THE SUBSTANCE VFX
FINER DETAILS It was a balancing act to maintain the rough-hewn quality of the film with the high level of detail promised by VFX techniques. “When we’re working on someone’s face, we need a lot of data and we try to be as detailed as possible – especially with the skin and other very specific features,” insists Shafaghi. “But on this one, we liked to break up the physical part of our work somewhat. If we need to match pores, for example, on someone’s skin, we had to break this to be able to refine the look of the prosthetic – the more silicon look. So we needed to start with something very detailed, then go back to what Persin had done on-set with the skin of the monster – and the same for the texture of the crawling bug. “We did a lot of reviews and iterations to figure out which details we could add or had to remove to find the start of Demi’s face. It wasn’t just doing her face, it was doing it while it was stuck on the
IN YOUR FACE One of the bigger challenges was combining the VFX with prosthetics work
body, working out how we could blend it with the prosthetic.” Every minute change was returned to Fargeat so she could check them and ensure the emotions of the creatures were portrayed just right. “Every time we changed the camera angle, for example, we could lose her,” says Shafaghi. “Sometimes we’d send a version that was exactly the same shot but with a tiny bit of detail around the eyes altered. That might have lost the essence of Demi in Coralie’s eyes. We then had to quickly figure out what changed or identify what we need to preserve every time we showed her a different angle or different shot, to ensure she’d be happy with the final product.” HAPPY ENDINGS Ultimately, emotion was the top priority for Fargeat, states Shafaghi, and getting that right was essential. “At the end of
the film, it’s happiness that appears on Demi’s face – the release, the relief of everything. Since we did a technical reshoot, we managed to get exactly the emotion we wanted without trying to match other scenes.” Rather than making the visual effects obvious, the aim was to make them disappear and blend into the prosthetics. “I was in a screening a few days ago, and some people asked, ‘What have you actually done?’ That’s the best compliment we can get at this point.” In total, it took one year to fine-tune the VFX. “It’s not that many shots, but it was very difficult work to do,” recalls Shafaghi. “It was the first time we were able to work with this level of data for a movie, so it was very cool and very important to get right.”
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