VFX supervisor Dan Bethell helped the studio deliver 880 shots on famed director George Miller’s latest post-apocalyptic romp, including work on the Citadel Battle, the Bullet Farm ambush, the Stowaway to Nowhere, and the titular character’s mechanical arm.
From the Citadel Battle to the Bullet Farm ambush and Stowaway to Nowhere – itself some 250 shots – DNEG’s VFX work on George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was an exacting, sophisticated exercise in helping the famed director create his latest larger-than-life romp across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Delivering 880 shots within 24 key sequences, DNEG’s team was led by Dan Bethell, who was previously a CG Sequence Supervisor on Mad Max: Fury Road for Iloura. Bethell came onboard Miller’s latest adventure with Andrew Jackson, the film’s Production VFX Supervisor, as they helped startup DNEG’s facility in Sydney. “It’s more than what you see on the screen; that’s been its own journey,” notes Bethell. “You have to separate the technology and infrastructure, which is universal from the team. It’s like casting a movie. Every show is different and as you build a team in a new location that’s often the most challenging aspect.”
A prequel and spin-off to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, and the fifth installment in the Mad Max franchise, Furiosa presents the origin story of the Fury Road character Imperator Furiosa (originally played by Charlize Theron, and here incarnated by Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Browne).
But, notes Bethell, the Mad Max movies are not fantasy. “They’re always grounded in some sense of reality and believability,” he says. “But with that said, the frames that George produces and the story he’s telling are always larger than life and epic. A lot of our work is increasing the grandeur and scale of everything while trying to make it feel grounded in some form of reality. Finding that balance is hard.”
DIs are extensive on a George Miller production. “Normally, when there is a large amount of photography, we try to remain neutral and match the black and saturation levels,” states Bethell. “As the DI pulls the image around all the visual effects go with it. With imagery as complex as some of stuff from Furiosa you have to have a strong idea of where it’s going to go in order to integrate the elements correctly.” A signature moment is the Stowaway to Nowhere, which is basically a War Rig chase sequence that lasts for 16 minutes. “Technology is one thing, but [the real difficulty is] the complexity of the choreography, orchestration and construction of these shots that George puts together from pieces that are disjoined in order to tell the story.” Camera tracking was critical. “One of the big challenges that I haven’t had to do a lot before is [continually going between] live-action and digital cameras to try to create a unified camera move. We do a lot of stunt performer to digital double takeovers but we’re effectively doing that with cameras as well as characters and vehicles.”
Further complicating things is the semi-truck with metallic tanker trailer known as the War Rig, which acts like a reflective chrome ball. “In some shots it’s very complicated while other ones became easier,” remarks Bethell. “Because the War Rig was this big hero vehicle that reflects everything, any shot with it would be rendered with a CG version with a few exceptions where you didn’t see the whole of the trailer. We always had a clean War Rig that could be used by utilizing traditional 2D techniques to patch our reflections or crew or we could replace parts of it wholesale, whether it’s the cab, wheels, or back trailer. Quite often beyond removing crew we were doing sky replacements. We were removing green fields and replacing them with these vast wastelands.”
Other significant vehicles were the Octoboss Glider, Monster Truck and Valliant. “Like with Fury Road, the [six-wheeler] Monster Truck and Valliant were fully built and realized by [Production Designer] Colin Gibson and the art department,” states Bethell. “We constructed CG versions of the real-world equivalents. The same with the bike component, a Harley-Davidson shell with the four guns on the front of the Octoboss. The glider itself is entirely CG. A little way into the production there was the annual kite festival down by Bondi Beach. Andrew Jackson sent us a video a couple of days later where he had filmed these large kites, so we used that as an inspiration for some of the materials and movements. Then various bits of complex rigging and cabling to try to create the construction, which is this heavy bike suspended by an enormous kite with these long tentacles behind.”
Keeping the story moving forward throughout the Bullet Farm ambush required unrelenting work. “The Bullet Farm ambush was good fun because even though you’ve got all of these components like the ambush itself in the beginning, Praetorian Jack driving the War Rig down, Furiosa comes back and takes up the sniping position, destruction of Manhattan which is the chimneys and structures in the middle, and the finale with the War Rig tipping into the pit, they all string together tightly and form a singular story,” Bethell explains. “Particularly when you have large scale destruction over multiple shots as part of a sequence, choreographing that to have cadence, rhythm and continuity, as well as managing these large-scale simulations and making every shot impactful, beautiful and composed, is a real balance. One-off effects in a shot are one thing, but when you have to make them work across multiple sections and effectively animate large scale destruction, but in a way that looks physically believable, real and has scale, that’s major challenge. The effects team did a fantastic job working within those constraints because we were constantly iterating as well.”
