Pan's Labyrinth - Physical and Digital Special Effects

Pan's Labyrinth has long been one of my favorite films. Premiering in 2006 by director Guillermo Del Toro (who also directed Hellboy and Pacific Rim), Pan's Labyrinth is a beautiful combination of makeup and physical special effects blended with computer effects.

Considering Del Toro has a background in special effects makeup, it's no surprise that he tends to want all effects to be present in the set. While shooting his latest film, Crimson Peak, Del Toro remarked that having a set built, instead of green screen, allowed the actors to give better performances and the final product to have a more lifelike quality.

Some great scenes where the digital effects really bring the fantasy to life include a scene at the beginning where a stick bug emerges from a broken statue, the stones walls of the Labyrinth opening up for the main character as she makes her way through the maze, and a scene in a courtroom of magical people. Another effect that is remarkable is that for the faun, his costume was built, but many aspects of the human anatomy don't mesh with a faun's, so the team had to create green screen wraps for certain body parts and they would fix it in post, creating a creature that looks completely fantastical.

Pan's Labyrinth will always be a favorite of mine and Del Toro will always be one of my favorite directors. His monster's and dark fairy tales are exactly what I want to explore further, and I can not wait to see what he has planned.

Pan's Labyrinth and Special Effects



One of my favorite scenes:

The Book of Life

Now here's an animated movie that's appropriate for this upcoming Halloween. I watched The Book of Life last year and it was stunning! Aside from the concept, because this is a graphics and animations class, what immediately caught my attention was the decision to make all the characters look like wooden marionettes. It gave a whole other layer of fantasy and really the interesting choice in texture, oddly enough, gave them more life.

The movie is all about big, bold colors and intense lighting. There is nary a simple scene, in fact, what is meant to be the underworld is even brighter and more colorful than the land of the living.

Recreating the World for Pacific Rim

I recently sat down to watch the 2013 film Pacific Rim. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, this movie follows the journey of small team of individuals as they attempt to stop Kaijus, colossal aliens, from terrorizing mankind. In order to combat these giant beasts, the humans built Jaegers, giant robots that are piloted by people. Although these robots are slowly being phased out by the government in favor of a protective wall around the Kaijus' portal, four a chosen to fend off the monsters until the wall is complete. Eventually, after some giant battles, the Jaegers use a bomb, blow up the portal, and save the day!

Although I thought plot of Pacific Rim was particularly strong for a science fiction movie, what really impressed me were the special effects. In my search to find out the techniques used for the film, I came across the above video. In particular, this video focuses on the special effects used in the climatic battle scene between a Kaijus and a Jaeger. Because these behemoths are the size of skyscrapers, the visual effects team had to recreate the entire world were this fight takes place, which is suppose to be Hong Kong. It was particularly eye-opening to hear of all the little details that had to be added to create a realistic scene, such as rain bouncing of the monsters and dust coming out from collapsed buildings. Although much of the battle sequence relies on computer-generated graphics, it was also interesting to see how the visual effects team used scaled down versions of buildings for several shots. Unfortunately, although I would like to see a sequel to Pacific Rim, that seems unlikely to happen given its financial disaster at the box office.

Pans Labyrinth - Special Effects

Pans Labyrinth is a popular movie that came out in 2006. This movie is filled with special effects. I watched a few videos on how they made this movie and I found it very interesting. To create the different creatures they would combine using traditional makeup effects and digital effects. For example they would do some sort of crazy makeup up to a mans face to make it distorted but then after they shot it they would digitally edit the face on the computer using special effects to get exactly wanted they wanted.

They would also use green screens to get the effects they needed. For example, there is a creature that has different legs then human legs. They put a man in a costume but then to edit the legs they needed they would put green fabric around his legs. They could then later edit out his original legs and replace it with the new ones.

Guillermo Del Toro was the writer and director of this movie and I thought his vision of what these characters should look like came across very well. I posted a video below that gives a good description of what the special effects and makeup team had to do to make these different creatures in the film come to life.

El Laberinto del Fauno

Talking about Guillermo del Toro in class today reminded me of one of my favorite films, El Laberinto del Fauno. If you haven't seen this film, I highly recommend it because visually, it is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. It also has a unique story that is propelled by the visual effects. The movie tells the story of a young girl who tries to escape Facist Spain through her imagination. She meets all sorts of different creatures and explores a fantasy world she has created. Guillermo del Toro is known for creating amazing worlds in his films that have a unique look.

He used the award-winning company CafeFX to help him create the world of El Laberinto del Fauno. CafeFX specializes in visual effects and has worked on many movies including Sin City, Alice in Wonderland, and 2012. El Laberinto del Fauno sticks out in my mind when I think of movies I have seen with great visual effects. I found an interesting article that talks about CafeFX involvement in the film. One thing that stuck out to me in the article is a quote from CafeFX Visual Effects Supervisor Everett Burrell about Guillermo del Toro's attitude towards the film. "When considering the fine line that production needed to take between realism, harsh imagery and child like fantasy, Burrell recounts that 'Guillermo always said this is a European film- we can do the whatever we want

, we ever have no MPAA, we don’t have to deal with that – so we just went for it. And he is a big horror fan and I have worked on every zombie movie you name it! Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead the remake…I have been through the horror gambit, he really respected that and I really respected that about him.'" It's interesting to think about censorship when it comes to visual effects but I will save that for another blog post.

The article also talks about one of the more graphic scenes of the movie and how it was created. The scene has a man tending to a large facial wound on his own face sewing it up. CafeFX added much of the wound later on in post-production. In my opinion it is very realistic and I'll admit, I had to turn away when watching it for the first time.

I also found a video that shows some of the visual effects in the film so you can get a better idea if you haven't seen it.

And here is a video that details the making fo the various creatures in the film.