Some of the seamless effects work included the jackal, setting a nun on fire, and de-modernizing Rome.
Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen features a plethora of horrifying moments, many brought to life with a combination of on set practical effects and fully digital visual effects.
The jackal featured in the film’s climax, for instance, was a fully CG creation from Herne Hill. Fire surrounding the creature is a mix of real, digital and composited fire elements.
There are many other VFX in the film, too, including moments when characters needed to be on fire, and scenes requiring crowd and vehicle extensions and ‘de-modernization’ of Rome for the 1970s setting.
Another kind of digital effect involved digital prosthetic cleanup work, such as for a scene in which a character is split in half following a car accident, and for the film’s opening gory beginnings.
Here, production visual effects supervisor James Cooper and Herne Hill visual effects supervisor Ben King break down the work for befores & afters.
b&a: James, I always like starting at the beginning. When you came on board, what were the visual effects requirements going in for the film?
James Cooper: The main ideas in terms of visual effects were mostly about the de-modernization of Rome, crowds, the fire work for Sister Anjelica hanging herself on fire, and the jackal creature. That was always intended to be a practical prosthetic make-up performer, although we eventually wound up going fully digital with that because there was a little bit of a redesign two-thirds of the way through.
b&a: Ben, let’s talk about the jackal. Since it was originally a practical creature did you have access to any kind of creature to reference and scan to start your CG build?
Ben King: Yes, we had a photogrammetry scan of the creature, the original design, and we had proceeded with creating a fully digital version of that, that we were going to either use to augment or fully replace in certain shots. But as James said, the design changed midway through the project, and so we had to go through a bit of a redesign process. We received some sketches from the on-set team and then we built a digital version internally.
b&a: What I like about the jackal shots is that they’re very suggestive of the horror, in a way. I like the shot design. I guess, James, with those, they’re kind of scarier because we’re not necessarily up close on it.
James Cooper: Very much so. That was the take of Arkasha, the director. We’re fully on board with that–the alien monster reveal situation where it’s scarier what you don’t see half the time.
b&a: The thing is though, Ben, there’s quite a lot of detail in it and lots of crazy stuff in terms of setting up the creature. What were some of the challenges there?
Ben King: Yeah, I mean it’s one of those things where you always want to be able to show your work off more than sometimes you get to. But as James alluded to, it’s obviously better for the film if we see less. Still, we did a full build for the creature. It involved a very detailed sculpt, some really detailed lookdev work and a lot of texturing. The creature was supposed to be very mangy and it had been living in its own filth for its whole life essentially. We went through a reference collection phase where we collected different levels of mange. The creature, not that you see it too much behind all the fire, has as a whole fur groom. We went through different variations on groom mange and adding debris into the fur and all that kind of stuff.
While that may not be ultimately the most visible thing in the end, all of that’s underneath. I think you get the sense that it’s there, even though it’s not directly visible. All that stuff adds realism. It all adds to the effect in the end, even if it’s not specifically so visible to the audience.
James Cooper: I think Ben and the team at Herne Hill had created a very robust photoreal asset that we could have shown in its entirety at any point. Probably the best examples of that are some of the montage flashback sequences where we see the creature’s mouth and back. It’s just very quick flashes of it, but that’s where we see it the best.
b&a: And James, was that jackal immersed in fire towards the end? Was that actually filmed as a plate with the practical creature at all with real fire?
James Cooper: We did actually shoot an entirely different finale with the performer and prosthetic makeup. It was a completely different idea, although the creature was always destined to be burned in the end of it all. We had a whole different finale that we were working towards when it was decided that we were going to change the whole ending and the design of the creature. So, we didn’t have a performer for the finale as it appears in the movie now. We just shot fire plates on the Phantom camera at 300 frames a second.
For the reveals of the fire and the tapestries that burn off, that’s all practical fire. Then Ben and his team in Herne Hill did a fantastic job of matching into the practical fire that was there. That’s one of the reasons that it’s so successful is that you really cannot tell what’s practical fire and what’s Herne Hill fire. We didn’t have a reference for them at all. It literally was, ‘Here’s a plate.’ We did have a 3D printed head from the model that we flashed in for some lighting reference, but other than that, it’s all Herne Hill.
b&a: Ben, what were some of the challenges of immersing your digital creature into fire elements and comp’ing that?
Ben King: For anyone who’s worked on fire, I think they know that fire’s probably one of those things that’s deceptively difficult in computer graphics. I think everyone thinks that fire’s a solved problem, but it’s one of those things where to get it to look right, to get the exposure to look photographic, how the camera lens blooms when the fire is in frame–all those things are really challenging.
We really relied on a lot of combinations of things. We did a lot of simulations as a base and then layered on practical elements that James had filmed on set, as well as even roto’ing out sections of slow mo fire that were working really well on the plate and then comp’ing those in. It was a real combination of things to get it right, and it was just a ton of elements, just a huge comp to get it to really work and look believable.
b&a: Speaking of fire, there’s the scene of Anjelica setting herself on fire and leaping off the balcony. James, again, what kind of things were filmed for that to make that gag possible?
