The Weasel’s Tale

"Ten years after the Oscar, the same vfx heads returned"

THE WEASEL'S TALE

We are proud for being called one more time by Juan José Campanella to support his narrative and his vision through visual effects.

We've designed from scratch a very important key scene in the film,
a whole pool play sequence unnoticed by common audience where all the balls in the pool table where cg animated and integrated into the live action shots.

Also we've designed a car crash sequence mixing real car with another one full computer generated (cgi). In addition we've generated camera vfx transitions (including a oner-shot), muzzle flashes, cg weasel integration among other vfx to improve the production value in every scene.

More than 200 vfx shots!
We are glad to have contributed to the film storytelling one more time.

The pool scene was the most complex scene (...), the most difficult sequence of all the movies I made".
Juan José Campanella

VFX MAKING OF

Visual effects breakdown reel (how-to) of the vfx we have done in this film production. We're showing you a lot of vfx features that weren't told in the official film making of to keep the magic alive!...

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THE VFX POOL-Scene !

Featuring CGI applied to free camera moves along 6 minutes sequence!

This sequence took 3 month of planning including pool play design, acting and vfx design accordingly.
It was considered to make a oner shot (as we are used to) but the long acting dialogues and the pool play at the same time was pretty hard to achieve even having already considered the vfx design to be a oner shot but!... at the end of the movie, we've finally made a mini oner-shot were the hand-held camera goes over a crane going out through the window glass to continue seamlessly on a drone shot until end titles.

To help the actors to do their game performance, we've placed 3 types of markers on the pool wool surface. One type for the cg balls position (which were numbered to maintain the game order). Another type for the "aiming" direction of the ball shot. And the last one to stop the pool stick after hitting the ball. To help actors to keep continuity in every ball shot, their performances were guided by laser point that were digitally removed later.

Apart of the lens distortion, hdri adquisition, matchmoving, lighting and look dev, the main challenge was the animation since we must to create a system rig fo the balls rotation to achieve the slipped effect on the green wool among other things.

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THE CAR CRASH-Scene !

Featuring Full cg car crashing into camera!

Having the attention and the trust of Campanella is how we've made this money-shot possible!

After showing a proper vfx design and planning to the director, we've got the green light. The planning was based in an animatic virtually showing the location with topographic survey and technical information. Later camera department and stunt drivers made exactly what was designed by Rodrigo Tomasso (who also made the on-set supervision, animation and final compositing of this vfx shot). We've worked in the same way we did in the oner-shot of previous Campanella's film "The Secret in their Eyes".

We asked the stunt driver to drift the car far away from camera (for the crew safety) and then we switched to the cg version of the car (after the real one aim and blind the camera).