SUICIDE SQUAD
How MPC created Suicide Squad’s huge range of special effects
Robert Winter, who served as one of the visual effects supervisors on Suicide Squad, had a huge amount of work on his hands with this project. “MPC did 700 shots for the film,” he says. “We delivered and finalised in Vancouver, Montreal and London. Our Bangalore facility contributed a lot to the building of assets and MPC London came in to take on additional work.”
Sony Imageworks also contributed to the visual effects work on Suicide Squad – handling the action centred on the train station interior, while MPC worked on all of the material set beyond the train station. Early on in the film’s production, Jerome Chen from Imageworks alerted Robert to the film’s emphasis on realism, which underpins the combustible, brooding and manic action of the movie.
Discussing the range of work MPC handled, Robert explains that: “It was literally everything from a digital double to a satellite getting destroyed. We had tons of environment work, tricky camera work, flashbacks for
MPC did 700 shots for this film, and the range of work we did was also huge
backstories of important moments in the characters’ lives.”
The studio also had to build highquality digital doubles for characters Harley Quinn and Killer Croc.
Of MPC’S animation work for the movie, one particular challenge and opportunity came in the form of the work on the Squad’s enemies. “The filmmakers wanted the demon soldiers to shatter like obsidian when they get hit,” says Robert. To achieve this, the MPC artists had to deploy a non-deforming mesh when showing the Demon Soldiers shattering. The crew then had to find a way to efficiently shatter meshes on these digital doubles.
Another challenge in terms of complexity for the stunts and practical VFX was a scene when the squad are brought together, but are unaware of what their mission consists of. Ultimately, the mission transpires to be getting to the top of the Federal Building and retrieving an asset.
“It was storyboarded as a set with a small portion of a skyscraper rooftop,” says Robert. The studio built one quadrant for principal photography and a Cg-burning skyscraper just across the street from the rooftop.
“We had to do interaction of fire and detail to sell the realism. If you include the building of the assets and the people executing the shot, it took about 100 people,” explains Robert.
As a counterpoint to the expansive action of the Federal Building extraction scene, Robert describes the studio’s work on a more concentrated character moment in the film featuring two of DC’S biggest villians.
“One that stands out is a flashback when Dr Quinzel becomes Harley Quinn,” he says, adding: “There was a piece of concept art that depicted the Joker and Harley Quinn in a chemical vat with their clothes melting off. You’d see the colour dye mixing in the chemicals: a visual of this bond with each other. It’s a demented love story.” The scene was designed so that the studio could add the chemical vats and the operation equipment. On top of that, the wardrobe design meant that the melting shirts were tied to the actors. “They shot in a vat that we replicated,” says Robert. “We took that photography and replaced the surface of the liquid so that we could control and art direct those ribbons of ink.”
Commenting on the overarching, big picture aesthetic that guided MPC’S work on Suicide Squad, Robert says: “We did a very good job of completing what they committed to camera”. He also remarked on the challenge of transforming comics – which are snippets of action – into moving pictures. “We’d ideally like to be almost invisible for the vast majority of our work, but sometimes that’s not possible,” he explains. “Everyone’s maturing in order to find a nice balance between practical and CG.”. See more of MPC’S work at www.moving-picture.com