How Oscar-Nominated VFX Teams Created Alien Animatronics, Wicked Worlds and More
Without a juggernaut like “Avatar,” this year’s visual effects Oscar race is proving a competitive one, with VFX branch members nominating the stellar work in “Alien: Romulus,” “Better Man,” “Dune: Part 2,” “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and “Wicked.”
“Alien: Romulus” brings history to the race, as 1979’s “Alien” and 1986’s “Aliens” won VFX Oscars. To stay consistent with the classic feel of the franchise but take advantage of VFX advancements (while involving noted “Alien” vets in the production, as well as the work of companies such as ILM and Weta FX), the latest movie in the franchise features 1,400 “analog” and digital VFX shots to create its scifi world and inhabitants. The frightening Xenomorphs, for instance, were brought to life with methods from animatronics and puppets to the use of fully digital characters. “Practicals were used as much as possible with the actors to get the performance,” relates VFX supervisor Eric Barba. Work also ranged from the Renaissance Space Station to the likeness of late actor Ian Holmes, who appeared in the original film.
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“Better Man” stars a Weta FX-created photoreal CG chimp as singer-songwriter Robbie Williams in the otherwise live action biopic. This audacious approach meant that the Williams character had to look like a monkey but otherwise emote and behave like a human in a believable way alongside human actors. Said VFX supervisor Luke Millar, “We could have created the best looking digital ape ever, but if everyone around him is not convincing, then the whole thing sort of falls apart.” The design of their synthetic simian started with a scan of Williams for key features, but also incorporated the proportions of Jonno Davies (the actor who, wearing a mocap suit, performed the role) as well as chimp features.
Following the success of 2021’s “Dune,” which won the VFX Oscar, director Denis Villeneuve again turned to production VFX supervisor Paul Lambert (who is vying for his fourth Academy Award) and a team that combined practical and digital techniques to complete the scifi epic’s 2,156 VFX shots that expanded the world of Arrakis and brought to life the desert planet’s sandworms. Lambert says the emphasis was on making the work seamless, noting “there just isn’t a world where Denis is going to have something in this movie that takes you out of the story.” The scene during which Paul rides a sandworm for the first time mixed practical and digital work. “We did a lot of the actual riding on top of a gimbal in Budapest, and then we had the approach done in Abu Dhabi,” Lambert relates, nothing that on the digital front, DNEG did the “heavy lifting” though work involved multiple VFX houses.
The three prior movies in the “Planet of the Apes” reboot, which starred Andy Serkis and featured Weta FX’s work, were all VFX Oscar nominated in their years. Techniques continued to advance to create a cast of even more realistic and emotive apes for “Kingdom,” including with the use of dual-camera facial rigs and evolving software for tasks such as muscle simulation, facial animation and grooming. Work also involved action scenes involving water–from rapids to a massive flood–but VFX supervisor Erik Winquist noted “the biggest part of this was the actual interaction with the characters themselves.”
To create the “Wicked” land of Oz, 2,200 practical and digital VFX shots included environments (from the Emerald City to Shiz University), hundreds of digital creatures, and effects such as those used to make Elphaba fly and her college library spin.
On the environments, VFX supervisor Pablo Helman explains that production involved 17 stages and an exterior backlot estimated to be the size of four football fields, “so the idea’s that as much as possible, production design will give us sets of up to 25 feet high in interiors and up to 55 feet in exteriors. And everything else will have to be done in visual effects.” ILM and Framestore led the digital work.
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