Behind the visual effects by Imageworks for ‘Red One’.
On Jake Kasdan’s Red One, Sony Pictures Imageworks visual effects supervisor Chris Waegner oversaw a range of CG characters, effects and unique environments. These include snowmen henchmen who confront the heroes in Aruba, the witch Gryla, human characters being shrunken down into a snow globe, and a dynamic final battle high above the North Pole involving Gryla and the massive sleigh dubbed ‘Red One’.
Here, Waegner, who worked with production visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen, breaks down the sequences for befores & afters.
b&a: Let’s start with the snowmen battle. What did you decide with production about how that would be accomplished?
Chris Waegner: Well, the snowmen have several unique characteristics to them. They’re magical snowmen to begin with. They’re conjured up as snow assassins or henchmen for the witch Gryla in the movie. Each snowman brandishes their own unique weapon: spear, sword, throwing stars, daggers, things like that. It’s not enough that these magical weapons are made of ice but whatever they touch freezes into a solid block of ice. There’s one particular moment in the movie where Jack (Chris Evans) is frantically swimming away from a snowman, the snowman sees this and sticks his spear into the swimming pool, freezing the water solid, trapping Jack on the other side of the pool.
The snowmen characters went through several design iterations early in post- production. Originally, they had more of an ice ninja look but as animation testing progressed, they evolved into more of a traditional snowman design. Each one then developed design characteristics unique to a classic snowman like a top hat, corncob pipe, carrot nose, etc. What was unique about the Aruba fight sequence was the visual juxtaposition of a tropical beach location with these frosty snowmen characters.
When creating a “real” snowman out of fresh snow, they tend to have this soft fluffy composition but after they’re out in the cold for a few days, the snow tends to become very hard and icy. Early in the design phase, the snowmen started off with a very hard compact snowy look, this helped establish them as formidable foe but it didn’t really work well when designing the fight choreography. We finally settled on the look of a freshly made snowman which allowed for various creative opportunities. For example, during a fight when one of our heroes hits a snowman, bits of snow and ice crystals fly through the air creating a rainbow-like effect when the sunlight passed through these bits – creating a “snowbow.”
Overall, it was quite an endeavour for the team to figure out what these snowmen would look like in tropical beach location like Aruba. There’s literally no practical visual reference to rely upon because snowmen don’t exist in hot tropical locations, so the film makers really relied on us to realistically envision the Aruba sequence.
b&a: What did you decide in terms of behaviour and movement of these snowmen? Is it pretty much what the stunt performers did, or were they sort of lumbering? Were they fast? I’m also curious about facial animation. They don’t have too many details in their face, but there are some things that you could lock onto, obviously.
Chris Waegner: That’s a great question. Early on, the snowmen concept was more of an ice ninja design – smaller with a leaner physique allowing them to be more nimble and quick. As the animation team began exploring this early character design, it became apparent the ninja design wasn’t really working for our filmmakers. Animation testing continued using plate photography and the snowmen design slowly evolved into a more traditional look with them becoming larger in scale and more formidable foes.
As far as facial performance goes, we built a full facial rig in each snowman but as we explored their performances within shot context, it became clear that less is more facially with these characters. The extensive animation testing led us to determine that if they emoted too much, they actually started looking cartoony and less threatening. We decided to propose more of a deadpan stoic look with subtle facial movements which matched their menacing physical attributes. In the end, their stoic look with very little facial expression resonated with what Jake Kasdan and Jerome Chen had envisioned and I think it was a successful choice.
b&a: You mentioned the fact that they’re on this beach, they’re in full sunlight. It also seemed like a really big challenge to have both super close-up shots where you can see almost the crystals, and then further away ones. How you did end up dealing with surfacing and just the look and feel of them in the end?
Chris Waegner: The distance of the snowmen to the camera played a big role resulting in the need for several different visual setups. The multiple setups were necessary because they are not composed of entirely pure white fluffy snow but rather snow, chucks of ice, dirt debris and fine ice crystals. As they progress through the sequence, they start accumulating dirt, debris and little bits of their environment sticking to them. We also incorporated a subtle crystalline light scatter and deep snowy subsurface look that helped establish their unique exterior surface look.
b&a: How did you approach the shots of Jack and Dylan when they’d been shrunk down to snow globe size?
