Feature Films VFX
Black Adam
Wētā FX
Black Adam's introduction into the DC universe has him facing off against the Justice Society: Doctor Fate, Hawkman, Atom Smasher, and Cyclone - leaving a path of destruction across the fictional city of Shiruta. Extending the plate photography, the Weta FX team built out the environment, focusing action-packed sequences in the Sunken Street city center, waterfront marketplace, and palace ruins.
To enhance the destruction, a library of fire, smoke, and dust matching the plate footage was created and realised as VDB caches that were placed into shots by compositors much like traditional 2D elements. Instilled with powers for the Egyptian gods, Black Adam challenges the Justice society and provides a visually stunning battle for audiences who are introduced to Dr Fate's intricate geometric spells and Cyclones kaleidoscope of colours as she manipulates the weather.
A key section of the teams work was bringing the supervillain Sabbac to life, for his face, we started with actor Marwan Kenzari, and introduced more heroic, and chiselled muscle shapes, while maintaining key features for both likeness and performance range. We referenced more exaggerated artwork and old comics for Sabbac’s body, but opted for a more realistic anatomically correct muscle formation and structure to create his mighty physical form. Uniting in the third act for their fight against Sabbac and his newly acquired demonic powers, we see a culmination of the characters superpowers and are treated to a classic showdown between Dr. Fate and Sabbac with carefully orchestrated camera transitions to generate a sense of multi dimensionally and heighten the dynamic interaction of the fight. We also introduced variable re-speeds to artistically control the pace of the action.
Shot timings and camera hand-offs were constructed based on the birth, launch or hit of a spell. All of the information was utilized downstream by the FX, Lighting and Compositing teams.
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