The leading visualization studio did extensive previs, techvis, and postvis for Universal Pictures' horror/comedy starring Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage; sequences included the massacre of goons, Dracula transformations, and the film’s final battle.
Leading visualization studio, Proof shared a “visualization reel” for Renfield, Universal Pictures’ horror/comedy film starring Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Nicolas Cage. The studio did 21 weeks of previs and techvis as well as 22 weeks of postvis.
The Proof LA team, led by David Allen, and the Proof Atlanta team, led by Michael Grawert, worked closely with VFX supervisor Jamie Price and VFX producer Denise Davis. The sequences executed include the massacre of goons, Dracula transformation and action, and the final battle.
For the movie’s opening scene, the Proof team integrated actors Cage and Hoult into original footage of Universal’s 1931 Dracula.
“One of the more interesting Previs tasks for Renfield was integrating our main actors, Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult, into footage from Universal’s 1931 Dracula for the opening of the film,” explained Grawert. “I was tasked with analyzing the original footage and providing matching lens and position data for our production camera equipment. The information was used by the VFX team to line up each shot to later be composited over the original.”
According to Allen, one of the team’s primary previs goals was “to introduce Dracula and his powers through a battle in his home castle against several vampire hunters.”
He explained, “Our work was used to experiment with the scale and atmosphere of the environment, as well as the gory ways that Dracula could defeat his opponents. It was a great chance to explore a lot of different concepts for how Dracula might transform into various animals and fend off multiple attackers.”
The team was involved in almost every action set for postvis, which presented unique challenges.
Grawert shared, “The most challenging shots involved the Dracula transformations, which ended up being a combination of fluid dynamics and particle sims driving a bat swarm animation. These shots had to be directly cut with ILM shots for the director and audience screenings and not look out of place.”
Check out the fang-tastic reel: