It takes more than a village to make a movie. It often takes a global network of visual effects artists working alongside the on-set actors, crew, and filmmakers. Especially if you’re attempting to pull off something as heartbreaking and realistic as the modified animal CG characters in James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.”
READ MORE: “The Creator” Oscar-Nominated Visual Effects Team: “We Were Putting On The Parachute As We Fell”
“Vol. 3” earned this particular franchise its third Oscar nomination in the Visual Effect category. It hasn’t won yet (“Interstellar” and “Blade Runner 2049” took the prizes previously), but the movie’s nominated Visual Effects Supervisors – Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams and Theo Bialek – hope the third time’s the charm. And they’ve got a shot. Especially if they can overcome another Disney release, “The Creator,” and the legendary big green monster himself, “Godzilla Minus One.”
The quartet jumped on Zoom with The Playlist earlier this month to discuss why they think their peers recognized their work, the specific and lengthy contributions of each of their teams to the production, why Gunn’s “Guardians” movies have a track record of such impressive effects and much, much more.
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The Playlist: Congratulations everybody. I know that this is Theo and Alexis’ first Oscar nomination. I’m curious, what was you guy’s response, and then for Stephane and Guy, was it just like, same old, same old, just another Oscar now?
Stephane Ceretti: I’ll start. It’s still exciting. Heart is still beating and I was actually driving to the studios by myself as it was [being announced]. So I had my phone in front of me because I had to be here in time. And I was like, “Oh, good.” You never know. It’s still exciting. It never gets old, honestly.
Alexis Wajsbrot: For me, as you said, it was my first time, so it’s ultra super exciting. I’m over the moon by that. I didn’t watch when they announced it, I was actually trapped for some reason. I think it’s because I do really care. I think I do really care for the work that we all did on that show and how much energy and love we spent to try to make this picture as good as it can be and try to convey all the emotion we wanted to convey. So, I really care and I really love the team we’ve been working with and for all of that, I was so much into trying to get one. And so I’m really, really happy, over the moon.
The Playlist: How about the rest of you?
Theo Bialek: Yeah, I think I was up at 5:00 in the morning because I have a new baby, but I was emptying the dishwasher and had it on the little screen by the side. And I couldn’t watch it while it was happening. So, I guess I also was a little bit nervous. I was putting away the silverware and I just dropped the silverware when they announced it, so it was exciting. But I mean, a lot of pressure because it’s just like, you’re representing over a thousand artists and production staff across, not just the vendors that we represent, but all the vendors on the show. And it’s just an enormous amount of collaboration and work that it takes for all the people working in the film and then their families and everything. So we just want to make sure we represent the best we can. It’s definitely an honor.
The Playlist: Many of the Marvel movies have had fantastic and beautiful special effects, but there’s been always something about James Gunn’s “Guardians” movies where they’ve just been a little bit more special and I don’t always know what the reason why is. Maybe it’s because it’s set more in outer space and there are more fantastical things you can do in some ways. But you are four visual effects supervisors on big gigantic teams. What is the thread that made the work so good on these films, and especially this one?
Stephane Ceretti: I work with James because I work at a studio and I think there are two reasons. I think the main reason is that we have CG characters that are very well fleshed out in terms of the script and are really part of the story and the emphasis is really pushed on that from the get-go, from everybody on the production. And it starts with James and the way he writes the script and the way he writes the characters. And I think from the first film onwards, there was so much emphasis put on, “They need to look real. We don’t want Bugs Bunny in the middle of the Avengers.” That was what James told me on the first film, on the first day. So, it’s so important for us that we all focus so much on these characters and make them real. And because they’re written so well, because the acting of these characters is so good from our actors, Bradley [Cooper] and Vin [Diesel] and everybody else that we have in this film. The emphasis is really pushed on that. And then the universe that James is creating, it’s got a very specific visual style and that goes very well with those stories. And he surrounds himself with amazing production designers and costume people and stunts and all. Everybody’s really top-notch on this production. So for us in visual effects, it helps tremendously to have that attention on the visuals. And the fact that James is so focused on the story and on the way he wants to represent it on screen because he’s the writer and the director, is really good for us. And also James has full control of the way he wants to do things and the way he wants to write his stories. And for us, it makes things very straightforward in a way. Not easy, but straightforward because things don’t change all the time. What James says is what needs to happen. There are hundreds of discussions about everything, but at least he’s got such a great handle on the film itself and how he wants it to look and feel and sound and everything. For us, visual affects people, it’s much more stable as a cut, as a direction, as a look. There’s not a lot of thinking and figuring it out later going on.
Alexis Wajsbrot: That makes a huge difference for us. The FX studio working on it. It’s probably one of the biggest differences. James Gunn knows his movie so well and he knows especially the story so well what he wanted to tell. But the movie didn’t evolve that much during filming. So what that means is for us, when a shot is turned over, we know we will keep making it better and better and better through the pollution rather than changing our mind going left and then, “Oh, finally going right, going center, going back, right?” No, we are going in a straight line, keep progressing. And so I think on this movie we have time to maybe put the extra five, 10% of detail that’s on some of the [renders].
The Playlist: Excuse my ignorance here, but you all have visual supervisor credit. On this project, did each of you have a segment or a certain number of parts of the film your company’s working on or you were working on? Or did everybody contribute to everything?
Guy Williams: The thing I’d say is Steph’s job is to be the center of everything and to figure out the best way to break it up. It’s too much work for any one place to do proper service too. So, you know that you’re going to take this piece over here and this piece over here and this piece over here, and then it allows you to have this entire full-size team focused just on polishing this one part and refining it and building upon it so that you get these really complex results all the way across this very diverse, very complex movie. For us, we got a little bit of work everywhere in the movie. We did the Abilisk fight, we did all the stuff with the giant red spaceship called the Arete on the outside and the inside of it. We did the big third-act battle where the Guardians are fighting the High Evolutionary and the Arete gets destroyed. We also did the big hallway fight with the Guardians, the big one. All these pieces go to different companies trying to figure out how to balance that load out, and that was our slice of the pie if you will.
The Playlist: Stephane or Theo?
Stephane Ceretti: Yeah, I’m the visual effects supervisor for the film. So, I work at Marvel on the film and I’m on set with James all the time. And I am the air traffic control in a way, of everything that happens in the film. So, initially, with my producer Susan Pickett, we make a plan. We look at the script, break it down, and see which companies are going to be the best for different parts of the movie. So for example, Theo, and Theo can talk about it. They were more in charge of the OrgoCorp, that weird meat planet, and a lot of the stuff that was happening in Counter-Earth as well. And then Alexi, they can talk about it too, I don’t want to go into detail, but they were more into the Rocket flashback stories. So Theo, if you want to talk about your-
Theo Bialek: Yeah. So a lot of sequences again, spread out throughout the movie, but a particular note would be the OrgoCorp, the exterior, and the interior. That’s an organic space station. We also built the Bowie, but as was in a lot of our shots, but we did share that asset with the other vendors as well. So sometimes Guy will take the ship and they’ll make adjustments for their particular sequence. They might have special needs that we didn’t build for in ours, but also I think Steph talked about a little bit, would’ve been when Counter-Earth is exploding or self-destructing. There’s a fight sequence between the War Pig and Gamora and then Warlock because he’s flying around and his mother ship explodes. And then also when Gamora is taking Bowie off and crash landing on Counter-Earth crashes into a forest and a stream, that type of thing. So, those are pretty difficult sequences as well.
The Playlist: What about you Alexi?
Alexis Wajsbrot: But yeah, I think at first we were involved the same as WETA and Sony in sequences around the movie. We were involved in the opening sequence of the movie where Adam Warlock and the Guardians are fighting. We were involved on what we call the stampede sequence at the very end where Rocket is saving all the animals in the cages and then they just run away and there’s a little fight between the Guardians and the High Evolutionary. We were also involved on the final dance where everyone dances in Knowhere. But I think the sequence we worked on the most and we had the most amount of shots were definitely the flashbacks. So, all the story between Rocket, Lylla, Teefs, Floor, which was all of this emotion and where the heart of the movie is. So there was a lot of pressure to just make sure that we get them right and we tell the right story and we get the right level of emotion basically.
Stephane Ceretti: On that, we have three of our big main vendors here, but we had 12 vendors on the film and they were everywhere in the world. We have some people in England, some people in Germany, some people in Montreal. We have other French stores, one in Vancouver, and one in Montreal, we did Knowhere and Cosmo the Dog. I mean we have people everywhere in the world. And we’re only the very small tip of a huge iceberg in this call here. It’s just a lot of people and lots of companies everywhere.
The Playlist: There are 10 films that make the Visual Effects category Bake-off. What do you think your peers saw in the work that you guys did? Why did they vote for you? Was it the scope of the work? Was there something individual about it you think that was impressive to them?
Stephane Ceretti: What did you guys hear about the Bake-off?
The Playlist: What was the scuttlebutt?
Theo Bialek: Yeah, it was a combination of things, but I think the emotional resonance that you get between a Rocket and the Otter character is particularly of note. It’s not often that you get people crying at a Marvel film with fictional characters, which was pretty standard every time it was screened with our crew. But I think also weighing into it is, the scope of the film is huge. All the “Guardian” films, it’s just over the top. Everything that’s happening, all the environments and the CG characters, but also to pull a film off like that, but to keep the quality across all of those shots at a minimum, at a level that it was at, that’s technically a really hard thing to pull off, with all the different vendors and sharing all the assets. So I think all those things are recognized.
The Playlist: My quick last question for you is, I’m going to assume that Stephane and Guy have already gone to the Oscars before in person. What’s your advice to Theo and Alexis for the show?
Guy Williams: Don’t drink too much before the show because it’s five hours long and you don’t get to leave. Take a muesli bar and hide it in your coat.
The Playlist: That’s very good advice.
Stephane Ceretti: Yeah, it is.
“Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” is available on digital download services and on Disney+