FILM
DEEP DIVING INTO WWII NAVAL WARFARE ABOARD SUB HUNTER GREYHOUND By TREVOR HOGG
TOP: Not only does Tom Hanks portray Commander Ernest Krause in Greyhound, but he also wrote the screenplay based on The Good Shepherd by English novelist C.S. Forester. (Image courtesy of Apple)
56 • VFXVOICE.COM WINTER 2021
PG 56-61 GREYHOUND.indd 56-57
Seafaring adventures inspired the imagination of English novelist C.S. Forester who wrote the Napoleonic War-era Horatio Hornblower series and World War II-era The Good Shepherd, which Tom Hanks turned into a screenplay and retitled Greyhound in reference to the code name of the destroyer USS Keeling. The Oscar-winning actor stars as Commander Ernest Krause who is given his first wartime command escorting 37 allied ships across the North Atlantic while being hunted by German U-boats. In order to guide the production, director Aaron Schneider (Get Low) put together an extensive website with details and photographs of all of the ships that were suppose to be in the story. Trouble arose when the visual effects methodology proved to be problematic once post-production commenced. In order to fix the issue, executive producer Aaron Ryder (Arrival) turned to the visual effects team responsible for Transcendence. “Aaron called me and asked, ‘Can you help me out with this?’” recalls VFX Producer Mike Chambers (Tenet, Dunkirk). “We talked about supervisors and he said, ‘What do you think about Nathan McGuinness?’ I answered, ‘I like Nathan. We both know how we did on Transcendence. Let’s go.’ Over the course of this show, Nathan and I were absolutely partners joined at the hip to make the effects look great and fight whatever battles that had to be fought.”
The practical effects had to be digitally replaced in post-production lasting from October 2018 to February 2019. “The interiors and a lot of the exterior immediate deck [of the Greyhound] were shot on an actual Fletcher-class destroyer [USS Kidd in Baton Rouge] but it was landlocked,” states Chambers. “There was no motion or background to speak of. The bridge was built on a gimbal to try to help with the motion, but a lot of the practical stuff didn’t work as well as it needed to. That’s why we had to work over all of those shots.” There were over 1,300 visual effects shots, with the water and exteriors being entirely CG. “Nothing was just an A/B composite,” Chambers remarks. “A lot of the shot count was treating shots where we had existing foreground material, like the dialogue scenes. There are not as many huge, full-on-CG, wide, epic shots, but a good number of them. Every day we kept dealing with whatever the issues were, and trying to get everybody on track and moving forward. It was certainly a scramble towards the end. “Early on I was screaming to get more editorial turnovers than what I was getting, but eventually got what we needed,” adds Chambers. “Fortunately, we did have a semi-rough cut of the movie. We definitely knew which sequences were going to need more focus, resources and time. As things got fine-tuned, what we would think of as simple shots came late [in post-production], so that became more of a thing.” Originally, there were going to be multiple visual effects vendors. “However,” explains Chambers, “due to circumstance, schedule availability, and knowing that we needed a certain level of quality and believability [the decision was made to go with a single vendor]. Fortunately, Nathan and I have a long-term relationship with DNEG and knew what they are capable of. When we learned that their visual effects supervisor was going to be Pete Bebb, I said, ‘Sign me up.’ I had a great deal of confidence in DNEG, and they went above and beyond.” A detailed chart was produced that categorized the difficulty and state of development of each shot for DNEG facilities in London, Vancouver and Mumbai. “I picked out shots within these
“The interiors and a lot of the exterior immediate deck [of the Greyhound] were shot on an actual Fletcher-class destroyer [USS Kidd in Baton Rouge] but it was landlocked. There was no motion or background to speak of. The bridge was built on a gimbal to try to help with the motion, but a lot of the practical stuff didn’t work as well as it needed to. That’s why we had to work over all of those shots [in post-production].” —Mike Chambers, VFX Producer TOP TO BOTTOM: DNEG visited the HMS Belfast in London to get a sense of how the Fletcher-class destroyers were actually built and applied that knowledge to the CG versions. The sky was mapped out for the entire duration of the film’s journey across the Atlantic and determined the light source for each shot. (Images courtesy of DNEG. Final image courtesy of Apple)
WINTER 2021 VFXVOICE.COM • 57
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