Thursday, January 26, 2017

The Magnificent Seven - VFX Review

Movie - The Magnificent Seven
released - 2016
Director - Antonie Fuqua
Cinematography - Mauro Fiore
VFX - Zero VFX


The movie is a remake of the 1960 the magnificent seven. The film stars Denzel WashingtonChris PrattEthan HawkeVincent D'OnofrioLee Byung-hunManuel Garcia-RulfoMartin SensmeierHaley Bennett, and Peter Sarsgaard




Directed by Antonie Fuqua, the approach to VFX on this film is quoted as "I never want to see them, ever". The team at Zero VFX loved this. As a VFX studio they too reflect it on their name, the focus on not to show the viewer that VFX was used in the shots meant having a realistic output on every shot that required VFX.  



A total of 700 VFX shots were delivered by Zero VFX for The Magnificent Seven. The actual filming took place on the sets at baton rogue, a wetland with humidity & rain storms passing by now & then. The VFX team was tasked with converting this wetland scenery into an old texas landscape.

having worked with the director Antonie Fuqua on previous films, such as Equaliser, the VFX supervisor sean devereaux & the team were able to get involved in the film from it's pre production phases. The movie was all about the old west & all the VFX shots were laid out to support & enhance the narrative of the story. 



As the filming took place at Baton Rogue & Santa Fe offer, the Zero VFX team was responsible in creating the beautiful town of rose creek with vistas of mountains with fiery skies & keeping them consistent throughout the movie. making a few shots vs keeping them consistent in a full movie was no easy task!.

To overcome this, the VFX Zero team created a full 3D recreation of Rose creek with high quality LIDAR scans of every building on set. with this data, & the replicated VFX plates of Rose creek the actual set matched perfectly in every shot they wanted to do. they also shot more than a terabyte of scenery footage to use for the reference shots in creating the big background plates.

Horses Horses Horses


After the big problem of creating Rose creek & keeping it consistent was over, the VFX team took it to the big showdown between the good guys & the bad guys. Explosions, digital horses, flying debris were needed to enhance the effects & make the audience feel it was the last place they wanted to be during the big battles. 




Over 150 or at sometimes almost 300 actual horses were on set & the actual actors took part in the stunts. smoke bombs were set off during filming and the explosions had to be added later in the post production.



Volumetric effects with computer simulated explosions, smoke layers that acted as affected by winds & debris were made & mixed on post production. The level of realism is so believable, that when you watch the movie you connot tell between real & CGI!

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