Cinesite’s work on The Omen wasn’t voluminous, but the 120 shots were remarkably complex and had to look absolutely real. All images ™ & © Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. 

It was certainly the marketing coup of the year. When you want to release a feature film about the devil incarnate, what better day than 6/6/06? 666… the Mark of the Beast. On that fateful day, 20th Century Fox releases The Omen, the remake of the classic 1976 horror movie directed by Richard Donner. The story follows the investigation of an American ambassador (Liev Schreiber replaces Gregory Peck from the original), who realizes that his young son may be the devil’s offspring.

A surprise worldwide hit, the original movie left a lasting impression on everybody’s mind, especially its intricate death scenes. The concept of having the main characters killed off one by one in a series of horrible “accidents” later formed the basis for the Final Destination franchise. In 1976, Donner relied on the expertise of legendary make-up artist Stuart Freeborn and on skillful editing to craft the shocking death scenes. For the remake, director John Moore wanted to pay tribute to these sequences. At the same time, he wanted to draw on digital technology to take them even further. To this purpose, he turned to visual effects supervisor Matt Johnson and visual effects producer Aimee Dadswell-Davies at Cinesite (Europe). “It wasn’t a large show in terms of volume,” Johnson acknowledges. “We did about 60 shots featuring “creative visual effects,” and another 60 or so of wire removals. It was a small number, but some of these shots were remarkably complex, and they all had to look absolutely real. Plus, the visual effects provided the key element to most of the main sequences. Basically, any time anything bad happens in the movie, that’s where we stepped in. In other words, the visual effects were doing the work of the devil!”

Revisiting a Landmark Sequence
As in the original movie, the most impressive sequence features the decapitation of a key character. “For many people, it was a stand-out shot in the 1976 movie,” Johnson notes. “They still remember it today. Our challenge was to re-invent it in a way that would appeal to audiences 30 years later. We wanted to be faithful to the original action, but, on the other hand, we knew that most of the audiences for this new movie weren’t even born when the original came out. It allowed for some artistic license.”

The decapitation takes place when a loose hammer accidentally hits a shop sign in a street, breaking its top supporting bracket. The sign then swings down scythe-like over the character, who stands up at the wrong moment… The hero shot of the character being decapitated required the combination of no less than four different plates. “I wanted to see the real actor in the scene, all the way until the head is chopped off,” Johnson relates. “I didn’t want a cheap cutaway on a dummy. It’s always a giveaway. In order to achieve that, we had to create a seamless transition between the real actor and a dummy that was built by special make-up effects supervisor Matthew Mungle.”

On set, the sign was mounted on a mechanical rig that repeated the same movement every time. The crew first shot the static dummy being decapitated by the swinging rig. Then, the actor was instructed to stand up and to stop in the same position as the dummy. At that point, he had to jerk his head forward as to simulate the impact of the sign. Video assist was used to align both elements as close as possible. The actor was shot in front of a portable green screen, which later allowed compositors to reposition his body in 2D as to precisely match the dummy’s position. The crew also shot a plate of the swinging sign alone, and a clean plate of the background.