Vfx plays a small, but key role in Body of Lies, including an Amsterdam explosion. A digital explosion was added to footage shot in Morocco and Washington D.C. Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks. All images © 2008 Warner Bros.

In Body of Lies, the just-released film from veteran director Ridley Scott, the visual look throughout is a gritty verisimilitude to add authenticity to the movie's plot about the deceptive and deadly cat-and-mouse games played by a CIA operative in pursuit of terrorists in Iraq and Jordan.

Upon viewing, there seem to be few CG visual effects employed in Lies, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the undercover agent and Russell Crowe as his crassly obsessive CIA handler. Though limited, vfx does play an important role in several key sequences. They include a flower market explosion set in Amsterdam and a complex desert chase involving cars and helicopters. In addition, a scene that takes place at what's supposed to be the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey was created digitally.

VFX Supervisor Sheena Duggal and her team at Sony Pictures Imageworks get props for seamlessly integrating the CG scenes with the shot footage. Duggal recently talked to VFXWorld about the challenges of the job. "We wanted to be smart about how we approached the visual effects in the film, because it's not a visual effects driven movie -- the visual effects are really just there to help the story," notes Duggal. Sony Imageworks worked on about 50 effects shots. Invisible Effects (supervised by Dick Edwards) accounted for another 150, and Imageworks India also was involved.

"One of the things I realized from the bidding stage -- I've worked with Ridley before on Matchstick Men so I had a sense of how he works -- I knew that atmospheric effects was going to be a really important part of this project for us," says Duggal. "I don't think there's a shot in the film that we worked on that doesn't have lots of vfx animation stacked in there elements like smoke and dust layers."

As for software, Flame and Shake were used for compositing, and Maya for 3D animation. Houdini was used to run the volumetric simulations (describes the forces of the explosion). The simulations were then rendered in Svea.

Duggal was in Morocco where most of the film was shot, as well as in Washington, D.C., which substituted for Amsterdam for the flower market explosion. "When we were on set we knew that some of these visual effects were going to be more complicated than others," she adds. "We were trying to be cognizant of the vfx budget, and then figure out what was most effective for Imageworks to do in post."

Imageworks post took a brief seven weeks and the complex 2D and 3D shots were done primarily at Sony Pictures Imageworks. The rest of the shots which involved monitor burn-ins and graphics, and some of the 2D matte paintings, were done at Invisible Effects.

The Amsterdam market explosion and destruction, set off by a bomb inside a car, is one of the film's highlights. It features pulsing shock waves that have an almost physical impact for the viewer. For starters, footage was shot of an actual explosion. "We filmed some TNT blowing up in Morocco," she says. "We captured these incredible shock waves on film, and Ridley really liked this effect and wanted to incorporate it."

The blast for the film was a digital explosion. It was created by Dr. Patrick Witting, an expert in fire and smoke simulations. The simulation was then rendered on an in-house renderer called Svea. The Compositor Jason Greenblum and Effects Animator Bjorn Zipperich, working with CG Supervisor John Monos, added color lighting compositing effects comprised of smoke, debris, shattered glass, and distortion effects from the shock waves.

Director Scott wanted to have the big-impact moment personalized by, including a Japanese tourist couple to absorb the shock of the explosion. Created digitally, they appear in a medium close-up shot that shows them taking photographs; they get hit from the blast. Next: a side view of the explosion where a car gets flipped.

"Overhead aerial shots of the explosion [are] how the audience sees the big shockwave and the big digital explosion," notes Duggal. "Those are all effects." The couple being blasted was shot in several plates. "We had a plate that was just a live-action shot, and then we had a plate where we rigged dummies and there were special effects rigged in the vehicle." In post, the compositing package was used to blend and morph the two plates to make it look realistic. Then the wires and all the rigging were removed.