The Wicker Man burns again in a new feature. All images © Warner Bros. Pictures.

Visual effects shots probably aren’t the first images that come to mind when you recall the career of writer/director Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things, In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty). But when LaBute decided to tackle an update of the 1973 Christopher Lee cult movie The Wicker Man, some essential visual effects were required. While creating this new version for Millennium Pictures (released in the U.S. by Warner Bros. on Sept. 1) LaBute did make some crucial changes to the macabre story about an island community practicing pagan rituals. But the iconic image of a giant, blazing, wicker-wood man remained part of the tale.

So viewing the original film was what vfx producer Scott Coulter calls “Research 101.” When Coulter’s Sofia, Bulgaria-based Worldwide FX got the call from parent company NuImage/Millennium to be the lead house on The Wicker Man, Coulter bought a DVD of the 1973 version right away. He actually picked it up on his way to the airport for a flight to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he met with LaBute on location. Coulter admits, “I hadn’t seen the original film in 20 years, but I remembered what a great movie it was — and still is.”

Back in Bulgaria, where Coulter founded Worldwide FX six years ago, the team created a majority of the 150 visual effects shots in The Wicker Man. “We did about three-quarters of the shots in the film,” recalls vfx supervisor Danny Markov. For certain scenes in the film’s finale, LaBute wanted the effects to be done in Los Angeles, so they could be readily tweaked as needed. Those shots went to Pacific Title in Hollywood, where the Digital Intermediate was also done. In addition, a call for CG-animated bees went out during the tight post-production schedule, and Lava Studio in Miami, Florida, stepped up to create those shots.

A Worldwide FX Task
The first-priority assignment for Worldwide FX was the car crash sequence near the film’s beginning. A police officer played by Nicolas Cage witnesses a fiery accident that foreshadows eerie events to come. Several shots also required Worldwide to create close-ups of Cage’s face surrounded by flames. Markov notes, “ Digital fire has always been one of the biggest challenges for any studio, but we have huge experience working with that. The key to doing fire and smoke is randomness. Usually we use Maya for those kinds of simulations, although our LightWave artists also get good results.”

Coulter adds that the fiery car crash “was a straight Maya render that was heavily enhanced in 2D with Digital Fusion, and combined with footage of actual flames. It’s always better to comp and enhance real fire,” he says. Markov separated his crew into two teams to handle The Wicker Man. “Basically, the 2D team was five to seven people and the 3D was done by four people. We finished our first delivery in two months.”

Given this project’s tight time frame, Worldwide FX relied on proprietary visual effects management software called FX Track. Coulter explains, “We handle anywhere from 16 to 18 projects at a time so it takes a great deal of tracking to manage these projects properly and communicate with clients all over the world.”