To handle such complex characters and environments (totaling nearly 2,600 vfx shots compared to Return of the King’s 2,000), Weta concentrated, whenever possible, on generating data during render time. This freed up technical directors, in particular, to concentrate on lighting by manipulating low-res models. “We relied more on rendering to some degree,” Letteri continues. “It’s funny: you go in stages because early on you can’t rely on low-res stuff. You have to know what it looks like and what you’re getting, so you run it through high-res. Once you get comfortable with that, you can start pushing low-res models because you know what that will get you coming out the other end.”

At the outset, Letteri shared supervisory duties with Ben Snow (Van Helsing, Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones), who handled Skull Island and New York scenes. Then in August of this year, they recruited two additional supervisors: George Murphy (The Matrix Revolutions and Reloaded and Oscar winner for Forrest Gump) and Scott E. Anderson (Hollow Man and Oscar winner for Babe) to assist in managing the massive amount of shots to be delivered.

They deployed a “divide and conquer” strategy, with Anderson concentrating on the “New York Rampage” sequence and Murphy jumping into several Skull Island sequences. “Delegating many of the sequences between Ben, Scott and myself freed Joe to focus on the overall consistency of the show and, as the ‘keeper of Kong,’ to really hone in on key Kong moments. In working with Joe, I found that I had a great deal of autonomy on my sequences and in how I approached the work with the crews to pull these shots together.

“One of the most challenging aspects of CG Kong was how sensitive the material shaders were to lighting and shadow. Too far one way or the other and Kong would look gray or bald or puffy. There were clearly lighting set-ups that featured Kong more dramatically than others, and a host of parameters that affected the look, texture and feel of Kong. Like every actor, he favored a certain kind of lighting and angle to the camera, but unique to CG, a whole team of Weta artists were constantly refining the look and behavior of Kong’s fur and skin from shot to shot, based on what each of us supervisors sought to portray. Rendering Kong was a learned thing that took time to get right.”

Serkis studied gorilla movement and behavior first hand to get this Kong performance just right.

One of Murphy’s favorite sequences, “Ann’s Sacrifice,” in which the natives of Skull Island capture Darrow and offer her to Kong, offers the first glimpse of Kong. “At this point in the story we don’t know Kong and I felt that it was important to keep him feeling dangerous,” Murphy continues. “Peter didn’t want us to get too good of a look at Kong yet — he was saving that for later — but we had shots that would reveal a large portion of the ape. I worked with the tds to keep the lighting mysterious, yet try to get a good feel for the physical presence of the beast. We used the setting’s smoky pretext to selectively reveal and hide Kong in the compositing and to give Kong physical interaction with the alter environment.”

Meanwhile, one of the most challenging sequences was “Kong’s Capture” on the island. Again, lighting Kong was key. “We were trying to preserve this sense of pre-dawn that was the time frame for this scene, which meant pursuing a ‘day-for-night’ look that entailed low shadow detail and slightly overexposed highlights. With Kong, it was always a tightrope act to find that balance between suggested shadows and no shadows. Once we had dialed in the optimal CG lighting, I opted to have the tds render Kong’s key and fill lights in separate passes so that we could fine-tune them in the composite. In this way, we could selectively suppress or enhance portions of each lighting pass as needed, without resorting to new and costly fur renders. For the interaction of grappling hooks and the net with Kong, we experimented with special deformation of the 3D hair geometry, but found that this tended to affect too large a region. It proved most effective to do 2D displacements of Kong’s fur in the composite based on the positions of the rope. Roto mattes were used to make the ropes and net look like it partially buried itself in the fur.”

Lighting Kong to enhance his performance was important to Anderson, too. “One of our first scenes was the Kong and Ann reunion after the ‘Rampage.’ I really approached that scene as a classic ‘30s [moment], with low light and very selective eye lighting on Kong. Basically, I treated it as a romantic reunion. The approach was based on some small but important details that Peter and [cinematographer] Andrew Lesnie had given me about the aesthetic for the film— modern in technology but strongly classic in look… it really became the foundation for my approach on many levels. The other key motivation was simply Kong: his expressive range really drove much of my thinking overall, while showing his size and scale drove many other considerations.”