Chris Waegner: The filmmakers envisioned a camera setup which was essentially a macro lens at the snow globes scale resulting in lots of depth of field. At times, this camera is within the snow globes and sometimes just outside the globes which resulted in an interesting look. Finding the correct visual balance for this emotional sequence was key for our director. We wanted the audience to feel like they were inside this macro world, trapped with Jack and Dylan and feeling their emotions.
During principal photography the crew set up these giant acrylic half domes for the actors to perform within. This became a great reference point for our digital team, but it was actually too perfect and didn’t have any glass abnormalities typically found in snow globes. Our team embarked on a journey to try and create this macro snow globe environment that looked realistic and not perfect. Varying the glass thickness, adding glass wobble, scratches, finger prints, fine glass imperfections, etc all added to the macro-photography of the snow globes. Without all these subtle details the audience subconsciously knows something’s amiss and can be taken out of the emotional moment shared between Jack and Dylan. Once we started layering in all these tiny details and incorporated aspects of macro photography it all came together.
Another aspect of this sequence that was relatively challenging was the constant falling snow inside the snow globes. There was no performance photography of our actors with practical snow, so the snow within the snow globe had to be digitally created. Since our characters are moving around within their globe environment the FX team had to create digital snow that was advected by their performances, could stick to them if needed and piled up around their feet as they paced around trapped withing their globes. The digital falling snow also had to match the “spirit” of snow globe snow, meaning it couldn’t just fall straight down, our digital snowflakes required some initial motion which was generated by a fluid sim within the confines of their globes.
b&a: There’s the stealing of Santa’s sleigh and the transformation of Kiernan Shipka into the giant witch Gryla. Tell me first about dealing with Santa’s sleigh.
Chris Waegner: Well, Red One, the sleigh, is about the size of a bus. On set, it wasn’t the type of thing the film crew could move around very easily, resulting in physically moving cameras to imply the sleigh’s speed. The sleigh is also being pulled by eight giant reindeer with lots of interactive FX snow. As the sleigh races down the runway, kicking up snow as it goes, visual continuity of the snow becomes very important – direction of falling snow, reindeer snow, sleigh tracks in the snow, snow footprints, etc.
The sequence starts with Gryla stealing the sleigh, charging down the runway. She believes she’s gotten away but our heroes make it to the sleigh just in time. Our heroes engage with Gryla who ends up getting ejected off the sleigh, believing they have saved the day. Part two of this sequence, Gryla transforms to her true self, an 18-foot-tall ogre type creature from Icelandic folklore. She climbs up to the top of the runway, and then we have an epic battle for Santa’s freedom.
There were many challenges with this sequence, one in particular that comes to mind was establishing the correct eyelines with our actors. For this, we put actress Kiernan Shipka in the scissor lift 18 feet in the air. Our actors could then perform their dialogue, reacting to her as if she was 18 feet tall. We also were able to capture Kiernan’s facial capture performance while she was on the scissor lift performing. The physical battle between our heroes, Cal and Jack, and the 18-foot-tall Gryla had its own set of challenges requiring – a lot of rotomation, live-action plates augmentation, and live-action to digital double transitions which is relatively standard these days. But this was all taking place during a snow storm, high above the North Pole City and on a narrow runway. So even though we started off with live-action plates we needed to account for digital falling snow, digital background enhancements, digital ground snow continuity and it seemed like digital everything else.
b&a: For Gryla as a witch in particular, was there any kind of need to do a facial capture session with Kiernan, the actress?
Chris Waegner: We incorporated a head-mounted camera setup on Kiernan Shipka to capture her performance. We found that the most important thing for our Gryla character was capturing the essence of Kiernan’s performance, and then determining the correct balance required for the shot. The structural differences between Kiernan and giant Gryla was quite vast and while it was great to have the head-mounted facial capture from set, it was the animation team who helped define these performances. Throughout the sequence animation was dealing with the subtle difference in Gryla’s performance, balancing her calm and confident moments against the angry and furious moments – each dictated by the shot requirements.
b&a: She seems like a character with lots and lots of CFX challenges. Tell me about some of those.
