God's tear added a touching dramatic punctuation to the film’s message.

BD: And that final water droplet, “God’s Tear,” was another post-production addition by Mel to provide more dramatic payoff?

TR: I think it was more a matter of punctuation than payoff. It was very difficult to get the shot to work dramatically. This film, more than any other project I’ve been involved in, has been especially challenging. It was a marriage of visual and makeup effects as pure filmmaking. In most cases, the difference between what worked dramatically and what didn’t work was very slight. Of course, that in itself is a double-edged sword. If the work just disappears into the story overall, then nobody knows that we did all of this [vfx] work. Interestingly, I found myself going through the same process as an audience might. I thought one day while looking at a batch of vfx film outs, “What took us so long?” I was aware of every step involved but still I found myself reacting as if I didn’t know any of that, just like an audience member. If one can get the work to a sufficient level of transparency, then the task that’s been accomplished just doesn’t seem to be any big deal, like it was really there all along and we just shot it.

Bill Desowitz is the editor of VFXWorld.