The great wall
Trevor Hogg speaks to The Great Wall’s VFX supervisor, Phil Brennan, on the creation of epic battle scenes, a fearsome monster and an ancient army
How ILM created epic battle scenes for this exciting new movie
H ollywood heads to the Middle Kingdom to produce a blockbuster helmed by internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who has previously dazzled audience members with colourful action sequences in Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
With the assistance of Western cinematic talent such as visual effects supervisor Phil Brennan (Snow White and the Huntsman), The Great Wall brings to life a vicious and ravenous Chinese monster that is fended off by the iconic ancient structure and a 12th-century army standing guard to protect humanity. “In the mythology, the Tao Tei has eyes in its armpits,” explains Phil, when discussing the antagonist that represents greed and gluttony. “We have them in the shoulders, which is still weird but worked better for the story,” he continues.
Motion cues were taken from cheetahs and gorillas while the hard skin was inspired by elephants, rhinos and reptiles. “The Tao Tei are a little bigger than a grizzly bear and have a hive mentality. They are controlled by a Queen that is 25- to 30-feet-long. There are also the Paladins, which are about the same size as an elephant. They have these big fan-like shields that are extended and form a circle around the Queen to cover her if there is any danger. There’s a particular pattern that for the Chinese people represents the Tao Tei, which is embedded into the foreheads that links them all together.” Stunt work Hundreds, not thousands of extras were present during the principal photography. “We had to do a ton of motion capture for the armies,” states Phil. “There are five different colours of soldiers and they all do different jobs. The red guys are the archers. The blue ones leap off and do their Cirque du Soleil-style aerial ballet as they stab the creatures [with spears].” There was extensive wirework. “Stunts had some complicated rigs to work out. We were able to use large parts of it as practical elements. Then on the bigger shots we would have to take over the practical and turn to CG.” The primary colour palette is a trademark for Zhang Yimou. “He likes the colours to be vibrant and beautiful, but when it comes to something like creatures and green screen, you have to be careful to make things believable,” says Phil. The set for the Great Wall of China covered an area of a couple of football fields and was surrounded by a 40-feet tall container wall covered in green screen. “The only thing that we were able to
Whenever you approach a long single Take in previz, you know it’s Going To Go Through many iterations and ideas Patrick Smith, previz supervisor, The Great Wall
use the real one for was texture reference,” remarks Phil. “We had two wall sets. one which was taller that was used for stunt work and one which was low to the ground but had all sorts of equipment and could be populated with extras. It was definitely extended in different directions.” Preparing for battle a vast assortment of atmospherics needed to be produced to integrate the practical and CG elements. “The director was adamant that the movie would be full of black thick oily smoke, which is toxic so you can’t use it around people. It meant that a lot of those battle scenes were shot relatively clean.” Three battles take place against the Tao Tei, who invade from a fully digital volcanic landscape gouged out by a meteor thousands of years ago. “The first time you see hundreds of thousands of them out in the open at daytime,” states Phil. “The second time it’s much more creepy and intimate… it’s much more a one-on-one kind of fight. everything moves in and out of the fog. The third battle takes place in a city. There’s the jeopardy of the civilians getting eaten. Those were the ways that we used to make each of the main battle sequences feel unique.” ILM was the primary vendor, with most of work being based out of Singapore. The visual effects company in turn subcontracted Base FX, animal logic, Ghost VFX and Hybride. “There are around about 1,200 visual effects shots, which is over two thirds of the film,” says Phil, who had 14 weeks of preproduction time, but still had to adapt to the needs of Zhang Yimou. “We learned quickly that he wasn’t going to shoot the previz, so we had to design shots and techniques to give him as much flexibility as possible on the day.” The $150-million project, produced by legendary entertainment and distributed by universal Pictures, crosses a cultural divide: “The biggest challenge was trying to combine Western and Chinese ideas and aesthetics to make something that satisfied audiences in China and the rest of the world.” To find out more about The Great Wall, FYI see www.thegreatwallmovie.com