Amazing Before & After VFX Breakdown: The Shape of Water
464Guillermo Del Toro's "The Shape of Water" is a romantic fairy tale about monsters and misfits whose VFX are brilliant, not for being big and explosive, but for being subtle and sensitive, adding luster to the whole film rather than shining through it!
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Dry-for-Wet
For the initial shot, Mr.X created a digital underwater riverbed, with moving reeds, fish, and a doorway that led into an apartment. The apartment was shot using an effect called "Dry-for-wet" shooting. By using high powered projectors they ran a pre-rendered high-contrast animated black and white pattern to give the effect of rays of light refracting off the water's surface, props and objects were hung on monofilaments and the set was filled with smoke, adding to the underwater effect. Mr.X then had to add a floating blanket and Elisa's hair, both of which had to match the cadence of the reeds at the start of the shot, and then digital fish, bubbles, and particles were created to add detail.
The Physical Suit
Because of the depth of interaction between the lead characters, Del Toro wanted the "creature" to be "on set" so a Physical Suit was created by Legacy Effects.
Working from original designs Legacy created a variety of prosthetic suit pieces and head and make-up effects to be worn by "creature performer" Doug Jones.
Mr. X was given the task of augmenting the practical suit, considering Doug's was under a half-inch of latex, this included all the facial movements, eye movements, gill movements, and bioluminescence of the creature.
The Digital Suit
Although the physical suit was used in the grand majority of the movie, there were some shots that required a fully digital version.
The digital version couldn't be a highly realistic aquatic monster, it had to look like Doug in a suit so Mr.X did a highly accurate scan of Doug using their own Photogrammetry Scanning Rig called Xscan, which consists of 56 DSLR cameras that completely surround the actor.
Digital face.
Thanks to the physical suit both actors were able to give a deep and emotional performance but Doug's facial performance was hindered by his latex make-up.
This meant that Mr.X not only had to augment Doug's movements, they had to add feeling and emotion. Mr.X artists had to ride a very fine line between emotional and cartoony.
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