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A Noble Quest How David Lowery’s The Green Knight was shaped by the digital wizardry of Weta Digital, Outpost and Maere Studios.
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ne of this summer’s more intriguing fantasies has an unlikely source of inspiration: the 14th century Middle English chivalric romance known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, penned by an unknown writer. Filmmaker David Lowery’s (A Ghost Story) new movie The Green Knight tells the story of King Arthur’s headstrong nephew (portrayed by Dev Patel) who embarks on a quest to confront the eponymous knight, a gigantic treelike creature. To bring the period and fantasy elements of the story to cinematic life, Lowery relied on the visual effects expertise of Weta Digital, Outpost VFX and Maere Studios. “Our post-production time was eight months, and we worked on just over 200 shots with a small but efficient team,” explains Eric Saindon, VFX supervisor at Weta Digital. “David and [producer] Toby Halbrooks always set up their own
‘It was a relaxed, creative and collaborative show with quite a long turnaround time which is all too rare in our business. It gave us time to iterate and achieve the look that David was after with a tight-knit show team.’ — Outpost VFX supervisor David Sadler-Coppard
small post-production group for doing VFX shots and plate clean-up. We shared as many assets as possible to help them out and make sure we were not duplicating work. David is always able to sketch out informative storyboards, while [production designer] Jade Healy always puts together detailed reference packs and artwork to give us a clear idea of the look and feel of the movie.” Saindon mentions that the critical part of the film was grounding the imagery in live-action plates. “Ireland has so much history and great lo-
cations for filming — with a few little visual effects enhancements to an old castle, it’s transformed into a medieval set. Because we were able to get good LiDAR scans of all the locations, camera tracks and set extensions were easily possible.”
Making Mr. Fox
In the movie, Gawain travels with a mythical fox that has the ability to speak. “David would send us videos where he walked through the
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august 21
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