For all intents and purposes, time has stopped. The small, circular
kitchen in the Pentagon is all but frozen in time, as millions of water
droplets, knives, frypans and carrots hang in the air. Plastic
bullets begin to slowly make their way towards the mutants trying to
escape the prison, as the ash-haired Quicksilver begins his high-speed
run around the room to save his new friends... and have a bit of fun
with the guards in front of him. It was, without a doubt, one of
the most spectacular scenes of X-Men: Days of Future Past (DOFP). At
just over 100 seconds long, it's but a tiny part of the entire
time-travelling superhero movie, but visually, the scene is a highlight
that combines live action and computer-generated effects so well that
filmgoers loudly proclaimed it as one of – if not the – highlight of the
film. What you may not know is that alongside the live-action
filming and the circular set, the bulk of that scene was created in
Adelaide, Australia, by visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures.
House of the Rising Sun
Rising
Sun Pictures (RSP) has been around since 1995, and has been responsible
for creating the visual effects sequences for over 100 feature films.
In typical Australian fashion, the company is named after the Rising Sun
Inn, the Adelaide pub the founders had their first board meeting in. Its
credits are large and varied: the studio has worked on everything from
The Great Gatsby to Gravity, as well as a both Wolverine movies and the
latter Harry Potter films. With a reputation as a "sequence
studio", RSP was always well placed to win its bid for creating one of
the DOFP's most iconic moments. But what's truly amazing – especially
for outsiders to the industry – is that the team managed to create it
all in just five and a half months.
Faster than light
In
a way, the team at Rising Sun Pictures was lucky with this particular
job. Director Brian Singer had an exceptionally clear idea about what he
wanted, and did a large amount of prep work before handing the reins
over to the South-Australian studio. "The process itself started
with Brian [Singer] coming up with the idea, storyboarding it out and
then he went through with a company called The Third Floor and they
pre-visualised out all of the shots so you have an idea of the moving
sequence," explained VFX Supervisor Tim Crosbie. The key premise
of the sequence is that the camera enters Quicksilver's world as he runs
around the room at ultra-high speed. The low-res render created by The
Third Floor allowed the team at Rising Sun to work out the timing of the
scene before they began serious work. For
example, an early version of the pre-vis had Quicksilver running around
the walls twice before he takes out the guards. It was deemed overly
long and unnecessary, however, and was taken out before the team began
creating it. The pre-vis also allowed RSP to work out the exact
camera locations, where the rigs for lighting could be installed and
ensured everything was in place for shooting in stereo 3D. This
groundwork ensured the effects team was able to hit the ground running
when it came to turning the live action footage into the final scene in
the movie.
A digital set
Even when watching the kitchen
scene up close on the film's Blu-ray release, it's impossible to
determine exactly what elements are CG and what is live action. The
truth is that almost everything in the scene is digital, either created
by RSP or a virtual recreation of a live action shot. The
film sequence had about eight cooking pots suspended on wires to fly up
at Magneto's control, but everything else – the carrots, the utensils,
the pots and pans and even the actors in many ways – are virtual
recreations of what was shot in the studio.
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