In 2024, Joao Sita broke down Framestore’s involvement in the Fallout series. He subsequently contributed to Deadpool & Wolverine.
With 25 years at Framestore, Martin Macrae has played a crucial role in bringing to life films and series like The Martian, Blade Runner 2049, 1899, and Wicked.
Nicholas Tripodi embarked on his career nearly 18 years ago, contributing to a diverse range of films such as Mortal Kombat, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and Deadpool & Wolverine.
How was your collaboration with VFX Supervisor Erik Nordby and VFX Producer Rich Yeomans?
JS: Erik was extremely collaborative and keen in creating complex visuals to support the narrative. With the collaborative aspect of the project we embarked on a relentless pursuit to find creative venues to elevate the photography staying true to Scott Derrickson’s vision. Erik brought in this wealth of knowledge of the story, visual references and laid down the basis for us to take that and add our “flavour”.
What are the sequences made by Framestore?
JS: Framestore was responsible for various sequences focused on the Hollowmen. From tackling the gun fight while the Hollowmen climb the wall, every shot featuring the Alpha Hollowman from the hollowmen ambush, Alpha in his lair with his snake all the way to chasing Drasa/Levi while they climb back the wall.
We were also in charge of the establishing shots for the lower gorge environment with the deformed/mutated trees, the aerials featuring the military facilities and the toxic plumes.
The Hollowmen are central to the terror of The Gorge. How did you approach designing their appearance to be both terrifying and unique?
Martin Macrae (MM): The Hollowmen were a fascinating problem to solve from the beginning. Eric Nordby gave us some head designs and briefed us with the exciting challenge of creating their bodies that might match them, as well as designing them to be quite grotesque and shocking to the eye.
Each character also needed some visual aid to show a hint of history to their origin, for example showing elements of an army uniform or science lab coat.
One of the biggest challenges with these creatures was designing something that merges naturally and cohesively but at the same time has its own presence and distinctive silhouette. We did lots of research on different types of flora and fauna and how we could be utilise their different distinct qualities in each Hollowman design, the biggest challenge was making sure that the character wasn’t lost in the different forms of overgrowth and flora, and that the silhouettes were kept unique and clear.
Could you walk us through the animation process for the Hollowmen? What techniques were crucial in bringing out their eerie, otherworldly movement?
Nicholas Tripodi (NT): A lot of time went into the study of how the Hollowmen’s mutations affected their ability to move. What movement is either restricted or enhanced by their contorted form. This became especially important when it came to the facial performance of the Hollowmen. We had to adapt the musculature of the facial structure around features such as third eyes and branches weaving in and around their faces. This lead to a bespoke rig and facial system for each character. The idea of ‘restriction’ was an important theme when it came to approaching the movement of the Hollowmen. These are not elegant, efficient creatures so we needed to reflect that in their ranges of motion.
How did you strike a balance between realism and fantasy when creating the Hollowmen’s features and behavior?
NT: It was definitely a balancing act to not only show the Hollowmen as horrific creatures, but to also communicate what they once were. Their underlying form. In the case of the Hollowman leader for example we wanted to show that there was still humanity buried deep within his grotesque body. This is where performance in the face and especially the eyes was crucial, to show that there was this internal conflict within the Hollowmen.
The dense fog at the bottom of the Gorge seems to play a significant role in the film’s atmosphere. How did your team handle its simulation?
JS: We started the project working on concepts and references that suggested was eerie and visually interesting atmosphere. At that stage we explored the smoke plumes and fog elements with certain sentient characteristics such as the sim would react to proximity as if it was avoiding the characters coming in or would read as coming out of the ground with a breathing pattern or behave as if it were a water tank etc. With the selection of movement/behaviour the next challenge would be defining how much smoke/fog can we add before we lose the reading of the background and detail and which of these elements would turn into re-usable instances vs bespoke simulations. We spent a fair amount of time between optimising the sim to allow for faster iterations and working with comp to dial in the densities and lighting.
How did the interplay of light, fog, and the environment contribute to enhancing the suspense and fear within those scenes?
JS: Lighting is always a key component in creating mood and highlighting the aesthetics of both the environment and characters. For the CG environments, we explored a range of soft light scenarios, adding keylights but ended up with a mix of lighting gobos and more art directed light sources. Another very effective way to create suspense was creating gaps in the fog to allow some stronger light to read through the environment in shots where the camera is at shoulder height or adding a darker tone fog patches or elements creating visuals that evoked the sensation of feeling contained in an expansive environment
While working with the Alpha Hollowman in the lair, very early we learned that from matching the plate we would have a great base to then re-orient light sources to reading on the face but then create odd shadows on his body and the multi layer, intertwined branches type of body needed to read rich and complement the face reading. With bespoke rigs focused on the face or eyes we art directed every shot there.
The Gorge itself is a visually striking setting. Could you share how the environments were designed and enhanced with VFX?
JS: The lower gorge environment was a big challenge of a build. Starting with the various chemicals that created a variety of mutations and deformations thus requiring the environments to read differently from one another.
Lots of concepts were done to nail the gruesome look of features seen in each landscape along with references from all sorts of environments in decay and organisms in decomposition.
In camera, the art department team had partially built a forest, the camera team used colored light sources and spfx fog helped create a mood for the shots which gave the actors and camera crew something tangible to interact and react to. From there, we had to expand the world, made the trees taller, added more gruesome and ghastly features to the bone trees and graded the plates to allow for the additional fog/smoke plumes. Playing with the contrast in the plates and finding the place to seamlessly blend the set with the digital environment was very tricky and required a great deal of coordination between departments.
Were there any memorable moments or scenes from the film that you found particularly rewarding or challenging to work on from a visual effects standpoint
JS: I really enjoyed bringing the Alpha Hollowmen to life along with his snake. It’s a moment where the Hollowmen are portrayed more as humans and we needed to show that beyond that mutated character there was somewhat the reminiscences of a person that had a history and belonged to a place.
Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of?
JS: The work on Hollowman characters is stunning, the level of detail on the builds and how their motion translated those mutations into it’s locomotion is fantastic. Again, the Alpha Hollowman is a highlight, we got to design something relatable on the human level and yet freaking disturbing.
What’s the VFX shots count?
JS: We delivered 516 shots.
A big thanks for your time.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Framestore: Dedicated page about The Gorge on Framestore website.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025
