Blade: Trinity vfx supervisor Joe Bauer eschews CG stunts on film and digital doubles. Instead he uses live-action elements and composits them into the original plate, using digital transitions to smooth things out. © 2004 Diyah Pera/New

It may not be as highly regarded as the Spider-Man or X-Men franchises, but the Blade film series actually is one of the most successful adaptations of a comic book to the wide screen. The saga owes a large part of its success to David Goyer, who wrote the first movie before being promoted to writer and producer for the second one. For Blade: Trinity, the writer-producer makes his directorial debut and helms what will probably be the final installment of the saga. In this new adventure, Blade confronts the mother of all vampires, an ancient creature that was once known as Dracula and who now goes by the name of Drake (Dominic Purcell).

New Line turned to supervisor Joe Bauer to oversee the visual effects work. “They asked me to do Blade: Trinity right after I had finished Elf for them. Originally, there were 270 effects shots planned, but this number ultimately grew to 540. So, our workload exactly doubled. In order to be able to handle these extra shots, I augmented the number of facilities that worked on the show. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable giving too many shots to any single facility. In my opinion, fewer shots per company means more time for them to fine-tune the work. In the end, I enlisted no less than 17 different companies, the lead ones being Digital Dimension, Giant Killer Robots and CaféFX.”

Live Stunts
While the previous two movies had relied heavily on digital doubles to obtain spectacular shots, Bauer tried to use live-action elements as often as possible. This approach was put to the test with a scene in which Blade jumps out of a window several stories up and lands in front of the camera — all in one shot. “The production thought we were going to do the jump in CG and transition to Wesley Snipes, but I was not keen on the idea,” Bauer recalls. “I don’t like the look of CG stunts on film. Instead, we shot the empty façade of the real building and did a tilt down to Wesley doing a small jump on location. Back at the studio, we photographed a stuntman performing a 50-foot tall jump with a descender rig in front of a green- screen. We did several takes and every time, he tried to match Wesley’s landing position as close as possible. Then, Digital Dimension took this element and composited it in the original plate. A digital transition between the falling Blade and landing Blade created the illusion that it was Wesley performing the stunt all the way. The effect was later enhanced with CG glass and a digital camera shake.”

Another spectacular stunt that seemed to call for CG animation was actually shot live. Blade performs — in glorious slow motion — a somersault above a car and shoots the driver from the air. The action was performed by a stunt double on a wire rig that was digitally removed. The rest was all captured in camera. For the climactic fight scene between Blade and Drake, most of the flying shots featured the real actors, photographed in front of a greenscreen. “Although they appear to be flying on screen, in reality, they were on static wires and didn’t move across the stage,” reveals Bauer. “It’s the camera move that created the illusion of the characters moving in space. A very accurate previsualization allowed us to plan a motion control camera move that created a convincing flying effect. When the required move happened to exceed the speed limit of our motion control system, the actors simply performed the action at a slower speed. Once again, the effects were completed with the addition of CG debris and glass.”

High Tech Body Scans
Although Bauer tried to minimize the use of CG doubles for stunt work, there were shots for which no other option was available. These included a spectacular fall from Blade and Drake. Fighting on a high-rise balcony, the two characters fall over and land violently on a granite floor several stories below, generating a shockwave that shatters the pavement. Since the impact would have seriously injured stunt performers, Bauer elected to realize the action with CG animation. “The first step was to cyberscan the two principals,” explains Bauer. “On Elf, I had used a laser scanner, but on Blade: Trinity, I decided to try a new system designed by Eyetronics. Instead of laser scanning the actor’s features, they use two still cameras positioned side by side on a hand-held rig. They take hundreds of photographs, which are then assembled to reconstruct the actor in 3D. The result is a CG model of high quality, but with fewer polygons than with laser scanning.”