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At the beginning of 2009 Platige Image began working on over 80 takes for the latest film by Lars Von Trier, "Antichrist". This project was a great challenge partly because the Director himself was our client, and partly because the effects we were working on were an unusual blend of subtlety and horror. It is difficult to talk about typical Hollywood effects full of spectacular blasts or characters in this project. Even if our work is much more subtle, it had a considerable influence on the final version of "Antichrist".

The effects were various. There was a vast array ranging from the least complicated tasks such as joining two scenes which would have been impossible to shoot simultaneously e.g. a scene with a couple having sex and a small child in the foreground or the one with a boy falling out of the window. There were also many takes which were a simple collage of several movie doubles. Yet, we will describe a few main takes out of all the 80 that we were working on.

U The take from the poster was the first one that we worked on in this project. It was shot in the woods. These were several movie doubles containing versions of different arrangement of extras and one double of the main characters having sex. The take was shot with a specially constructed Motion Control arm. Such an arm has an edge over a regular crane because when controlled by a computer, it can repeat precisely the exact same movement of the camera. It enabled a free arrangement of extras and shoot of a double from a moving camera. Unfortunately, the arm was so long that the camera at its end trembled dangerously. Because of that every double shook quite hard and finally, after the editing it turned out that each hand was moving differently. We needed to stabilize every layer separately and then add vibrations from just one layer. This united the picture.

We started our work on a concept created in Photoshop where we could quickly introduce corrections. We sent different versions to Denmark so that each take was accepted before we could work on it properly. The artist chose different arms and legs from various doubles so that he could achieve a dynamic and dramatic effect which would have a closed composition. Then this was recreated in the final take.

Animal corrections

There are several takes in the film in which we had to correct the animals appearing there. When animals feature on the plan it is obvious that not everything will go as planned. Wild animals, such as a fox or a deer need a collar so that they don't run away from the plan. The deer also had to have a harness with a dead foetus attached to it.

It is not advisable that such elements are visible thus they had to be arduously removed. It posed certain problems especially that the animals were shot in the run. Very often it led to exchanging the animal partially in 3D so that the part of the animal was deformed and lit exactly like the rest.

In several takes the animals didn't make moves expressive enough or it was necessary to add a wink or a slight movement to their "acting".

Chaos Reigns

The take with a talking fox was considered to be the most important one at the initial stage of the project. From the very beginning we knew that it was our biggest challenge. When we got the take and the soundtrack we started to analyse the material carefully. We got the chosen dubel initially in the form of Qtime Mov and Wave with the voice of the director saying CHAOS REIGNS. We used it to make the first attempts at the take. The material was stretched in time so that the position of the fox's snout in the form of a yawn on the source material resembled the word REIGNS. The fox didn't growl the word CHAOS so we assumed that this fragment will be added by morfing. The initial assumption also included adding language in 3D. Later we received the director's final decision passed by the project coordinator, Peter: the fox's utterance was to be made clearer by adding Lip Sync, i.e. a precise utterance of sentences. In case of animals such striving for clarity is usually avoided as it makes achieving a realistic effect (animal expressions are by far less prominent than human ones). However, here the director's aim, apart from realism, was achieving an eerie and unsettling impression. It required an exchange of the fox's snout for one made in w 3D. We decided to leave the original ears and eyes, but replace the rest. It gave us the possibility to animate the talking fox. There were a lot of versions of the animation. We checked the whole array of versions from the barely legible to the extremely human. Eventually, Lars Von Trier chose a very expressive, scary but a slightly exaggerated version of animation no. 37. Then an arduous process of creating fur, teeth, saliva and tongue so that they weren't different from the ones that we replaced in the take. We also had to recreate the lighting conditions from the shooting plan. At the end of our work the director wanted us to make the fox perform a bigger move with its head at the beginning and the end of the take.

It was quite a challenge because the time was running out. Yet, we managed to finish this take on time.

The fox gnawing at its own side

The take when the fox tears out its entrails was one of those takes that for some strange reason cause enormous problems. We made three or four attempts at this take and every time the effect was not satisfying. We got a material where the fox tears out a piece of meat attached to its side in slow motion. Our task was adding the wound, ripped tissues, muscles and skin. We also got technical material with pieces of meat torn out. Unfortunately, the torn meat is being deformed what made stabilizing the material difficult for the later use in the take. We started arduous work on manual “adding” various layers of meat to the fox's side so that they reacted to tearing. The director, watching our progress, kept looking for bigger amount of meat and blood in the take. We still needed enough materials from a shooting. So Peter bought entrails of a sheep at a Danish butcher's and shot many versions with a home digital candycam in his own sink. The material was not of good quality, it even looked technically poor, but it showed exactly what everyone was looking for: slithery entrails which could have slipped from the bitten fox's side. The materials were then coloured and “glued” to the animal's side. After adding shadows and a few layers of blood the take was accepted by the director. It's worth mentioning that when working on this take the director used a trick that surprised us all. In search of diversity and in order to intensify terror among the audience the entrails are as if turned back in time, their movement precedes the movement of the side.

This seemingly bizzarre idea works on the psyche intensifying the impression of eeriness and horribleness of the whole scene.

Climbing plants

Climbing plants that Willem Dafoe is looking at in scene 62 could not be shot. Their incredibly shortened cycle of life was to show the cruelty of nature. The majority of plants die not growing over the size of a seedling. Only few manage to grow above the rest, getting a chance for developing fully. After watching several films of this type in the Internet we decided to fall back on manual animation. We prepared a library of several plant models. Then, the animation artist prepared a whole series of different versions of the animation. There were examples of plants which die really quickly. There were also those which live a bit longer and of course, the ones that grow above the grass. The next step included using a mini program written during our work on the project which modified animations adding various random and characteristic round moves of plants looking for light. We placed such a library on a 3D surface and after counting realistic shadows and materials we composed the take.

We added grass and some mist lit throught by the sun in order to create a slightly magical atmosphere. The mist was necessary to show that plants cast shadows on one another thus stealing light. So it was not only visually necessary but also pertained to the content.

Senior Visual Effects Producer:
Jarosław Sawko, Piotr Sikora

PI Project Supervisor/Lead Composition and CGI Artist:
Jakub Knapik

Visual Effects Executive Producer:
Katarzyna Jarzyna

Production Assistant:
Katarzyna Chodak

Compositors:
Krzysztof Grygowski
Adam Janeczek
Kacper Fertacz
Rafał Sadowy
Jacek Skrobisz

Support Compositors:
Krzysztof Kamrowski
Paweł Szklarski

Matte Painting/Concepts:
Jakub Grygier
Rafał Wojtunik

Roto Artists:
Piotr Dworaczyński
Wojtek Bagiński
Aleksander Szkudlarek

R&D / Simulations:
Adam Wierzchowski
Łukasz Sobisz

3D Animations:
Marcin Filipek

Modeling:
Piotr Suchodolski
Radosław Nowakowski
Bartosz Opatowiecki