Matt Johnson helped lead the creation of the epic feel of King Arthur. All images © Touchstone Pictures. Courtesy of Cinesite.

In the great John Ford classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it is said that when a historian has a choice between recording the truth or a legend, he should print the legend. But in the case where a legend has been done and redone to the point of utter familiarity, sometimes it’s good to go back to the source and discover what actual events inspired the mythmaking. Such is the idea behind Touchstone’s new King Arthur. In an interview several years ago, producer Jerry Bruckheimer said that he’d wished he’d made Gladiator; now, in King Arthur, he makes his wish a reality with a film that is comparable in many ways to the Ridley Scott epic. And yet, despite its basis in actual history, this King Arthur manages by the time of its finale to create a legend of its own — the origin of the British nation under its first king and queen.

VFX Plus Intermediary Equals Reality
From an effects perspective, the most readily apparent challenge was to match the daringly realistic photography with equally realistic effects. Shot in a grainy style that gives an appropriately rugged look to the earthy, battle-scarred terrain, King Arthur is a classic instance of a film in which the often clean and linear designs of CG would stand out like a sore thumb. So an effort was made to combine the vfx work with the digital intermediary, all the time in service to director Antoine Fuqua’s vision. Hence the naturalistic photography is partially a CG creation. “The entire movie has been graded using an intermediate process,” says Matt Johnson, vfx supervisor of Cinesite, the sole vfx vendor on King Arthur. “Cinematographer Slavomir Isziak envisaged color themes for each sequence; these have been enhanced using the digital grading process.”

Anyone who has seen Fuqua’s Training Day knows that this King Arthur would be more of a nitty-gritty ride than a pageant of ’50s era epic pomp. “Antoine Fuqua was intimately involved with the visual style of the movie,” Johnson says. “His approval was sought when establishing the look of the CG environments. He had very specific views about rock texture, snow, color and atmospheric effects that were applied to the scene.” It was this involvement that lends the film its visual unity, Johnson maintains. “The visual effects on King Arthur were a wholly collaborative process with both the director and the editorial team involved throughout.”