Blackbird VFX

When we first read the script and Director Rich Lee’s treatment our imaginations lit up with excitement. Our brief was to amplify the menacing aspects of the physical geography and immerse the vehicle in a perilous environment. Working on location amongst the spectacular peaks and rugged terrain of New Zealand’s South Island we saw a lot of potential for strong cinematic visual effects.

Special care was taken to enhance the perilous nature of the car’s journey. A combination of real world elements employed during the shoot with added VFX enhanced the overall feeling of suspense and tension required.

The bulk of our work was focused on the ‘old road’ sequence of the spot and divided between two main elements: firstly a complex post build which required the bringing together of vertiginous cliff-faces with the sea, and secondly adding degradation to a suspension bridge to the point where it appeared on the verge of collapse.

Visual effects always work best when they have a practical element – even if it is only a relatively small part of the frame - to ground the surroundings in what the eye perceives as reality. For our purposes we captured a foreground stone wall with a dolly move and set this as the basis for all the projections in the surrounding environment, which were collected from different elements captured in Skipper’s Canyon.

For the bridge scene Blackbird teamed up with Toybox, who helped create the CG augmentations for Skippers Bridge. Construction and animation tests began immediately following our first tech scout, and high res survey stills were sent to Auckland for the team to start building and designing the deconstruction of the structure. Beginning the process prior to the shoot gave us a good insight to what angles would best reveal the hazardous state of the bridge and which pieces we could add and remove to enhance the overall effect.

Location stills were used as a reference to build a proxi model of the bridge in CG which could in turn be animated. We didn’t want the vehicle smoothly cruising over the bridge, so wooden sections were nailed onto the existing structure to give the vehicle an uneven surface to negotiate. This provided the realistic movement of the car bobbing up and down over an uneven surface. This surface was later replaced with a completely new CG structure complete with missing slats and glimpses of the deep abyss below. In order to further heighten the atmosphere of danger we added a deeper gorge at the bottom of the frame and a layer of fog all over.

This scene required the melding of two separate environments. Shooting a road with all the elements required was not logistically possible, so we opted to combine a ‘perfect road’ with a ‘perfect storm’. Once we had our ideal road, Rich and DP Christopher Probst went on a trip up the Sur to chase some high seas that were forecast to hit the California coast during our post schedule. The footage captured proved invaluable in bringing this scene to life. The plate of the vehicle was 3d tracked, some simple geometry created, then the ocean plates projected and combined with some rock texture in order to blend the different terrains and landscapes.

Hyundai iX35 “Road Less Travelled” offered us an exciting opportunity to bring this methodology to the fore. It was a perfect harmony of real-world elements taken from the rugged, perilous New Zealand landscape which we then fluidly integrated with complex GC builds and 2D matte painting techniques to realise Director Rich Lee’s vision. The challenge with any job is to ensure that all the elements involved blend seamlessly to create a beautiful and cohesive whole, and it has been a gratifying experience realising this concept into it’s final delivery.