A woman crosses a busy street at night. Cars pass noisily. A tram makes its journey. Behind her we see flickering flying buttresses, a cinema marquee and imposing neon signs. It rained early; the pavement is still wet. It’s Mexico City in the early 1970s.
This is a scene from “Roma” (2018), Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white drama based on the life of the housekeeper who helped raise him. Less obviously it’s also a dazzling display of visual effects.
The huge movie theater is made up entirely of computer generated imagery, or CGI. The same goes for the tram and many of the other vehicles, as well as most buildings, signs, facades, lights and pedestrians. Even the reflections in the puddles were created on the computer. Designed to be unobtrusive and compelling, Aaron Weintraub, director of creative operations at visual effects studio MPC, describes it as “one of our signature shots.”
When most people think of visual effects, or VFX, what comes to mind is fantasy, science fiction, and summer blockbusters. But visual effects studios like MPC estimate that about half of the work they produce is made to be invisible—sophisticated visual effects that filmmakers hope the viewer will never realize is an effect.
Robert Grasmere, visual effects supervisor at Temprimental, a boutique effects studio, takes pride in his work going unnoticed. “Almost every movie I’ve worked on, my friends and family watch it and then tell me, ‘You didn’t do anything; there were no effects in that movie,’” he said. “I love that”.
“Everyone tends to underestimate the amount of invisible effects that go into a film,” said Raoul Bolognini, CEO of Temprimental. “This work takes months and months and costs thousands of thousands of dollars.”
In “The Alley of Lost Souls,” Guillermo Del Toro’s moody 2021 noir, Stanton Carlisle, the con man played by Bradley Cooper, returns to his hotel room to find carnival performers waiting for him. As originally filmed, Toni Collette greets him with a quip. But in the finished film, she says nothing—a change achieved by cutting the audio and digitally replacing the actress’s mouth.
These effects give filmmakers a level of control that borders on perfectionism.
“Maybe someone’s hair was slightly out of place and we have to go in and replace it,” said Luke Groves, senior vice president at MPC. “On the one hand, it’s like, what does it matter? Nobody will know. But at the end of the day, it’s these little things that can make a movie that much better.”
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