Picture Credits: Framestore /
The climbing sequences in Apex are nothing but impressive. Baltasar Kormákur’s ‘90s throwback thriller opens with a bang by starting with a failed climb up the legendary Troll Wall in Norway. The tangible results are no small part due to Framestore’s VFX supervisor, Gavin McKenzie, who oversaw the crafting of the big opening and final climb in Apex.
McKenzie has 16 years of experience in the visual effects business. Similar to Everest, the Framestore team brings an authenticity to the climbing sequences in Apex. Recently, McKenzie spoke with What’s On Netflix about creating the big VFX scenes in Apex.
Cinematographer Lawrence Sher was really impressed by the VFX work done here. The digital effects came together with the practical elements seamlessly, to his eye.
That was always our objective. We knew it was going to be a challenging movie to do because the VFX I like to do is the kind the audience doesn’t realize is there. That’s challenging when you’re doing a movie with photoreal magic or creatures because it’s difficult to hide behind that. But I always strive to have everything grounded in reality, and it was really refreshing to do a movie like this, which was all based in a real-life scenario. We always wanted the audience to feel trapped within the environment.
With the Troll Wall sequence at the beginning of the movie, the cast were never there. Lawrence and [VFX supervisor] Enrik Pavdeja shot some really amazing references for us. They did quite a few helicopter shots, which were intended for wide establishing shots. I know they used a few in the movie, but it was super helpful for us to base our environment on.
The Troll Wall — it is one of a kind. How do you recreate it?
When we were first talking with Enrik about the movie, was that no one ever climbs it in the winter because, one, it’s a really dangerous thing to climb to begin with. Two, no one wants to climb it in the winter. But the movie takes place in the winter, so it’s really exaggerating the danger. Seeing it with all the beautiful snow everywhere and the landscape around it really sells the danger of the movie.
Visualizing the mountain was really interesting because in all the photography, and even just reference pictures of it, it’s enormous. It’s very difficult to establish how big it is. We found some really good reference videos of people climbing and documenting their climbs. You really come to grips with, oh my God, they’re this tiny little thing on the mountain.
The establishing shot, which is a helicopter shot where we’re pushing toward the mountain, we had to put the people on there in CG. Obviously, the climbers were not there. But we had to make them a little bit bigger because if they were their real scale, you would never see them because the mountain is so enormous. So the mountain itself was a constant challenge to work with because we always wanted to show the steepness, and we really wanted the audience to have a sense of vertigo throughout.
There is so much depth that you had to create so many different directions.
Definitely. It was interesting because they shot all the performances on a set piece that was about 20 to 30 meters tall. So it was a big one, but obviously the Troll Wall is over a thousand meters tall. Getting the right perspective was important. They did a great job on the shoot making sure that the perspective down the wall was as steep as possible.
But as soon as we were adding an extra thousand meters, or even 600 meters, to the base of it, we were often having to tilt the perspective of our CG camera a little bit to give a more impossible steepness down. Because although the Troll Wall is very steep, it does have a gradual slope toward the floor. So when you look down it, the floor is farther away from the viewer.
So we had to tilt the camera to make sure you really felt the base of the wall was right below them. As soon as we started doing that, everyone working on it was like, “Oh, I can’t look at this anymore because it’s too steep.” But that’s exactly what we wanted.
How did you want to create that sense of vertigo?
Free Solo was a movie that we watched a lot to get that feeling of being on the wall with them. The challenge of shooting a movie like this is that you don’t want the camera positions to take you away from the feeling that you’re climbing with these people. They did a great job of having the cameras close to the cast, which gave you a sense of claustrophobia, but you felt like you were climbing the wall with them rather than observing people climbing the wall, if that makes sense.
What about handling digital light and snow in a sequence like the Troll Wall?
It was probably one of the most technically challenging sequences because we had all these effects simulations of blizzards wrapping around the characters. Because the sequence takes place at night or very early dawn, they had headlamps. So, all of the CG around them needed to be illuminated by our CG lights. We had to body-track everyone and line up the headlamps, then illuminate everything with a light source that mimicked the one used on set.
