kingdom of the planet of the apes Doesn’t seem to be overtly indebted to James Cameron’s films. But key special effects in the latest simian adventure wouldn’t have been possible without Weta Workshop’s Oscar-winning creation “Avatar: The Way of Water”.
“The water solver we used came from the back of that movie, and it took six years of intensive research and development to do the water simulation. So going into this project, it was an aspect of the movie that I wasn’t too concerned about, ” said visual effects supervisor Eric Winquist.
While the building blocks of the effect were already there, achieving director Wes Ball’s vision required a “different mix” of the water itself. “The ferocity and turbulence of the water is very different from what it was before. Avatar. This gives us the opportunity to make improvements to the toolset.
Set 300 years in the future War for the Planet of the Apes, kingdom A young ape named Noa, played by Owen Teague, embarks on a perilous journey to eventually find the brutal Proximus Caesar, played by Kevin Durand (Proximus Caesar). Not only does the narrative timeline fly forward, but so does the technology used to depict it.
These advancements enable the most realistic reproduction of two notoriously challenging effects: water and hair, or more specifically, ape hair. They come together in an action set piece that ends with Peter Macon’s evolved orangutan Raka being swallowed by a raging torrent.
Showing Raka trapped in rapids required a challenging combination of water and hair effects, and Weta’s simulation framework Loki made it possible.
Jasin Boland/20th Century Studio
“We know this is possible because the simulation framework we use at Weta, Loki, handles all of our simulation needs,” Winquist explains. “We use it to simulate hair (either dry or wet) and water. But we can also simulate those two things together so they affect each other.
There were also a lot of fires (Wynquist called it “a complete inferno”). This is the special effects expert who worked on previous great ape trilogy and was nominated for an Oscar for 2015’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes Rise of the Planet of the ApesAcknowledging practical effects is critical to the visual effects team’s work.
“Weta handled all the dangerous stuff that they couldn’t really handle, but I can’t underestimate what our special effects friends gave us on set,” he said, citing the village attack sequence as an example. “They have LPG fire systems all around them to give us real fire and light. Although there are lighting fixtures, the natural fire gives us an accurate reference as to what the exposure should be and how the flames behave. We always have some Something to anchor our digital firepower on.
kingdom They also benefited from advances in performance capture suits. Teague wears a streamlined third-generation suit in which elements are integrated into the interior rather than sitting on the outside of the suit, where they might catch something.
Teague wore his performance capture suit to play Noah, in which “elements were integrated internally” to prevent obstructions.
Jasin Boland/20th Century Studio
“That was really important when he had to do something like walk out of the bush,” Winquist said, adding, “One of the things about the trilogy we did before was that these were live-action movies, and we Finding and shooting stunning movies in them meant we needed to design motion capture markers that emitted light, rather than reflecting it like they would on a stage.
kingdom There are more than 1,500 visual effects shots in the 145-minute film, 33 minutes of which were entirely digital. One of the most striking examples is the opening egg crawling scene, which was difficult to find a suitable location for and the crew couldn’t build a physical set large enough to achieve the same effect.
“That was a real place and anchored our scene, so we started there,” Winquist said, adding that one of the trickiest aspects of working with digital environments is “the organic stuff.”
It’s a perfect example of ape hair and water effects working together, as Noah holds on after the seawall of Proximus Caesar’s compound is blown up and water floods the abandoned bunker. Here are the key moments in the gripping and action-packed finale Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios(3)
“Making an urban landscape has its challenges, but when you cover it with vegetation and need to have leaves fluttering to bring life to the place, you need to consider the volume and distribution of organic materials within the frame,” he says. “It became an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive process. I think there were about 16 million factory assets scattered throughout the opening shot.
Check out other revealing stories about the filmmaking process: THR.com/behindthescreen
This story first appeared in the December Independence issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
