Quick VFX Update (+ bonus set pics)

Matt here! Freddie is taking a well deserved break after 7 months of boxing training. A quick refresh before we start action rehearsal first thing next month. Which means you have to suffer a quick VFX from yours truly instead of the digital maestro himself.

Currently, all the VFX shots are with a company for a first pass on all the roto, matte clean up, plate preparation etc. Essentially all that initial work. They are then going to our VFX Supervisor, Nathan Samm, who will do final touches on them. We also won't be doing much noting until Nate works on them, just to get the work flow moving along.

Nate is currently tackling the bigger shots such as liquid squirting out of the fake knife, Freddie's head hitting the rungs of the ladder, etc.

That should all be coming in the next week, as the plan is to have this sequence done early August.

Still, I wanted to share some of the initial VFX coming in. I whipped together a little compilation of two of the main VFX in this sequence - compositing two shots to make it look like Freddie is actually getting punched, and the train background.

You will see that the train background still has the watermark on it, looks different from shot to shot and so on. We are still dialing it in.

If you are curious about our workflow, we use a website called Frame.io - we've used it since Dimension 404 days. Maybe even Season 3 of VGHS? Not sure. But if you don't know what it is, it's a cloud based platform that lets you load and share files, but it's great for VFX work because it allows for & tracks feedback. Here is a pic of what it looks like:

Enough COMPUTER EFFECTS. Blah. Who cares about those. I've heard that F1 and Top Gun had ALL real cars and planes (every shot in those movies are cgi, almost nothing was real, Hollywood needs to stop lying about CGI and pretending its what ruins movies) and lets get to the PHYSICAL.

Today is the last day of set construction. Next week is set decoration, meaning they bring in the furniture, interior lighting, art, and so on. I was just at the stage and they had put in the carpeting and are working on the last bits of aging the walls and so on. It is surreal seeing the actual Mama Wong's dumpling shop come to life in our little warehouse.

Really love the runner they got on the stairs, and carpet is a very nice mellow green that is unfortunately hard to see in this picture.

Kitchen equipment is getting loaded in, and we now have kitchen doors, and the counter top.

Lots more next week. It is wild to me that in a little less than a week we start action rehearsals. It will essentially be nonstop rehearsals/filming until January. Film is so slow until it is suddenly breakneck fast.