Narrator: During the iconic bridge fight in Spider-Man: Homeless, Doctor Octopus’ tentacles were the work of the VFX team, but on set, the cars and these exploding buckets were very real.
Scott Edelstein: Even if we’re going to replace all of this and have a digital version of something, it’s always better if you can shoot something.
Narrator: That’s VFX Supervisor Scott Edelstein.Working with special effects supervisor Dan Sudick, his team found the right mix of practical and digital to create “No Way Home” action-packed bridge battles, like Doctor Octopus taking his mech for the first time The same as when the arm appeared.
To really sell the power of these CGI weapons, Dan devised a way to nearly smash the cars into what the crew calls “taco cars.”
Dan Sudick: When I saw the preview, I thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great if we could just pull down the center of the car so hard that the car folds up on its own?”
Narrator: First, Dan built a steel platform with a hole in the middle.Then he put the car on it, connected the two cables to the bottom center of the car, and pulled it through as it split in half.Shots like this -
Unlike 2004′s Spider-Man 2, Alfred Molina didn’t wear a pair of manipulated claws on set.While the actor can now move around more nimbly, Digital Domain had to know how to keep his arms in the shot, especially when they held him up that way.
The best visual reference depends on how high his body is off the ground, which varies throughout.
Sometimes staff can lift him with a cable to give him more freedom to move his real legs, but it’s not very comfortable.Other times, he was strapped to a tuning fork, allowing the crew to guide and steer him from behind as he lifted himself from under the bridge, as shown.
As the arms brought him to the ground, they used a mobile platform that could be lowered and maneuvered like a Technocrane.This gets trickier for the VFX team as the sequence progresses and the characters interact more and more with their surroundings.
Scott: Director Jon Watts really wanted to make his movements meaningful and have weight, so you don’t want him to feel light, or anything he’s interacting with.
For example, he always has at least two hands on the ground for balance, even when he lifts two cars at the same time.The way he handles items also needs careful consideration.
Scott: He threw a car forward and he had to transfer that weight, and when he threw the car forward, the other arm had to hit the ground to support him.
Narrator: The actual combat team also applies these rules to props used in combat, such as here Dr. Oak threw a giant pipe at Spider-Man and instead crushed a car.Dan and chief visual effects supervisor Kelly Porter wanted the pipe to fall like a baseball bat, so it actually had to collapse at an angle rather than flat.
Narrator: To achieve this unique effect, Dan uses two cables to keep the concrete and steel pipe straight.Each cable is connected to a cylinder, which releases air pressure at different rates.
Dan: We can press the tip of the tube into the car faster than the front end of the tube is falling, and then pull the front end of the tube at a certain speed.
In initial testing, the tube crushed the top of the car but not its sides, so by cutting out the door frames, the sides have actually been weakened.The crew then hid the cable inside the car, so when the pipe collapsed, the cable pulled the side of the car down along with it.
Now, it was too dangerous for Tom Holland and his double to actually dodge that pipe, so for this shot, the action elements in the frame were shot separately and combined in post-production.
In one shot, Tom flipped over the hood of the car to make it look like he was dodging the pipes.The crew then filmed the pipe installation themselves, while replicating the speed and position of the camera as closely as possible.
Scott: We track cameras in all these environments, and we do a lot of reprojection so that we can integrate them all into one camera, basically.
Narrator: In the end, the editing changes meant Digital Domain had to make it a fully CG shot, but a lot of the original camera and actor movement remained.
Scott: We do try, even if we’re going to exaggerate it, use the foundation he’s done, and then touch it up.
Narrator: Spider-Man also had to rescue the Assistant Vice Principal from her car as it teetered on the edge of the bridge.
The whole stunt is divided into three parts: the car crossing the bridge, the car hitting the guardrail, and the car hanging in the air.
While the main section of the highway is at ground level, the road is raised 20 feet so the car can hang without hitting anything.First, the car is placed on a small track to move it forward.It was then guided by the cable and lost control for a moment.
Dan: We wanted it to look a bit more natural when it was hit, to have it swing a little over the rail, rather than just follow this precise arc.
Narrator: To make the car hit the guardrail, Dan made a guardrail out of beaded foam.He then painted it and smeared the edges, before breaking it down into smaller pieces beforehand.
Dan: We built the 20 or 25 foot splitter because we thought the car was 16 to 17 feet long.
Narrator: The car was later placed on a gimbal in front of a blue screen, so it looked like it was really teetering on the edge at a 90-degree angle.The gimbal was secure enough for actress Paula Newsom to be in the car so cameras could capture her horrified facial expressions.
Narrator: She’s not watching Spider-Man, she’s watching a tennis ball, which is then easily removed in post-production.
As Spider-Man tried to pull her car to safety, Dr. Oak threw another car at him, but the car hit some barrels.According to Dan, the director wanted it to be rainwater, so Dan had to steer the car and the barrel.
This required slanting a 20-foot nitrogen cannon through the car.That cannon was connected to a high-voltage accumulator to fire forward.Dan also filled the bucket with fireworks attached to the timer.
Dan: We know how fast the car enters the barrel, so we know how many tenths of a second it takes for the car to hit all the barrels.
Narrator: Once the car hits the first barrel, each barrel explodes in turn according to the speed the car is heading towards them.
The actual stunt looks great, but the trajectory is slightly off.So using the original image as a reference, Scott actually replaced the car with a fully CG model.
Scott: We needed the car to start higher because Doc was further down the road with his arms up.As the car drives towards Spider-Man, it needs a kind of roll.
Narrator: Many of these battle shots actually use digital doubles, which works because the nanotechnology-powered Iron Spider suits are made in CG.
Narrator: But since Spider-Man took off his mask, they couldn’t just do a full body swap.Just like the assistant vice-principal on the gimbal, they also need to shoot Tom hanging in the air.
Scott: The way he moves his body, tilts his neck, supports himself, is reminiscent of someone hanging upside down.
Narrator: But the constant movement of the action made it difficult to place the iconic garment accurately.So Tom wears what’s called a fractal suit.The patterns on the suits provide animators with the easiest way to map the digital body onto the actor’s body.
Scott: If his chest is turning or moving, or his arms are moving, you can see the patterns move more easily than if he was wearing a normal suit.
Narrator: For the tentacles, Doc Ock has holes in the back of his jacket.These red tracking markers allow VFX to accurately place the arm despite the constant movement of the camera and action.
Scott: You can find where the arm is and stick it on that little dot, because if it’s swimming around, it looks like it’s swimming around his back.
Narrator: After pulling the Vice-Principal’s car up, Spider-Man uses his web blaster to pull the door down.
The network was created entirely in CG, but on set, the special effects team needed to create enough power to open the door on its own.This first meant replacing its hinge pins with ones made of balsa wood.The door is then connected externally to a cable driven by a pneumatic piston.
Dan: The accumulator lets air rush into the piston, the piston closes, the cable is pulled, and the door comes off.
Narrator: It’s also useful to pre-destroy the car the moment the Goblin’s pumpkin bomb explodes.
The cars were actually taken apart and then put back together before being brought to the set-up, resulting in these dramatic results.Scott and his team were responsible for enhancing all of these collisions and explosions, while filling the footage and digitally expanding the bridge.
According to Scott, Digital Domain created 250 static cars parked on bridges, and 1,100 digital cars driving around distant cities.
These cars are all variants of a handful of digital car models.At the same time, a digital scan of the car closest to the camera is required.