The Evolving VFX of Underworld
In 2003, Underworld made a strong impression on horror fans around the world with a fancy cast (Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman), an intriguing storyline (Romeo and Juliet among vampires and werewolves), brilliant direction by Len Wiseman and innovative creature work by Patrick Tatopoulos. Three years later, the same team brings us Underworld: Evolution, a sequel for which Tatopoulos served as creature designer/fabricator and production designer. Also returning was overall visual effects supervisor James McQuaide, who recently oversaw the effects work on The Cave.
As always with sequels, Underworld: Evolution was far more ambitious than the original movie, especially when it came to vfx. “Going into production, we were budgeted for roughly 225 visual effects shots,” McQuaide recounts. “However, this is a fraction of the total number in the final cut of the picture. The cost of the extra shots was covered, to a large degree, by Lakeshore and Screen Gems allocating more money once the picture was in post.” It also helped that, as an exec producer, McQuaide had access to all of the lines in the budget. This provided for some very important financial flexibility. For example, when it became clear that the picture was going to be shorter than the 120 minutes that had originally been budgeted for, McQuaide was able to save money on digital intermediate, IPs, INs, etc., and invest it into new visual effects shots. “It may not sound like a very large savings but, on a picture as tightly budgeted as this one was, it really made a world of difference. In the end, there are 553 digital effects shots in the picture, plus about 800 ‘opticals’ [speed ramps, re-pos, camera shakes, fades and dissolves].”
In the end, McQuaide had to tackle the intimidating challenge of having to produce more than 500 highly complex digital effects shots for less than $7 million. “We were fortunate enough to collaborate with a group of smaller visual effects houses who could work within our budgetary limitations, and still deliver shots on a quality level equal to anything out there. Also, because there was a great deal of wire work and simple compositing required for the picture, vfx co-supervisor Gary Beach and I set-up a small vfx company in my office — Sub/Par Pix — that ended-up delivering 122 shots. While it did increase the day-to-day workload a bit, the net savings was very significant: it probably paid for most of the shots featuring CG William, the picture’s main werewolf. Most importantly, Len Wiseman was both pragmatic and decisive: everything we had to work with ended up on the screen. There were only three vfx shots that didn’t make it into the final cut.”
The shots that couldn’t be done at Sub/Par Pix were spread among eight vendors, with Luma Pictures leading the pack. In some cases, multiple houses worked on a single shot, which was especially true with the miniature work (ship, helicopter, dungeon):
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