Even Though The Creator Is Out, The Film’s VFX Supervisor Tells Us Why He Still Wakes Up ‘In A Cold Sweat’ Thinking About The Film
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Anyone can identify with the fact that sometimes, no matter what job you call your vocation, there are moments that really stress you out. So much, in fact, that if you’re like Jay Cooper, The Creator's Visual Effects Supervisor, you’ll wake up “in a cold sweat” just thinking about this entry on the 2023 movie release schedule.
For Mr. Cooper, those moments came from some of the more intensive shots in 20th Century Studios’ latest sci-fi movie; and as you’d expect, it was all inspired by the intricate visual effects crafted for Gareth Edwards’ cybernetic epic. Having the absolute pleasure of speaking with Jay Cooper and Onset VFX Supervisor Andrew Roberts on behalf of the film’s theatrical release, I had to pry into the shots that really racked their brains.
In a movie where the director wanted as realistic of an approach as possible, and without as little aid from mo-cap suits and tracking dots as possible, the visuals you see in The Creator’s trailer should seem all the more impressive. And as we all know, that work doesn’t happen overnight. So with that in mind, take a look at how Jay Cooper described one of the toughest VFX shots in the film to CinemaBlend:
There are a number that were really hard, to be honest. There are a number that are really hard. One that jumps out at me is when Daw is having her face put back on … that shot goes on, it's like a thousand frames or so. Those are the kinds of shots that really scare me. We had very minimal, you know, again, in keeping with Gareth's approach, small tracking dots, built a fully CG head, and then of course there's a little piece that picks up with the little tongs, putting it on there, having that to sit in, and then the camera comes around, and the shooting. That was a tough nut to crack. … I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, but not often, luckily since it's out.
The scene in question shows US military forces, represented by actors Allison Janney and Sturgill Simpson, interrogating a Simulant for pieces of crucial information. As the character known as Commander Daw (Leanna Chea) was badly damaged during a skirmish prior to this sit-down, her face needs to be reconstructed before she can talk. This leads to the bit of sci-fi surgery described above; and having seen it myself, it looks as painstaking in the finished product as it must have been to construct.
Gareth Edwards’ return to directing certainly sounds like an intense experience based on various accounts that have been given to promote the picture. Tenet star John David Washington’s remarks noting that The Creator was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done” help build that image up rather nicely. But as with any rewarding experience, the hoops that were jumped through by all were remembered as worthy obstacles, and not a painful slog.
You can certainly feel the complexity of the world that Jay Cooper and his ILM colleagues helped build. The Creator’s breathtaking LAX Spaceport is a prime example of that sort of dedication, as Cooper and Andrew Roberts, as well as directors of photography Oren Soffer and Greig Fraser all provided a pretty extensive recollection of how just that set piece alone came to life.
On both sides of the technical knowhow I was able to tap into first hand, realism was always a concern. While the 2070 shown in the movie doesn’t look too far off from the world we live in today, futuristic flourishes inspired by classics such as Alien and Blade Runner are present all throughout.
The seams between reality and fiction blended together all too well thanks to an innovative camera rig used for The Creator being able to capture environments a traditional setup wouldn’t have been able to encounter. But for as complicated as the wider landscape of The Creator’s world happened to be, the up-close reality of Simulants and their enhancements clearly proved to be just as tricky.
Jay Cooper offered these further examples of the exciting challenges that came from the more personal scaled thrills that were part of the bigger picture:
There's one gentleman in Nepal, who has like these almost large jowls, that you wanna make sure that all that kind of stuff fits in. And another person that's praying, that is another one that was really challenging. There's a bunch. There's a shot where we had hundreds of dead robots, or I guess they're dead, in the crushing machine. And that was very difficult technically. And then we wanted to add this animation of one sort of, kind of trying to claw to come out of it. So that's a really difficult thing to sort of work out technically.
Stress is an understatement when pulling together an effects heavy picture like The Creator. It’s par for the course of anything as huge as the tale that Gareth Edwards has released to the world. While the results are truly gorgeous, one can very easily identify with the cold sweats that Jay Cooper had during the process. You can celebrate the hard work from the behind-the-scenes talents that shaped The Creator thanks to the movie currently showing at a theater near you.
