The Rhythm Section (2020)

Description

 

 

 

Based on the book of the same name, The Rhythm Section is an action thriller starring Blake Lively and Jude Law. Blue Bolt were the sole VFX vendor and I supervised delivery of 125 shots.

The work was mostly subtle, including screen inserts, newspaper headline adjustments, adding cold breath and continuity fixes. The scenes set in the Scottish Highlands had to have environment enhancements – adding mountains into the back of shots.

However there were a few key shots that took the vast majority of work.

The first was a 3 minute car chase, presented as a single shot but actually built from 14 different takes. The sequence had been carefully planned to shoot over a number of separate street locations in Almeria, Spain, with huge resets in between. Our task was to stitch these takes together into a seemless piece of action, as well as removing stunt rigs, adding fully CG cars to create closer near-misses than were safe to shoot, enhancing impacts and creating CG damage to crashed cars.

The second key shot was a car bomb being detonated on the streets of New York. There was nothing practical shot on location apart from the SUV pulling up at traffic lights. The Blue Bolt team had to then blow it up, using fire and smoke sims from Houdini, shattering glass effects and a whole lot of comp work.

You can click here or on any of the images to see BlueBolt’s VFX breakdown video for the show.

Tags: Compositing VFX Supervisor