Luma Pictures Creates Texas-Size VFX for "No Country for Old Men"
Studio Sole VFX Vendor for Coen Brothers Drama
SANTA MONICA, CA - Luma Pictures helped recreate the flora and fauna of rugged West Texas in providing visual effects services for the new Coen Brothers film No Country for Old Men. The studio was the sole visual effects supplier for the film, delivering more than 60 shots, including environmental effects and stunningly real wildlife recreations. No Country for Old Men will be released by Miramax Films November 9.
Based on the book by Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men is a tense, violent and darkly comic tale that centers on a $2 million drug deal that goes bad near the U.S. border with Mexico. The unforgiving, bone dry Texas country is more than a backdrop for the tale, it is a malevolent presence that threatens to swallow up those foolish enough to venture into it. Luma's role in the film was primarily to enhance and to add naturalistic elements to that environment to aid plot points, but to do so imperceptibly and in a way that did not distract from the film's stubborn, unblinking realism.
"Most audience members would not guess that there are any visual effects in this film," said Luma Pictures Visual Effects Supervisor Payam Shohadai. "Yet the effects work was both extensive and complex."One of Luma's most impressive accomplishments is a hunting sequence where Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) kills a pronghorn antelope and then stumbles upon several dead bodies. All of the more than 20 animals pictured in the scene are CG. Luma animators developed a number of distinct antelope models representing animals of varying sex and age, and animated each one by hand. The artists used documentary materials and animal biomechanical studies as reference in creating creatures that look, move and behave like the real thing.
"Each animal has a different reaction to the gun shots and other events in the scene and that helped to make it seem more realistic," explained Lead Animator Burke Roane.
In placing the CG animals into the background, Luma artists added grass and ground cover to make the blend more seamless. They also added dust and debris that gets kicked up as the animals flee.The Luma team created a CG crow for a different scene. Although in this instance only one animal was involved, the scene involved its own set of unique challenges. For one thing, the bird is the central focus of the shot and so any artificiality would be easily spotted. It also had to perform very specific behaviors. "There is a lot of subtlety to the bird's actions, even when it is in a relatively motionless state," recalled Visual Effects Supervising Producer Steven Swanson. "It ruffles its features slightly and makes other small body movements as it shifts its weight from one foot to the other. And it reacts to a passing car. It had to do all that without the audience ever suspecting that it is not a real bird." Swanson added that in addition to reviewing existing documentary footage of similar birds, Luma took an HD camera out into the field to shoot some of the feathered creatures on its own.
The scene was further complicated by the fact that it occurs at night. "It is always a challenge integrating a dark element into a dark background," said Senior Compositor Jason Yanofsky. "We added a layer of reddish-blue iridescence to the bird's feathers to make it pop out."
For another sequence, Luma Pictures created a different sort of winged creature-a 747 aircraft. Cost and the film's remote location made it impractical to use a real plane, so artists created a photo real CG model and composited it into a panning shot of the sky. As with the crow sequence, the CG aircraft needed to be detailed with extreme accuracy due to its prominence in the shot.
Luma not only succeeded artistically in pulling off such invisible effects, it also succeeded from a practical point of view, delivering the package of effects on time and on budget. "We always find a way to make the most of our assets and produce maximum quality with a minimum of resources," commented Shohadai. "We produce more iterations, more shots and better quality than some studios two to three times our size. We work smart and don't just throw money at the difficulties we encounter along the way. Our clients have really come to appreciate our ability to quickly develop solutions to complex problems, and keep their projects on track."
Luma Pictures is a leading provider of visual effects services to Hollywood with a reputation for artistic integrity, technical innovation and efficient production. The company served as lead visual effects provider on Underworld: Evolution, one of the biggest hits of 2006 and widely acclaimed for its incredible creature and environmental effects. Some of the studio's other credits include Apocalypto (Buena Vista/Icon), The Cave (ScreenGems/Lakeshore), The Holiday (Columbia Pictures), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Paramount), Crash (Lions Gate) and Ray (Universal Pictures). Current projects include Johnny Appleseed for director Todd Fjelsted.