But we didn’t want the light to spread too far and illuminate too much of the surroundings. We wanted just the right cone of light to reveal the danger a little more. It was nice seeing all the scratchy snow particles flying through the beam of light.
Like you said earlier, you want the effects to be as invisible as possible, especially for a grounded thriller like this. When does your eye know, okay, we’ve reached invisibility?
Well, it’s a challenging question because for some people and VFX supervisors, they would almost say, “Nothing’s ever finished,” like any artist. But for me, I love grounding things in reference and reality. Sometimes it helps to get another supervisor or artist from another show at Framestore to come and have a look at the shots we’re doing with no context for the movie and ask, “What do you think?” Fresh eyes are a good way of -checking what you’re looking at.
Especially with something that’s supposed to feel real, it’s difficult to hide visual effects that aren’t hitting the mark or where the lighting is slightly off. Or when you’re trying to push something too creatively and it starts moving away from reality, that’s when you get into the uncanny valley and realize you’ve pushed it too far.
So you’re always thinking, okay, I’ve got my extension and the lighting in the plate they shot is in this position that doesn’t make the rest of the mountain look nice, but I can’t put another sun in there because there aren’t two suns. Your brain instantly goes, that just looks wrong. So you’re always trying to find an interesting way to complement the photography while also making the environment sing.
I imagine VFX supervisors are horrified even hearing the words “uncanny valley.” Say for the final climb, how do you – again – stay invisible without falling into unbelievability?
It’s about not pushing the creativity too far away from something that needs to remain grounded in truth. When we were doing any of the digi-doubles. We had a great stunt team on the shoot. They did amazing stunt performances and a lot of wire work, but there were some things they simply couldn’t do because they’re impossible, and that’s where we stepped in. It was great to use as many of their stunt performances as reference as possible, or even regular climbing footage.
We also found ourselves searching YouTube and the internet for videos of climbers falling off mountains and studying footage where people were caught by their ropes. Thankfully, there’s not much footage of someone completely falling. It was really interesting diving into what happens when a rope breaks or someone has to get caught by their partner.
For the final climb, Charlize and Taron both did quite a bit of climbing, though Taron was supported on his rope. Charlize did an amazing amount of climbing herself, either on the set or on location. I think it really drove home that she was genuinely doing this. We wanted it to feel believable. It was mainly about enhancing the shots with the best-looking environment possible, but never to the point where it distracted you from what she was doing.
Digital doubles have come such a long way. I’m sure you remember the early 2000s, when a lot of them didn’t always look so great. What’s been the progress to get to this point of realism in digital doubles?
It comes down to experience within a company that has made a lot of assets and creatures and understands where the detail is really needed most, as well as understanding the physics of how a character needs to move. You can make the most perfect representation of a character, but if it moves badly, the illusion is broken. And vice versa, too. You could animate something perfectly, but if it doesn’t look right, it still won’t work.
It’s about finding the right balance of artists who really understand the process they need to follow, but communication between all of them is really important too. You don’t want to go overboard modeling a crease under the eye if you’re never going to be close enough to see it. It’s about maximizing the detail in the places where it’s most needed.
So you can build an asset with a great level of detail and then take it further with really good cloth simulation work. Again, you want that grounded in reference and reality because we all instinctively know what a jacket looks like when it blows in the wind. It’s not like we’ve formally studied it, but by observing people our entire lives, we understand what feels right. Replicating nature and people in CG is really hard because everyone is unknowingly a critic.
You instinctively know what feels right and what doesn’t. I always worry when you’re pushed to do something that doesn’t obey real forces like gravity, or when you move too far away from something that could really happen, because it becomes difficult to sell. So if you need to do that, I like to suggest ways to justify it physically. If we need someone to change direction while they’re falling, maybe we can add a piece of rock that redirects them rather than just having them suddenly move from one place to another for no reason.
Baltasar, especially after his experience directing Everest, how’s his eye for CG in climbing sequences?
Framestore did Everest with Balt, so we were lucky to have worked with him before, particularly with snow. There were a few times during reviews where it became clear that Balt, being Icelandic, really knows snow incredibly well. Apparently there are so many different names for snow because it behaves in so many different ways. So, it was a lovely challenge making snow that Balt was happy with because if we were making him happy, we knew we’d nailed it.
