The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly) - The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special
SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS
One of the great things about working on an MCU movie is you get to do a bit of everything,” says production VFX supervisor Christopher Townsend, whose two previous Oscar nominations were for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Iron Man 3.
In Shang-Chi, he says, “There were fantastical [CG] creatures that we based on mythological Chinese characters. There were environments [including the Ta Lo realm], and there are some huge simulations, with both the jungle and the water.” And with sequences such as the final third-act battle in Ta Lo, “the complexity in terms of simulations and the scope of some of these shots is just huge. That certainly made the job challenging and interesting.”
Helmed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film contains 1,761
VFX shots completed by vendors including Weta, Trixter, Rising Sun Pictures, Digital Domain, Scanline, Method (now Framestore), Luma, Rodeo FX and Fin Design. Oscar-nominated alongside Townsend are additional VFX supervisor Joe Farrell, Weta VFX supervisor Sean Noel Walker and special effects supervisor Dan Oliver.
The VFX work involved digital face replacement on stunt performers in the martial arts sequences using AI/machine learning. “Deepfakes, as it’s commonly known — it was one of the first times we’ve used it in these sorts of films,” Townsend adds.
“We had an incredible stunt team [from China],” he relates, adding that they were led by Brad Allan, second unit director and fight and stunt coordinator, who died suddenly last August. “He was actually the first
non-Chinese person to work for Jackie Chan in his stunt team. He brought a lot of that energy and humor to the fights, but he also brought an authenticity to the different fight sequences.”
The VFX supervisor says he is proud of the “care and attention “that was given to create something so authentic to Chinese mythology and the genre of martial arts films. Every creature is based on mythological reference,” he notes. “Morris, the six-legged headless wind creature, is based on Hundun, the Chinese god of chaos. The dragon is Asia-inspired, based on a wingless creature.”
Because the pandemic prevented the team from shooting in Thailand or Vietnam as originally planned, Ta Lo took inspiration from Chinese brush paintings and Southern China mountain ranges. “We had to build the entire world surrounding the set piece digitally.”