Earlier this week on Beyond The Trailer, Bryon Hirota, VFX Supervisor at Scanline, and John “DJ” Desjardin, VFX Supervisor at Warner Bros., spoke with Grace Randolph about their past work on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, as well as a little on what’s to come with Justice League.
When asked about an update on the Justice League trailer, DJ, who has been working with Zack Snyder since Watchmen, jested that we already have a trailer with the 2016 Comic-Con footage. He goes on to explain that while they do a lot of VFX work throughout production, the bulk of the work is done in post-production:
“Once we’re done shooting, the footage and the edit starts to go to the trailer people, the trailer editor, and they start to put together versions of the trailer, and Zack kind of looks at those and says, kind of guides that process, and eventually that filters down to our department and they say ‘here are the shots we want in the [trailer], can we have these done.’ And sometimes we’re already in production on them, sometimes not, Bryan can attest, there’s basically an acceleration that has to happen to get those things done. But that is a long process, you know. It’s not like anybody is trying to hold back and not deliver a trailer, we’re just trying to deliver a cool trailer that shows exactly what Zack and the studio wants to show.”
As much criticism as Snyder gets for his films and filmmaking, no one can fault the man for his work ethic. He is involved with almost all aspects of the filmmaking process, from shooting, to editing, to VFX and more so that everything looks exactly as he wants them to. One has to imagine that seeing Snyder work on BvS, and Justice League made Affleck question whether he could do all that work AND write and star in The Batman, possibly causing him to step down as director.
Another interesting tidbit in the interview was that along with Cyborg (who is almost 100% CGI), Aquaman and the Flash are the most CG intensive characters in Justice League. The Flash makes sense, seeing as every time he uses his powers will require CG elements, but Aquaman was surprising to me. Except in scenes that have him underwater, I would’ve expected him to need any more CGI than Wonder Woman or Superman, which makes me wonder if we will be seeing Atlantis in the film.
DJ also mentioned that their work on Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen, another fully CGI character, taught them a lot in how they would handle Cyborg in the film.
The full interview can be viewed below:
Justice League opens on November 17th, 2017.
