Digital Dimension handled individual death scenes, which amounted to more than 100 effects shots. According to vfx producer Chris Del Conte, certain deaths were detailed and intricate. Courtesy of Digital Dimension.

One of the most challenging scenes featured the crushing death of a character by a two-ton lift that cuts him clean in half. Velasco-Shaw originally shot a clean plate of the lift falling, and a plate of the actor miming being crushed and falling to the ground, with his bottom covered in green material. After compositing those plates, the director felt he wanted more of a gruesome punch for the shot. “We then took a standard CG body that roughly matched the actor’s height,” Del Conte explains. “We ran several animation simulations crushing the body with a CG object that matched the speed, size and trajectory of the practical lift. The director picked the version he liked the most, based on body movement, performance and how the torso settled on the grass. A new plate was then shot with the performer acting out the previs animation and getting his body into that end position. We then took this new practical plate and added multiple elements of blood and gore: pouring blood, blood bags, guts elements, cartilage bits… Using Digital Fusion, we combined the final effect with the falling lift.” To create the shots, Digital Dimension employed SynthEyes for tracking, 3ds Max for modeling and animation and mental ray for rendering.

One specific sequence — the “tanning bed death” — was assigned to Soho VFX. “It consisted of about 35 shots featuring CG skin, CG glass, as well as CG fire and smoke mixed with live fire and smoke elements,” visual effects supervisor Allan Magled explains. “For the shot where one of the girls fall through the tanning bed glass as it breaks, we actually used a CG double. Her whole body and bikini was CG, as well as the glass and bulbs that smashed under her. We also added CG cuts and shards of glass to the other girl’s face as the tanning bulbs exploded towards her face…” The 3D elements were created in Maya and composited in Shake.

The “tanning bed death” was assigned to Soho VFX. Allan Magled, vfx supervisor, recalls the sequence consists of about 35 shots featuring CG skin, CG glass, CG fire and smoke, mixed with live fire and smoke elements.

A Dedicated Crew
Fighting against a brutal deadline and a tight budget, Velasco-Shaw was swamped with work until the delivery of the final shot: “I’m exhausted, but I’m really proud of what we did. The vendors gave 110% to the project. On this movie, we were never satisfied with a ‘That’s pretty good…’ from James Wong. We never gave up until we heard him say: ‘Wow!’“

Alain Bielik is the founder and editor of renowned effects magazine S.F.X, published in France since 1991. He also contributes to various French publications and occasionally to Cinéfex. Last year, he organized a major special effects exhibition at the Musée International de la Miniature in Lyon, France.