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6 cgw j a n u a r y • f e b r u a r y • m a r c h 2 0 2 2 Here, CGW Chief Editor Karen Moltenbrey talks with Dan Glass (Jupiter Ascending, Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Speed Racer, V for Vendetta, Batman Begins), production visual effects supervisor on Resurrections. In addition to those proj- ects and many more, he also had served as VFX supervisor on Reloaded and Revolutions, working with The Matrix trilogy overall VFX supervisor John Gaeta, as well the video game Enter the Matrix. The Matrix Resurrections was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions. DESCRIBE THE MATRIX TODAY. The Matrix we're representing here is an upgrade on the Matrix we encountered in the trilogy. The machines have learned yet another level of nuance, one with more complexity, in order to better convince us that this is the one and true reality. It's therefore fi ting that Lana's process has evolved to one that really focuses on trying to capture natural light in real-world loca- tions. This film loo s and feels different from the fi st films — or story-relevant reasons. It's part of a continuing story, but one that is intentionally a departure visually, and I hope people will find that xciting. It is deliberately not trying to be what is most expected. One of the most daunting components was ensuring that the CG content lived up to the bar that had been elevated by the physical production. The way this film was shot, it's very rich in detail and almost more documentary in style than the earlier mov- ies. It needed to feel completely integrated. It needed to feel like it's in support of the movie that was shot. In many instances this was quite challenging, because we had to cut up or combine film d layers and fre- quently paint things out, but a completely natural sense of integration comes from that approach. The real world — confusing, because we think of our reality as the reality — is, of course, the Machine City, the sewers and tunnels, the post-apocalyptic world, which is, by nature, heavily CGI. Yet, we needed the digitally-created environments to feel as real as the reality we photographed to represent the simulation. HOW MANY VISUAL EFFECTS SHOTS ARE IN RESURRECTIONS? About 2,350. WHO WERE THE MAIN VFX VENDORS? DNeg was our main vendor. They were chiefl responsible for most of the work in the real world, our tunnels and sewers; the large CG environments of what we call the Anomaleum, which is the big chamber where Neo and Trinity are imprisoned in their pods within the Matrix; and IO, the new city occupied by those [humans] with freed minds (the new Zion). They also created the CG Synthients (machine defectors that are aligned with humans) and the Exomorphs, which are particulate-like characters. We also had to young-ify our heroes for a flash ack, which [DNeg] did, along with a chase on the roofs, a bullet train scene, and a really cool scene in an old theater involving a mirror that kind of pays homage to the fi st movie. (See "Creating Reality in an Unreal World," page 10.) Framestore delivered the end sequence for Act Three, a chase through the city streets of San Francisco on a motorcycle. Also, there's a fight cene that preceded that in the Simulatte cafe. And then the fina scene, where they go to The Analyst's house. One of Us did the key time-split scene in Trinity's workshop and one of the red pill effects of the world disintegrating. They also did the shoot-up when Morpheus is intro- duced in the office bathroom (see "Quint- essential VFX and More" on CGW.com). Rise Effects did the big fight in the actory with the Exiles, one of the shoot-outs in the of- fi e with the sprinklers going off, and all the scenes when we visit [the Exile program] Sati in her construct. Turncoat Pictures did a bunch of cleanup and tricky composite shots and greenscreens; we had an in-house crew that helped us on that as well. IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE WAS A WIDE RANGE OF WORK. Yeah. We have everything from paint and rig removals to really complex split screens with Steadicam takes. There are CG effects, aug- mentation and simulations, and large-scale CG environments, including one we built and rendered in [Epic's] Unreal. We have hero CG characters, machine creatures, vehicles, and large effects for things like the Sentinels, as well as crowds. We also used some volumetric capture with a company called Volucap for some red pill effects, where the geometry starts to The hacker Bugs is determined to help Neo again escape the Matrix.