For Vantage Point, Rainmaker Visual Effects needed to melt the visual effects into the background. All images © 2008 Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved. Photo: Courtesy of Rainmaker Visual Effects. 

When you think of political thrillers, intricate visual effects sequences really aren’t the first things to come to mind.

Yet in today’s age of filmmaking, that doesn’t mean an old-fashioned, political pot-boiler can’t use the help of some well-constructed vfx to help the story along. Take director Pete Travis’ new film, Vantage Point (opening Feb. 22 from Sony) It’s an old-school style thriller jam-packed with an astounding cast, including William Hurt, Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver and Matthew Fox, which uses a Rashomon-style narrative to document the failed assassination attempt on an American president in Spain. On the surface that seems like a pretty cut and dry thriller blueprint, one that utilizes a standard in camera shooting style to get the story told, but Vantage Point Visual Effects Supervisor Paddy Eason reveals that if you peel back the layers, there are plenty of vfx surprises.

Eason explains that Rainmaker Visual Effects, with studios in Vancouver and London, (now CIS Vancouver and CIS London) initially approached him to work with them on the film. “Rainmaker had a good relationship with Sony, most recently from work for The Da Vinci Code. I was looking for a good show to get involved with, and Rainmaker approached me and asked if I was interested. I read the script and thought it was amazing. Plus, Rainmaker seemed to be going places, and so I jumped at the chance.”

The God's eye view shot in Vantage Point came up late during pre-production, in a last minute script revision. Rainmaker did a full-CG build based on stills shot from a helicopter over Mexico City and Salamanca.

Initially, Eason says there were two issues that needed to be smoothed out early on with Vantage Point. One was the fact that it is a low-key political thriller in theme and tone, so visual effects needed to melt into the background. Second was the fact that first time director Pete Travis wasn’t even very keen on integrating visual effects into the film at all. “The initial vfx breakdown of the script was driven very much from Rainmaker,” Eason explains. “We offered [Travis] a kind of vfx shopping list, but at that point, I think he wasn't too focused on the vfx. It was his first major feature and I think he was feeling his way in terms of what was possible practically, and what needed to be done digitally. Most, if not all, of the vfx in the film are there for budgetary or safety reasons. It's not a movie that needed any rampaging monsters or spaceships. So if the budget had allowed, I think Pete would have shot everything practically -- the huge crowds, the lunatic car chases, the bombings, everything. It was when he couldn't do something for real; then it went from the shopping list onto the actual vfx budget.

”Travis was pretty apprehensive and initially not at all open to using vfx,” Eason continues. “In fact, early on he told me. 'CGI: I don't buy it. I can always spot when something is CGI,' which left me a little dumbfounded. It's moments like that that make you wonder why you are there at all. But I figured that everyone would be happy if we could just prove to him that we could do work that was utterly invisible. After all, it's only the bad CGI that you can spot in a movie. If it's good, then it should be completely seamless. And that was the name of the game on this show.”