After years of development and a production, The Batman went onto the big screen in March and was interrupted by a global Pandemic. The Dark Knight went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year so far, despite the fact that it didn't have enough star power.
A talented visual effects team spread across multiple studios helped bring the film's action to the screen. Two-time Oscar nominee and supervisor of the celebrated VFX studio Wētā FX, Anders Langlands, was among them.
Digital Trends spoke to Langlands about his team's work on the film and how they helped bring the vision of the Dark Knight to the screen.
The Batman doesn't feel like a typical superhero film. What were the visual reference points you were given for the film?
Matt likes to keep things naturalistic in his photography. The directives were to try not to go too crazy with the story. Batman is a good fit for that style. The film is a love letter to old crime thrillers like The French Connection, the Paranoia trilogy, and All The President's Men, according to Matt. There are a lot of similarities between the movies and the photos that the director of photography made. It was interesting to combine what we were doing with stuff from way before the era of visual effects really kicked off.
How many shots did your team take?
We did about 320 shots. It is not a huge chunk or a tiny one. The city hall environment where the Mayor's memorial sequence takes place and the bats near the end were fun to do. We did a lot of fight work early on, like the first fight on the train platform, and also when he was in the Iceberg Lounge. The highway chase was the most complex sequence we worked on. It was a lot of fun.
What went into that chase sequence? I've been describing it as "Fury Road in the dark" due to how crazy the scene is.
That is a really good description! They set out to shoot everything for that scene. Even in shots where they knew we would be replacing most of it, they still went out and shot a version of it. That is a great reference for us. We did a lot of post-visualization work on it, with rough animation on the film footage.
We needed to make the sequence of events and the cause-and-effect of all of the action more understandable for the audience while they were still shooting. We are always inside the action and looking in the camera. It makes it more difficult to understand what is happening because of that.
When Penguin kicks off that sequence, the truck behind him hydroplanes kicks off a chain reaction of events that ends with a huge explosion. There are a lot of fully digital shots and heavily augmented shots in there. We replaced some vehicles with other ones that made more sense and also to track more clearly the sequence of events.
I assume you can destroy highways.
Exactly. We were able to help Matt tell the story and make sure the audience understood what was happening because a lot of the shots in that part of the scene were fully digital. To have Batman ride into danger, avoid all of this stuff going on, and for it to feel like he's nearly out of control, but he's such a skilled driver, is an interesting balance to find.
You can't have Batman looking like a villain.
Right! Dennis Yoo, our animation supervisor, and his team did a lot of work on it, refining the action to find that really fine line he needs to walk. He has to be in control of the situation and not cause it. A lot of work was done to find the right spot for all of those things.
You mentioned that you were working on some fight scenes. What kind of visual effects were used in those scenes?
The fight scenes should feel like you are in a MMA bout, rather than watching a fight scene in a movie. It meant less cuts for him. In a typical fight scene, it is a quick series of cuts, cuts, cuts and shaky-CAM everywhere. For The Batman, we hold the camera steady for longer so you can see the fight. You can see what Batman is doing and how good he is. If you don't use a lot of cuts in a fight scene, you can see that the people aren't actually hitting each other. We needed to help make those hits feel quick.
A lot of re-timing is what we do in that area. We make the punch quicker if someone is holding back and 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 888-270-6611 It involves cutting out different parts of people's bodies and bringing a head to connect with a fist, so when someone gets punched, their head gets thrown back quicker and then rebound a little bit. There is a lot of animation on top of the shots in order to make it feel like it is hitting hard.
The last time I talked to you was about Justice League. Even if it uses the same character, that was a different film than The Batman. Did you know anything about The Batman?
Not really. They are different in their take on the character. Warner Brothers and DC are exploring the characters with different directors and different types of films, which is cool.
It's a hallmark of every Batman movie that at some point, there are a bunch of bats. The big moment in the film was created by the bats.
We have a lot of practice doing creatures and those kinds of things, and we are quite good at it.
The studio was created for that.
It is still always interesting. We used the sound cue and the light from the bike's headlight to set the bats off in the initial Batcave shot. We looked at a lot of reference for bat colonies to get a sense of their motion, and then the animation team went to work to generate that motion. The scene has a nice wave effect as the bike comes in and the bats start getting a bit agitated. When they fly down, it creates a beautiful sweep that leads into the next shot. Those things are fun.
What scene were you most excited to see when the film was released?
It would be the chase. That was the most difficult scene we did because of its complexity. One of the things that makes it different is that every job within it is different, and it had a unique set of challenges we had to solve to make it work. When you have the Batcave with Alfred and Bruce talking to each other and a blue screen behind them, we just replace the background. That is fairly simple. The chase was so complex because every shot is different and there are different vehicles. It was a lot of hard work, and we put a lot into it, and we were all very happy with how it turned out.
The Batman will premiere on the Max streaming service on April 18 and will air on April 23.
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