior shots would have to be fully CG as no full practical assets would be built for either plane in the air. We worked hard to make sure that every shot had a plausible method for shooting it, as if we had been able to shoot the material practically, e.g. hard mounts on the aircraft, virtual chase planes at reasonable distances with appropriate lens choices and camera operation etc. were all used to make sure the filmmaking felt naturalistic.
Inside the planes, previs did an amazing job in defining angles where we would be able to fit an ALEXA alongside the crew and cover the action inside the practical set builds. Both the Heinkel and the Nord sets were mounted on controllable gimbals by Alistair Williams’ SFX department so once we got to set with the previs we could all see how the plane sets had to be moved to cover the action.
Because of the planning we had done in previs and storyboarding, we were also able to shoot plates for outside the plane windows, and also to scan the location in Sicily with a helicopter unit during the main unit shoot. The location was used wherever possible, but the majority of ancient Syracuse and the surrounding environment was CG to allow us to shape the landmass to facilitate the dramatic action, e.g. when the planes needed to be flying over Roman triremes, when they needed to be flying over the city etc. The order of action in the sequence came first, and we designed a landmass that could accommodate that action, and that also incorporated the practical location within it.
