RECREATING THE IMPERIAL CITY

In the sixth century Chang’an was one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world. “Weta Digital designed the Imperial City based on Chang’an, Xiangyang Tangcheng Film and Television Base backlot, and production designer Grant Major’s [The Meg] designs for the main palace building,” states Mulan VFX supervisor Sean Faden. “But because main unit never shot there, anytime we see our actors in the Imperial City it is a digital recreation around them.” The entire Chinese studio backlot set was LIDAR scanned. “That was the largest LIDAR scan Weta Digital has ever done. 250 square metres,” notes Weta Digital VFX supervisor Anders Langlands. “The LIDAR and texture photogrammetry were used to build a construction kit of modular building pieces that we could then utilise to create a huge variety of buildings. The R&D team did a lot of work on upgrading our instancing system and that became important for how we approached the city build.”

“We did a huge amount of research about how a medieval city in this time period would have been laid out and designed,” remarks Langlands. “They had live-action performers there at Xiangyang Tangcheng Film and Television Base. The rooftop chase was shot either on sticks or with drones. The closeups of Liu Yifei were captured on greenscreen in Auckland.” The environment and matte painting teams had to produce the world beyond the borders of the Imperial City. “They started off with plates of different locations around China, chopped them up, and gathered them again to create the overall shape of the mountain range. We populated that with a lot of wild bamboo and grasses. Trees were used to blend the plate photography. The matte painting team [working in Clarisse] created this beautiful naturalistic-looking surround for the city that plays in a lot of shots.”