Resident Evil: Apocalypse goes to great heights to sell its effects. All images courtesy of Mr. X. © 2004 Constantin Films/Screen Gems Inc. All rights reserved.

Beware! The undead are back and they are bringing some new friends along... Adapted from the best-selling videogame series, the first Resident Evil movie combined a sexy lead character named Alice, a scary story (the ruthless Umbrella Corporation unleashes a virus that turns its own employees into zombies) and state of the art visual effects by Framestore CFC, London. In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the action picks up right where it left off. Genetically enhanced Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up in the middle of Raccoon City, which has become a virus-infected place of the dead. She joins a group of survivors and tries to lead them out of the city, fighting her way through nasty creatures and mean zombies. But the main danger that she will be facing is Umbrella Corp., the company who created her and that doesn’t want her to escape…

Producers Paul W.S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt selected Alison O’Brien to both supervise and produce the visual effects. A former head of vfx and director of production at Framestore CFC, she had overseen the production of the visual effects of Event Horizon for the two partners. She soon found out that the new assignment was going to put her management skills to the test… “We had about 500 shots to do, although 444 are in the final cut,” O’Brien says. “This was a rather large-scale project involving creature animation, CGI, crowd duplication and complex miniature set-ups. However, I was not allowed to pick up the facilities that I wanted to work with. Since this was an English/Canadian co-production shot in Toronto, there were tax incentives that required the effects work to be done exclusively in the Ontario State. This was an enormous challenge for me as I was not familiar with the companies there. I had to evaluate their capacity, their availability and their experience. With such a restraint and given the complexity of the project, I was actually very worried in the beginning. I knew it would take a huge amount of creative, technical, budget and deadline management to make it work.”

Made in Canada
Selected to handle the bulk of the effects load was Mr. X, Toronto, who produced more than 250 shots under founder Dennis Berardi’s supervision. A large part of their involvement focused on a climactic sequence that takes place at the City Hall of Raccoon City. Live-action plates were shot at the Toronto City Hall, taking advantage of its unique twin cove-shaped towers mirroring each other. In a spectacular shot, Alice is seen running down one of the 260-foot tall facades with the help of a cable rig. The action was performed live by stunt double Joanne Leach — 12 times in a row! — and captured via a special camera rig that was able to track along the fearless performer.

“The first part of the shot was framed as if she was running along a horizontal surface,” O’Brien recalls. “Then, the camera did a 90-degree turn and you suddenly realized that Alice was actually running straight down the edge of the building. This was a very complex shot that required face replacement as well as costume and cable replacement. Mr. X used a digital scan of Milla’s head and digitally tracked it — in Boujou — onto the stunt double’s body. The track was really difficult as the shot featured a dramatic perspective and lighting change on the character. Plus, it was unavoidable that the costume was stretched out at the point where the cable connected to the harness. So, we had to reconstruct the background, paint her clothes back to their normal shape and replace the whole cable and carabiner.”