When You're Not HAPPY With Your Badguy... | "A Quiet Place" VFX Breakdown
1,638Halfway through production on A Quiet Place, John Krasinski, and VFX Supervisor, Scott Farrar decided the creature just wasn’t scary enough. So the ILM team redesigned him and completed shots in only two months. They named the monster, ‘Happy.’
Like the music in this video?
Get it on Google Play:► https://bit.ly/2F10vbs ◄
Get it on itunes: ► https://apple.co/2ENGfu9 ◄
Listen on Spotify: ► https://spoti.fi/3boTfCl ◄
Buy it on Amazon: ► https://amzn.to/2QVJZfk ◄
A Quiet Place is a 2018 film, that proves that you don't need a huge budget, a massive cast of Hollywood stars, incredible sound engineering, and thousands of VFX shots to make a good movie. Sometimes, If you do it right, a well-told story, a few good Practical and Visual effects, some crabs legs, a piece of celery, and lettuce can make you a box office hit.
With such a limited budget, the team knew they had to use VFX sparingly but to good effect, so they needed to get one of the best, and they managed to get ILM. Because they knew their Alien monsters had to be CG and had to look terrifying, they knew that most of the VFX budget had to go on them.
The need for high-quality VFX and their limited budget led them to decide to show the Aliens, for the minimal amount of time possible, building up the tension with sound effects, clever camera work, and music, and letting the viewer's imagination, add the fear.
Practical Effects.
In addition to wirework, practical effects were used throughout principal photography, In the scene where Emily blunt goes downstairs and steps on a nail, a retractable nail was used, it pushed down when she stepped on it and came back up when she lifted her foot, the CG blood was added in post.
In the Silo scene, 12 inches of corn was covering a latex membrane with a slit cut in it, the kids would have their body halfway through the slit, and then when they had to go under they'd slip down through the membrane, leaving the corn in place, and then slip back through the membrane when they had to come back up, in some shots the membrane was visible so CG corn was added in post. For the part when the Alien puts his claw through the door, the SFX team cut a panel out of the door and replaced it with thick aluminium foil, and painted it the same color as the door, they then made a claw-shaped rake which they painted green and stuck to a microphone stand, they used this to pierce the door and then replaced it with the CG Alien in post.
For the flooded basement scene, in order to save money, instead of building the set inside a larger water tank, they transformed a smaller water tank, into their set. The art department added stone and paint to the tank's walls, they added food coloring to the water to make it darker, and props were added to float about on the water's surface. In this scene, and indeed for the majority of principal photography, the alien was in fact just a man in a suit, this gave a reference for the actors to work with but also gave a reference for the framing of the shot.
Making the Monster.
ILM was given the task of creating an Alien creature that hunts by sound. The Director had given them reference material of what he was looking for, pictures of prehistoric fish, black snakes, and strange scales and he referenced bats for the odd way they moved. Throughout principal photography, ILM worked on how the Alien would move, starting with a snapping and jerking movement which looked alien, but not very menacing. They decided to never have the creature stand up, keeping it in this crouched posture gave it the feeling it was always alert and ready to strike, referencing the movement of a shark, they animated the creature to move slowly and patiently moving until ready to attack with sudden speed and ferocity.
The way the Alien listened also evolved throughout the process, the director wanted flaps to open all over the creatures head, face, and body to reveal multiple ears to help it capture the sound, the idea being that the more flaps that opened, the more intently the creature was listening.
Sound in A Quiet Place.
In A Quiet Place, Sound is incredibly important, one sound at the wrong time could mean death! When the team was filming the movie, sound was also incredibly important, so much so that it was actually written into the script.
E Squared has worked on many films, from transformers to Godzilla vs Kong but in this film, instead of creating loud and full sound effects, they found themselves constantly having to dial everything back.
E Squared found themselves having to follow the logic of the film's environment, for example, they couldn't put footstep sounds in a shot where the actors were far away from the camera, because if we can hear their footsteps from so far away, so can the monsters, so they only put sound in when the camera was in close to the action.
Read more here: www.famefocus.com
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/focusfame