“We always start with the real-world photography, especially for the performances of Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy,” remarks Bethell. “It’s always a great reference for lighting. But particularly in the Bullet Farm, the environment is almost entirely CG and as you come from the environment in, you’re layering in effects. Ultimately, we have to interact with the cast members to make everything feel visceral and real. So, we end up rotomating them.” In one scene, a massive explosion occurs behind Furiosa as her back is towards the gate of the Bullet Farm. “In that shot, we had Anya against the gate, and through the gate you see the War Rig and the ambush, while beyond that is a digital set extension for the Bullet Farm. And we’re also enhancing explosions and bullet fire. All the flames coming towards the gate and past Anya were fully simulated. There was some wind blowing onset which gave us a nice method of tying things together. Just a little bit of wind through the hair gives the idea that there is some force coming towards her. Then we added some singeing in the hair and interactive lighting on her and the gate as well as little embers flying towards camera to try to draw the audience in a visceral fashion. We added heat haze to tie it all together. The fire simulation was slowed down to give it an ethereal and epic sense.”
Gas Town is an enormous oil refinery constructed from actual parts to provide an aura of authenticity. “With Gas Town there is a plastic resin refinery south of Sydney that we went and looked at for reference,” reveals Bethell. “We built a library of oil refinery components like pipes, vents, and catalytic distillery tanks, then effectively kitbashed a bunch of different layouts. We had a good idea of the overall structure for the story because there was previs. However, exactly where all the pipes went and how they tied in was something that we researched, kitbashed, and explored. Once you’ve got your kitbash, you need to make sure that all the bits start to blend together so you don’t start seeing any repeating patterns. The second time we go back to Gas Town, and it’s decayed, Furiosa is driving the War Rig and they’re trying to escape and go through a big tunnel. We actually found a service driveway underneath a section of the refinery and that became the inspiration for that tunnel. We took a lot of real-world references but then by amplifying them, we were able to create this monster that is Gas Town.”
Unlike the industrial setting of Gas Town, the Citadel is a network of caves within a natural landmark. “It’s a different environment but the same rules apply,” observes Bethell. “In the Wasteland everything is reused, reclaimed, and built by hand. The Citadel is large rock structures that have been chiselled into and carved away. The same reference that was used on Fury Road - these big rock formations in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney - provided the pallet for the rock. We made it into these massive geological formations and began carving away in ways that they could have done with the thousands of War Boys.” Regarding the rock’s material qualities, he adds, “You have to have enough reflection components for it to feel real. It can’t be completely diffused or too shiny. There has to be enough variation over the surface to feel believable.”
Decisions on the look of the film’s unending array of skies were anything but simple. “We would go and look at hundreds of skies,” notes Bethell. “One of the early references that Andrew Jackson sent over was a bunch of skies. Bear in mind we had been to Africa over a decade ago to shoot Fury Road and while we were there for nine months in the desert we took a lot of photography. That database of hundreds of thousands of photos became our foundation. A lot of those were skies. Andrew gave me a contact sheet of skies. In one axis you had moodiness and the other you had dramatic. We almost had a pallet of skies that different scenes could tap into and that was our starting point. But as we went through George would find skies that he felt were appropriate. It was effectively a casting process.”
Creating Furiosa’s mechanical arm involved the same process previously used on Mad Max: Fury Road. “We would remove the green sock arm of Anya as we did with Charlize Theron, then track and orchestrate onto it the CG version of the limb,” states Bethell. “Wherever possible they would shoot with a practical hand, and we’d create negative space where the arm shouldn’t be and put in a central rod. There were various levels of limb replacement for that.”
Extensive crowds had to be simulated throughout the film while digital doubles were exclusively used for takeovers or character replacements where actors could not physically or safely perform. “There were a lot of takeovers and background extras,” Bethell says. “The photography had a reasonable number of extras for Gas Towners, Bullet Farmers, and the Wretched at the bottom of the Citadel. However, when you’re working on a George Miller movie, it’s never enough!” Bethell concludes by sharing, “George Miller is one of those filmmakers who you can probably pick any frame in a movie and it’s this mini work of art through the composition, lighting and staging. He creates visual moments and the visual effects must not overpower that.”
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.
