Now it’s time for cinemas to enter Silent Hill. All images unless otherwise noted © 2004 Sony Pictures. All rights reserved.

Silent Hill is the latest hit videogame turned into a feature film. Just another no-brainer, shoot-them-all, show-no-mercy kind of adaptation? Well, maybe not this time. Compared to previous videogame adaptations, Silent Hill (released by Screen Gems on April 21) has three major assets to play with: an intriguing storyline, a director with a real vision (Christophe Gans of Brotherhood of the Wolf fame) and truly disturbing creatures designed by Patrick Tatopoulos (I Robot, Underworld).

In Silent Hill the movie, Rose (Radha Mitchell) desperately seeks a cure for her daughter Sharon’s bizarre illness. She decides to take her to Silent Hill, a deserted town that her daughter continuously names in her sleep. Soon after they arrive, Sharon disappears and Rose sets out to find her, a quest that will lead her to uncover the truth about the curse of Silent Hill…

The narrative space of Silent Hill consists of four dimensions: Silent Hill in the 1970s, Silent Hill in present day, the Fog world and the Darkness. The latter is a living shadow that periodically overcomes the city, literally transforming everything it touches into rusty, hellish surfaces. With so many different representations of the same locations, it was evident that visual effects would play a key role in the realization of Gans’ vision. Visual effects producer Holly Radcliffe was called in to coordinate the work of no less than nine vendors based in different countries and various time zones.

Three Vendors Turn Into Nine
“At the beginning of principal photography, the work had been distributed between three companies: BUF Compagnie in Paris, and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures and Mr. X, both in Toronto,” Radcliffe recalls. “The hero Darkness transformations had been awarded to BUF, largely because of tests they had sent illustrating the beginning of the peeling effect, eventually featured throughout the film. The Grey Children, the Armless creature and the fog and ash shots all went to C.O.R.E. Finally, the aggressive roaches were assigned to Mr. X.”

During the shoot, vfx supervisors Stéphane Ceretti from BUF, Bret Culp and Kyle Menzies from C.O.R.E. and Evan Jacobs from Mr. X all attended set and liaised directly with Gans in the coverage of their respective sequences. When new shots were awarded in post to additional companies, supervisors and artists came to the edit rooms to discuss and collaborate directly with the director. In the end, there were 619 visual effects shots in the movie, with major contributions from (in order of credits):

The vfx houses had to tweak on-set fog for a heightened look.

BUF COMPAGNIE
197 shots, including:

• The Darkness transformations
  
• The church exterior
  
• Red Pyramid’s execution of Anna
  
• The Nurses
  
• Church sequences

C.O.R.E. DIGITAL
227 shots, including:

• The Grey Children
  
• The Armless creature
  
• The fog & ash
  
• The birds
  
• Darkness environments (class room & court yard)
  
• Set enhancements and extensions
  
• Wire removals

MR. X
68 shots, including:

• The Janitor
  
• The Roaches
  
• Set extensions and action in the boiler room

INTELLIGENT CREATURES
6 shots

• CG elevator and shaft

INVISIBLE PICTURES
17 shots, including:

• Aerial matte paintings from opening sequence
  
• 2D map images

FRANTIC FILMS
47 shots, including:

• All driving sequences
  
• “Real world” sequences inside Silent Hill

MOKKO
45 shots, including:

• “Edge of the World” matte paintings
  
• The Rose & Dahlia sequence
  
• 2D matte paintings for the Armless sequence

KOOK EWO

• Treatment for the Flash Back Sequence
  
• Main titles

OPTIX DIGITAL PICTURES

• Additional work