A mix of live-action and CG animation was also used to bring to life the most striking and imaginative character of the movie, an old broken doll that a huge spider calls home. Not included in the shooting script, the spider doll character was created on the set by the director. “Originally, it was just a prop in the old witch apartment,” Leschinski recalls. “But when he saw it, Timur fell in love with it, and decided to turn it into a real character. Conceptually, it was a real doll with the spider living inside it. Whenever the spider needed to move, its legs popped out and carried the doll around. Depending on the shot, the spider doll was either an entirely computer-generated character created in Softimage XSI, or a real prop photographed on the set with CG legs added later.”

For truck crash sequence, the filmmakers used three different trucks: a real vehicle, a full size replica that could be lifted easily, and a full 3D model.

A Truck Goes Airborne
CG animation was selectively employed in one of the most spectacular sequence in the movie. As the three main characters rush through town in their truck, they encounter another Watcher crossing the street. Using his magical powers to avoid being run over, the pedestrian makes the massive truck turn over him and safely land on the other side… “We had three different trucks,” Leschinski comments. “There was the real vehicle; a full size replica that could be lifted easily; and a full 3D model. On location, we shot it step by step, varying the technique in almost every shot: the real truck approaching; the man on the street being lit by a rig simulating the approaching truck lights; the full size replica for the final landing and bouncing; and a partial set for the point of view on the pedestrian from the truck cabin. Only the shots of the truck tumbling over in the air were generated in 3D.”

Leschinski and his artists also used CG animation to visualize many effects related to the vampire characters. This included the vampires’ ability to visualize the blood vessels and arteries of the humans, as if the rest of their body had become invisible. The innovative effect appears when a little boy becomes the target of a vampire in the subway. “It was all carefully planned before shooting,” Leschinsky recalls. “First, special makeup artists created a headless copy of the boy’s torso. Then, in the subway, we shot a plate with the boy, and a second plate with the headless mannequin in the same position. It gave us two plates featuring the boy with and without his head. Later, we created a complex network of CG veins and vessels, and synchronized its motion with the real head. Then, we composited this animation into the plate of the headless boy, and finally dissolved it into the real boy. The headless mannequin helped us get a real clean reflection of the body on the door glass, and allowed us to add reflections of the 3D veins too.”

For the Russian vfx community, the Night Watch trilogy could very well do what Star Wars did for its American counterpart in the ‘70s — create an unprecedented boom in the industry and initiate the production of many more “entertaining” vfx heavy movies. Clearly, Night Watch has marked the beginning of a new era for Leschinski and his colleagues. “None of us had ever done anything of this kind before this movie,” he concludes. “This first experience came handy when we set out to create the vfx of Day Watch. They are more complicated and technically innovative. Since we benefited from a higher budget this time, it allowed us to concentrate on the technology and to achieve the best possible results, instead of having to work on small parallel projects in order to cover the expenses of the main one…”

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.