Switch VFX, a Toronto-based visual effects
studio, recently completed work on LAND OF THE DEAD, the
latest installment in legendary filmmaker George A.
Romero’s DEAD horror franchise.
Switch VFX was responsible for 155 of the film’s more
than 300 shots. Led by visual effects supervisor Jon
Campfens, Switch VFX created complex zombie
decapitations, digital gore, matte paintings and
greenscreen composites. The work was awarded to Switch
VFX by Romero and producer Peter Grunwald, both of whom
had worked with Campfens earlier on BRUISER. Switch VFX
began production in April for what had been intended as
a Halloween release. However, when the film’s release
date was moved up to late June, Switch VFX put an
accelerated production timeline into place for the
compressed six-week schedule.
Campfens, Switch VFX visual effects producer Pete
Denomme and their team of digital artists worked closely
with Romero and Grunwald, along with Universal’s visual
effects producer Lynn Gephart and editor Michael Doherty
to attain horrific realism. Discreet Flame, Alias Maya,
Adobe After Effects and eyeon Digital Fusion figured
prominently in the effects work.
One of most dramatic and challenging visual effects
sequences takes place early in the film, when a volley
of gun blasts decapitates a zombie’s head. Big Daddy,
the film’s main zombie character, tries unsuccessfully
to pull the other zombie away from the hail of bullets
and ends up holding just a severed head as the body
drops to the ground.
 |
|
Disembodied
zombie
head. |
The
original plan was to shoot the actors on greenscreen
with a prosthetic head and a prosthetic body and
composite all the elements onto a clean background.
During the editing, though, the best performance and
shot was discovered to be the live-action take of the
real actors. Switch VFX decided to use this footage as
their primary source material and charged senior digital
artist Gudrun Heinze with the task of creating a very
visceral effect.
Heinze, working on a Discreet Flame, recalled the
stages of the two consecutive shots. “I made an
appropriate clean background plate without the
foreground zombies, then added effects — breaking glass
(a shot element) and stock footage bullet hits and puffs
of smoke on the wall — and tracked the plate to the
original move. I then rotoscoped the two foreground
characters so that they could be placed over the newly
created background and so that the zombie body could
fall independently from the decapitated head.
“This necessitated separate mattes for the zombie
head and the zombie body. I hand-tracked a specifically
shot greenscreen element of neck viscera to the flailing
zombie. This element also provided me with fleshy bullet
holes that I revealed over time across the neck to
reflect the gunshot wounds that would separate the
zombie head from its body. I also added specifically
timed blood spurts to match the bullet wounds, along
with their respective shadows. Finally, I animated
interactive bloodspots on the zombie's clothing and then
animated the body to fall away from the head.”
 |
|
Man
stomps on zombie head (left). Zombie shot in the
head in the
arena. |
Switch VFX (www.switchvfx.com) is a Toronto-based
visual effects studio specializing in the production of
photorealistic digital visual effects and CG character
creation for feature films and television. Switch VFX
was founded in 2004 by Campfens, exec producer Denomme
and finance and business affairs exec Laurie
Thompson.
