A Darker Ghost Rider

Production VFX producer Jenny Fulle discusses the back to basics approach to the Ghost Rider sequel, Spirit of Vengeance, but with the addition of 3-D.

By Bill Desowitz | Monday, February 20, 2012 at 5:04 pm

Posted In | Magazines: VFXWorld | Site Categories: 3D, CG, Films, Technology, Visual Effects

Iloura also worked on the hell bike, the hell truck, the Blackout character as well along with the design of the mayhem that he inflicts on his victims. Not surprisingly, the biggest challenge for Iloura was defining the look and behavior for the fire in keeping with the new vibe for Ghost Rider and then maintaining a consistency. They continue to use Fume fx. Naturally the process was customized to minimize render overhead and to work within the new hybrid stereo pipeline.

But Fulle says they didn't want to overburden Iloura, so they called upon some other companies to pick up sequences here and there, including Evil Eye, Anibrain and Pixel Magic.

"For me, the highlight occurs in the last act when a chase starts and ends up in a place in Turkey," Fulle suggests. "It was the most challenging and fantastic-looking work. We had Ghost Rider jumping on a truck and turning it into a hell truck, so now its enflamed and has smoke everywhere and there's lots of chasing and car crashing. When we shot that we were in Turkey with limited time so, when we ended up cutting it together, we had to recreate a lot of that highway, where it took place, and Iloura did a great job of stitching it together. We were all worried about how Ghost Rider might look in broad daylight but we were blown away by how [cool] he looks with the smoke and the flares and the 3-D. It all clicked into place for us."

The hell crane becomes one of the most intense moments.

Fulle says there's also a memorable moment when they try to exercise the demon out of Ghost Rider. In fact, the freedom granted the VFX companies in general was a thrilling non-traditional approach that she claims was almost "acid trippy." It was fun for the artists to let their imaginations run wild.

Bill Desowitz is former senior editor of AWN and editor of VFXWorld. His blog is Immersed in Movies (www.billdesowitz.com), he's a regular contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and he's the author of the upcoming James Bond Unmasked (Spies), which chronicles the 50-year evolution of the iconic superspy from Connery to Craig.