Chris Waegner: Well, she was another character that went through a visual evolution of design. She’s unique in the sense that she’s 18 feet tall with distinctive decrepit hunched over appearance, and two Minotaur-type legs. One challenge the animation team had to overcome was making her a formidable adversary to our heroes with her decrepit posture. We used her tails as a physical counterbalance to her posture and the tails themselves became prehensile weapons which can used as whips or have the ability grab things.
When she first appears, she seems very old and decrepit but intimidating mostly due to her size, but then you realize that she’s also quite spry and agile with the ability to move very quickly during battle. As the sequence evolves our heroes have to change their battle strategy when they realize how quick and nimble she is.
As far as her costume and CFX goes, she had this mane of wiry coarse hair that was always blowing in the North Pole wind. Her shawl and cloak costume is made of a heavy burlap type material, acting like a long winter coat. The CFX teams had their hands full with her costume due to the physical interactions with our live-action and digital heroes. At one point her costume catches fire and in a fit of rage Gryla rips off a portion of the costume.
b&a: You mentioned the North Pole City. I just want to make sure I give a shout-out to your environments team that I imagine made quite a complex build there.
Chris Waegner: We did share the North Pole asset with another vendor on this film. Both facilities were running parallel but since our North Pole sequence showcased mostly the runway, North Pole Tower and surrounding Tower locations, it became manageable, not to imply it was easy. Our environments team focused attention on high altitude city views, looking down upon the city below and wide vista type shots. We had our own customized version of the North Pole City specifically designed and catered to our shot needs. Of course there’s specifics to our shots like digital snow continuity, sleigh tracks in the snow, icicles hanging down off the runway, all very unique and particular to our camera angles. There was also the constant visual balance with the other vendor while trying to make the North Pole look realistic and magical. Jake and Jerome had a very specific vision for their version of the North Pole city and it was up to us to create something that audiences could identify as what the North Pole might look like. It’s colourful, fanciful and magical, but it’s not cartoony.
b&a: Is there anything else about that particular sequence that you wanted to mention?
Chris Waegner: Like many films these days, for our sequences, we incorporated many modern film making techniques each with its own set of challenges – filming in various set locations, filming in soundstages, utilizing drones, incorporating motion capture and various handheld camera techniques. For example, in one sequence we start off with eight giant digital reindeer pulling a huge sleigh and trailer high above the North Pole city in a snow storm and end with an epic battle featuring an 18 foot all ogre. That’s huge… It’s a real testament to all the dedicated artists who were able to help visualize our filmmaker’s goals.
Sometimes there are little moments in a sequence. One such moment is when Jack gets thrown off the sleigh and he falls into the reindeer team. He has to navigate his way from the front reindeer team back toward the sleigh. It’s reminiscent of those classic Western films – the stagecoach charging full speed and our hero is stuck within the horse team. That sequence of shots was so much fun to work on and it became important to our filmmakers in the sense that they too saw an homage to the classic western films. Instead of a dry desert with horses and dust – it’s the North Pole, giant reindeer and snow. It also became a hero moment for Jack, it’s so disorientating at times, snow everywhere with silhouetted glimpses of Jack against these large dangerous hooves kicking all around him. It’s a short moment within this larger sequence, but it’s a great action moment where you’re right in the middle of the chaos.
b&a: I really like the idea that visual effects, as you’ve said there, is adding to the story by being the place where that kind of stuff can be worked out. Because, as you say, it’s shot on set, and you need to widen that world, but also introduce the freneticism. And I think the general public doesn’t always realize that visual effects is often in there to helping do those things, invisibly.
Chris Waegner: Oh yeah, yeah, I 100% agree. The term ‘invisible visual effects’ has been coined before. That’s exactly what it is when we do our job right.
