Punisher: War Zone: A VFX Gore Fest
Most of the time, filmmakers get it right the first time, but with some characters, it seems that once is not enough. Opening today from Lionsgate, Punisher: War Zone is not the first time Marvel's comic book hero Frank Castle has been adapted for the big screen. It's not even the second time. Director Mark Goldblatt took a shot at the vigilante hero in 1989, then Jonathan Hensleigh followed in 2004, but each time, the movie failed to launch the franchise the studio was hoping for. Will Punisher: War Zone finally click with audiences?
Supervising the visual effects for the movie was Robert Short, an artist with a unique combined expertise in visual effects and make-up effects (he won the 1985 Academy Award in this category for Beetlejuice) alike. "I was responsible for overseeing and designing the vfx and make-up effects. This worked out well because of my background and the amount of overlap between the make-up effects and the digital effects. In order to produce our 285 shots, we used several houses in the United States, as well as in Canada and England. We had CIS London, Pixel Magic, XY&Z, 2-G and PIC. Montreal-based Maestro Studio created the make-up effects."
Short and his team had a very tight schedule to work with, which did not allow for a lot of guesswork or experimentation. "Having cut my teeth working in the business with Roger Corman, I've learned how to work quickly and effectively with directors. During pre-production, I storyboarded all of the vfx and make-up effects sequences and created booklets for all the departments, so that we would all be on the same page. Doing the storyboards allowed me to 'cut to the chase' regarding the best angles to use for the shots, and figure out just how much we will be able to do in camera."
The vfx ranged from simple blood hits to matte paintings of New York to explosions composites to CG animated elements. Though the team strove to keep the vfx shots as invisible as possible, some sequences were treated as nods to the surrealist tone that graphic novels sometimes have. "Whether it is artistic license with the path of an ejected shell from a gun or the intensity of a background color, graphic novels sometimes embrace a hyper realistic approach, and so did we. A great example of some of our more explosive, but invisible effects is a shot of a thug being blown out of a window by a huge explosion. We shot the explosion first, with a locked-off camera, and then did a second take with a stuntman and the camera panning with him, which gave us a myriad of choices in post. The composite was completed by Pixel Magic early in the schedule in order for it to be featured in the trailer."
A Gore Fest Most of the exploding heads and viscera were shot on a greenscreen sound stage. Take after take, the team kept spreading blood on the immaculate green fabric. Each time, they would have to move up to find a clean area and keep shooting… The final composites of the gore effects were divided up between Pixel Magic and XY&Z.
Some of those shots were planned as practical effects, but eventually required digital trickery to suspend disbelief. In one such scene, a character gets his face punched in by Castle. Maestro FX created a flexible breakaway puppet head of the actor filled with blood. The intention was to shoot Castle's fist crushing the face as a practical element on set, and then have Pixel Magic enhance it with an eye blink and mouth move. After the shot was completed and screened, Alexander and Short noticed that, though excellent, the puppet head didn't feel quite real enough. In order to fix this, Short and the editorial team searched for a shot in which the actor's face had the right lighting and could be overlaid on top of the puppet. The perfect shot was found and XY&Z combined it with the blood element of the puppet.
Other shots required a more simple approach, including when a group of gang bangers is blown up by Castle's hyperbaric grenade. "The stunt team had rigged one of the guys to be pulled back and slam into the wall, while the others would simply pantomime their action. The effects department rigged a cluster of tinted flash bulbs for me in the center of the room as the interactive light source when the grenade goes off. Later on, Pixel Magic removed the flash bulbs and stunt cables, and overlaid a two-part explosion into the shot. A CG grenade and vapor trail were also added along with an element of shrapnel.
"Another good combination of on-set elements and 2D work is where a thug gets shot in the neck with a dart," Short says. "We had the actor walk along with the dart in his hand just off screen, and then bring his hand up to his neck as the CG dart flies across frame and hits him. Pixel Magic removed the dart from the actor's hand as he brings it up to his neck, and then revealed it on impact where it replaces the CG dart."
Because of the amount of carnage in the movie, director Lexi Alexander looked for innovative ways to create very graphic deaths on screen. Short suggested filming exploding puppets and combining them with the corresponding actors shot in a similar position. "This 2D technique allowed us to show heads and body parts being blown off in a very realistic manner. At times, it's very much like a zombie film… but without the zombies! Even though each shot was storyboarded, we were always prepared to change them according to the surroundings and needs of the final scene. As with all shots, the lens, f-stop, angle and height of the camera were recorded for later use with either the CG environments or shooting elements on green screen. Matching up the element shot of, say, an exploding head to the actor's shots was very much a by-eye-and-gut situation using a playback of the actor's footage and the camera log information."
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