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Nvizible Creates Visual Effects for ‘Captain Phillips’

Nvizible completes over 180 visual effects shots for Sony Pictures’ Captain Phillips, including CG helicopters, airplanes and seascapes.

Visual effects house  announced that they completed over 180 shots on Sony’s Captain Phillips. The film is the true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.

This is Captain Phillips director, Paul Greengrass’ second film based on a true story of modern global terror after his gut-wrenching United 93 about the hijacked airplane brought down by a passenger rebellion on 9/11.

Starring Tom Hanks as Phillips and with the screenplay by Billy Ray, Nvizible’s varied VFX award grew exponentially as the project progressed. The award included CG helicopters, airplanes, vehicles, CG seascape, environments and screen inserts.

Working on a real-life story it was imperative that none of the effects looks artificial and matched seamlessly with the Paul Greengrass’ style of shooting. Nvizible VFX Supervisor Adam Rowland commented: ‘We had to maintain continuity and authentic realism and it being a multi-format shoot also provided its own set of problems as we were working on footage shot on 35mm, Alexa, 16mm, Canon 5D and others, often within one scene. It was also important, therefore, to maintain the inherent idiosyncrasies of each stock during the compositing process.

Managing Director, Nic Hatch said, “We were really keen to work on a project directed by Paul Greengrass, so were excited to be called upon to be part of such a high profile feature. Our VFX Supervisor, Adam Rowland and his team worked incredibly hard to turn the shots around in a relatively short space of time and they did a great job.”

Source: Nvizible

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.