Are you burning to know the vfx secrets of Pathfinder? All images courtesy of Zoic BC. © 20th Century Fox. 

In the wilds of Vancouver in the early days of 2006, the film Pathfinder was being shot in the pristine, yet primordial-looking woods that surround the very cosmopolitan Canadian city. The film tells the tale of a Viking invasion of North America more than 500 years before Columbus set foot on the virgin continent. With their terrifying "dragon" boats, the Norsemen ransacked coastal Indian villages for slaves and supplies to take back to their homeland. One such mission ended with a shipwreck where one single Norse boy survived. Despite his blonde hair, strange language and the omen of evil surrounding him, the boy is raised by a Native American tribe as one of their own. Upon reaching manhood, Ghost (as he is called) must use his skills as a warrior to protect his adopted family when his Viking kin return to pillage once more.

While Hollywood-style Vikings were laying claim to a new world, there was a much smaller invasion happening in the city with the arrival of Zoic Studios. The first satellite expansion of the successful visual effects house based in Los Angeles, Zoic BC., grew out of the increased number of vfx projects the company was getting coming out of the British Columbia area known as Hollywood North. Set up by Zoic employees, Randy Goux and Patti Gannon, Zoic BC. opened its doors and its pipeline to Pathfinder as its inaugural project. "It was the perfect movie to get Zoic BC. on the map," says Randy Goux, who served as the visual effects supervisor on the film. "We had just come off of Serenity, which was the biggest movie for Zoic to date. We had set up systems for that in L.A., which we mirrored up here. We have 2K playback system and all of the [Los Angeles office] software, the network rendering, plus the facility and screening room are mirrored here in Vancouver. As far as software, we use Maya, Shake for compositing and Combustion -- just like in Los Angeles. We were also really excited about getting a Vancouver staff. It was an all-new crew and we had to interview lots of artists and bring in just the right guys. We found the talent pool very strong, with a lot of young guys that were just aching to work on feature films. They were really hungry and talented and there is a lot we can teach them."

Goux says it worked out well that Pathfinder's director, Marcus Nispel, was looking for exactly what Zoic BC. was pitching when he bid out his vfx needs for the film. "We had done some commercials and music video work with Marcus and we had a relationship with his producer, Vincent Oster. They were looking for the right-sized house for the feature and a company in Vancouver. It just so happened that Zoic was planning to open their Vancouver office and I jumped on it. There was nothing we couldn't do in this movie. The crew was incredibly dedicated. It turned out to be a lot more shots than we expected, but that turned more into a staffing issue than a technical issue. Initially, it was 120 shots, but the ending delivery shot amount is 283 shots."

Part of Zoic BC.'s mission was to create a primordial look to the North American landscape of the Viking era. 

With the film taking place in ancient North America, the greatest challenge for the Zoic team was helping Nispel achieve his vision for the dark, violent world of these early cultures. "There is whole component to our work where we are enhancing a movie that was shot beautifully," Goux explains about the type of work they provided for the film. "There is nothing mechanic about anything we do. If we are doing matte paintings, we are doing skies and mountain ranges and villager huts. If we are doing battle scenes, nobody can shoot an arrow on set because it's horribly dangerous so we are adding arrows all over the place. There's an action chase sequence where there are four different sleds all being pulled by snowmobiles, they go pretty fast, and, of course, they are all being pulled by cables, so there are removals. The thing about shooting here was that it was very pristine and so there is hardly any greenscreen in this show. It was nice, but what that means is that this is a little different show than I was used to in that we would drive an hour away to find the perfect place to do a climatic cliff sequence at a 50-foot rock wall. In the film there ends up being a battle with guys that are attached to ropes that are swinging across this rock wall and our job was to make it seem like they are 800-feet up."

"Another one of the things that was really crazy about this show was that they had three, sometimes four, cameras shooting at once," Goux continues. "For us to prepare any greenscreens for that kind of shooting, with the frantic schedule and shooting days, it was almost impossible. So I would plant myself next to Marcus and as soon as he would start shooting an angle, I would suggest how to go in tight or pull out to find the right angle to make a rock wall extension work. Patti and I were always on set, and instead of us demanding that there was a 60x30 greenscreen at all times on the side of the wall, we would help him get him what he needed and also recommend shots that would give us the most amount of leeway in terms of our post schedule. It was really neat because we were really involved in how they were shooting this thing, but on the sidelines, not screaming, "Hold the shoot!" It was pretty cool."