DEAD RINGERS
VISUAL EFFECTS
Afterparty VFX delivered 200 chilling VFX shots for the new 'Rachel Weisz' Amazon series ‘Dead Ringers’, created by Alice Birch.
Created by Alice Birch / Amazon / Annapurna Pictures
THE SURVIVALIST
VISUAL EFFECTS
Afterparty VFX delivered digital a matte painting + a digital fire sequence for the film "The Survivalist" starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and John Malkovich. Directed by Jon Keeyes.
Director Jon Keeyes / Yale Productions / Jon Keeyes
SEPARATION
VISUAL EFFECTS / DESIGN
Afterparty got its hands dirty delivering 255 grizzly shots for William Brent Bell’s Separation. We were lead VFX house on the movie delivering concept design, CG environments, characters and animals, digital blood and gore, and several high concept VFX sequences both realistic and fantastical.
CASE STUDY
Early Look Development
THE CRIMSON VOID
A key motif in Separation is a red, womb-like, alt version of the Brooklyn location. The actual street was scanned and constructed as a CG set. Trees were created and run through simulations to make them feel like they were pushed in a rhythmic arterial flow. The result was an eerily depiction of the home as an angry living organism.
HIT AND RUN
In a key moment, the audience is given an enormous shock when one of the main characters is suddenly run down by a car. The scene was shot in one continuous single take as the character (Mamie Gummer) walks down a city block arguing on the phone. Without cutting, she is hit by a car that then drives over her body. Afterparty created a pre-vis of the scene and was able to fully block out the action including camera move, actor timings and multiple vehicle plates. On set, the camera move data was transferred to the Techno Jib and replayed for real as a motion control path that allowed us to shoot the many assets that needed to be stitched together to create this effect. In post, CG rain and pooling blood were added to complete the horrifying effect.
Director William Brent Bell / Yale Productions / Rainmaker Films / Open Road
The Girlfriend Experience
VISUAL EFFECTS / DESIGN / EDIT FACILITY
Afterparty delivered unique digital magic on over 200 shots for the third season of ’The Girlfriend Experience’ from Executive Producer Steven Soderbergh, and Writer / Director / Creator Anja Marquardt.
CASE STUDY
USING AI / DEEPFAKE
In the series finale the main character steps into a VR world to meet a ghostly AI version of herself. We used deep learning systems and deep fake to create the digital double ensuring the most authentic AI clone possible.
THE WAREHOUSE
We produced 33 VFX shots for a sequence in an Augmented Reality sex party. To create the surreal aesthetic, all the actors were filmed in skin tight latex outfits matched to their skin tones. We retouched every suit, which included painting out all wrinkles and matching the latex to the adjacent skin.
THE BIONICS
Many of the characters wear augmented reality bionic prosthesis. The director wanted a future-tech level of AR - very real looking, but still obviously virtual. We had to devise ways to allow the actors to perform naturally with limbs that would be replaced with glass prosthesis in post. We integrated lighting and neuron-like particle systems in our bionic designs to ensure that they looked interesting and visible in the dark space. When possible, we set up limbs in front of bright, illuminated light boxes to take advantage of the beautiful internal lighting and refraction we got in the jewel-like glass prostheses.
THE V
The audience is introduced to this series through a chilling encounter in a Virtual Reality space called “The V”. The aim was to create a world that would look real and uncanny at the same time, while avoiding the usual science fiction tropes of VR with high tech user interfaces. The virtual world is clean, precise and realistic. The scene was shot on location but the set was heavily cleaned up in post.
To give the characters an uncanny digital quality, we tracked the actors' performance and replaced their actual faces with cleaned up static face textures. The effect gave the characters a subtle, unnatural quality, and the director was able to select a level of “uncanny” on a shot by shot basis.
AI CHARACTER
The series follows the creation of an AI character called EMCEE. We were tasked with creating a digital human that would increase in fidelity and humanity through the episodes. To ensure a sense of humanity she was created not with full CG, but instead by tracking pre-recorded footage of an actor and then relighting and laying in CG Elements - a marriage of a 2D and 3D approach. Houdini was the main driver behind the look on this project which allowed us to try many things with varying levels of complexity. To achieve the final look, we used a custom growth solver that connected data points attached to the face, a specialized curve system to represent neurons, and a simple but effective network to break her face up into triangles whilst still maintaining the details that make her feel human.
Director Anja Marquardt / Starz / Transactional Pictures
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC
Visual Effects
Afterparty supplied nearly all visual effects for this feature film which won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Effects included matte painting, terrain mapping and extensions and rig removal.
Electric City Entertainment / Shivhans / Directed by Matt Ross
DRUG FREE
Editorial / Visual Effects / Color Correct
Afterparty created seamless transformations to take one actor from age 10 to 18. The team analyzed a lot of progressive aging photographs, studying what happens to people’s faces as they age from late tween to late teen. We then used that analysis to manipulate the bone structure and facial characteristics of the actor in post.
The Partnership @ Drugfree.org / The Colony / DDB New York
MEDAL OF VICTORY
Visual Effects / Conform / Color Correct / Title Design
Afterparty supplied the entire post production pipeline for Medal of Victory, a comedy feature. We were tasked with digital gunfire, explosions, digital squibs, set extensions, a fantasy design sequence, greenscreen compositing, general clean up and color correction.
The Colony Media / Warehouse District Productions / Directed by Joshua Moise
NO MIND
POST VFX VR DESIGN
Afterparty created a collision for this short feature that included modeling and animating wind farms, animating broken glass and a CG surgical time lapse.
DANNY COLLINS
VISUAL EFFECTS
Afterparty was the primary VFX supplier for Danny Collins providing crowd duplication, greenscreen driving, cleanup, and signage replacement.
Inimitable Pictures / Shivhans / Directed by Dan Fogelman