Spirit of Vengeance: a grittier Ghost Rider

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| March 12, 2012 | 3:21 pm or 3:21 pm GMT

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from the fxguide article:

Johnny Blaze returns to rid the world of the Devil in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. This time around, famed Crank directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor helmed the stereo follow-up to the 2007 film which also stars Nicolas Cage as Blaze and his fiery alter-ego Ghost Rider. We talk to visual effects supervisor Eric Durst, visual effects producer Jenny Fulle and lead vendor Iloura.

Although in both films Ghost Rider is seen sporting a flaming skull, Spirit of Vengeance called on the titular character to be much more dirty and gritty. “In the first film there was a clean-ness about it,” says visual effects supervisor Eric Durst. “But here he has a dark face that’s been burnt. Anything around him too becomes like that, such as his bike.” Durst took that idea to a number of effects facilities to provide tests as part of the bidding process. “Iloura did a test in record time,” he says, “and they really nailed it and got the feeling of Ghost Rider – not just taking it literally for the charred skull but they also had the dark feeling of it.”

Ultimately, visual effects producer Jenny Fulle, through her Creative-Cartel production company, co-ordinated the efforts of Iloura and other vendors on 850 shots, plus the work of two stereo conversion houses – Gener8 and Legend3D. Fulle says the conversion was one of the biggest challenges conceptually. “We had to work out how to do the conversion on a 3D flaming head because of its volumetric nature,” she says. “So we came up with a hybrid pipeline with the conversion and VFX vendors. It was a 3D pipeline where we shared shots and we were able to have the VFX vendor do their matchmove and roto work, send it to the conversion vendor to do left eye/right eye and send it back with the cameras to VFX to render natively in stereo.”

The effects shots were reviewed mostly via cineSync sessions, relying on 5thKind to manage assets and a tailored FileMaker Pro database to manage the shots from companies in LA to Melbourne. Fulle says, “it’s kind of business as usual for us dealing with companies around the world so that was very manageable. Shooting in up-and-coming locations in Romania and Turkey can be a little challenging because they take a lot more planning – you can’t just get a crane sent out – but you have to improvise and that’s what we’re able to do.”

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Categories:

• Making Of
• Visual Effects

Tags:

• eric durst
• ghost rider: spirit of vengeance
• iloura
• jenny fulle