James Cooper: We shot at an ancient villa in Rome called Parisi, and that was the orphanage exterior, and there was a railing that was there. Ben and the team, again, did a fantastic job of recreating that wall at the orphanage. We also had our production design team led by Eve Stewart build a two-thirds scale version of that wall in our backlot. And then with our stuntwoman Lucy Johnson, we did a full burn with her leaping off of that balcony a couple of times, and then we also had a dummy that we dropped off and swung around to get some fire elements for that. Most of that served more as a reference for the Herne Hill team than actually using it as comp elements.
b&a: But it sounds like that having that even just as reference is amazing to actually have something, Ben, to work with to continue to augment and make the final shot. I’m guessing it was useful.
Ben King: Absolutely. I think having real fire, I mean, having anything real in a plate to match into I think is always best. And in this case, there’s no way we would’ve been as successful if we didn’t have that real practical fire in there as a base. We had a simulation for every shot, and then we layered on different elements where necessary.
James Cooper: It’s a particularly tricky one given the fact that she’s swinging around, which affects the temperature of the fire and the direction of the fire and the wind and all of that. Ben’s team did a fantastic job of matching into that and making it feel very realistic.
There were a few other elements where we had quite a lot of work that Herne Hill did that actually didn’t make it into the final movie. There was a lot of burn work with Anjelica, who came back in visions to Margaret fully burned. They did a lot of great work on that. At one point in the riot scene, Anjelica was running towards us fully on fire from the car bomb. And again, they did a great job making that work, but then the filmmakers decided to go a different route with it.
b&a: James, you mentioned de-modernization of Rome. That invisible work is awesome. What were the requirements there?
James Cooper: There were two major scenes on that front. The arrival at the airport at Leonardo da Vinci and in the Piazza del Popolo. Firstly, we didn’t actually shoot at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. We shot a bunch of elements. We had some crowds there and some cars. We did a bit of photogrammetry. I don’t think it really held up for Ben and the team, but at least it was good reference. We were able to find assets of a Fiat 500 from the ’70s and various different cars that are available.
b&a: Ben, can you talk a bit about that work as well, because that’s something different than the horror, it’s invisible stuff, but still vital to help with the storytelling?
Ben King: You’re right that invisible was the goal. We really didn’t want anybody to notice it. All the crowd simulations were done in Houdini, but then the cars were hand placed by our anim team. James is right, we were able to find some nice period car models that we could purchase and then bring up to the level that we were expecting to have them hold up in a shot.
b&a: James, there’s a couple of crazy gory moments in the film. The first scene is one, and there’s others in terms of bodies being split apart. What I really took away is that it feels very practical and tangible and tactile, but I can only imagine there were times where VFX had to augment or take over. Can you tell me about a few of those?
James Cooper: Very much so. There’s almost no prosthetic work that is standalone. As Ben says, we always want to have practical things on camera, and very much any VFX team and prosthetic team will tell you it’s always best when we work as a team and we work together knowing at what point the takeover happens and where we can help out and where we know that things might need a little life given to them.
So, the major scenes on that, as you mentioned, the opening scene with Father Harris, there was a prosthetic wound that was attached to a stand-in, and we used that as our jumping off point, but then the filmmakers definitely wanted it to be deeper and gorier and more of a fatal wound than we could do it with a prosthetic without creating a ginormous head to create that negative space, the concavity that was necessary.
So, again, that was something that started as a prosthetic wound that then effectively got a full takeover in CG with Ben’s team using that prosthetic wound as a jumping off point. The same thing goes with poor Paolo who gets eviscerated by a truck. We had just a half dummy prosthetic. Ben and the team augmented that and gave it just enough swing in the arms and the entrails and blood dripping and all the rest of it to really put it in the scene and make it believable that it wasn’t just a stand-in.
Ben King: The two shots that James is referring to were CG takeovers. However, we were able to take the practical elements that were shot and project them and track them into the shot. Specifically for the head wound, the base of the wound and all the blood that was dripping down and the blood that was dripping onto the character’s back, that was all practical. That was comp’ed in on top of the CG. The CG becomes the base, and then we layer on elements of practical on top of it to really make it look believable.
It was the same thing for the Paolo shot where he’s been split in half. We did a CG stump, and then the rest of it was augmented with the practical prosthetics that were shot. And then a lot of comp love to really make it look believable.
James Cooper: It was all about working as a team with Adrien Morot’s crew who did all the prosthetics. They are fantastic, amazing artists and a great team to work with. But we made sure to go and scan the performer and do a full FACS scan on the performer who was going to be the jackal, and then a proper scan of him in his full prosthetic makeup, a scan of our actor who played Paolo, and a scan of his dummy, eviscerated dummy. I think that the key to my job and on set and pre-production is to make sure that I provide teams like Ben and his team with everything that they need to realize the director’s vision in a photoreal manner.
