After getting in touch with Iloura, Head of VFX Ineke Majoor was kind enough to sort out the following answers to my questions about their work on Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. There are some very interesting and revealing details contained below (particularly in regards to the various vehicles they worked on for the Marvel character) so be sure to click HERE to check out their site and HERE to follow them on Twitter.
Iloura is a VFX, animation and design studio motivated by creative problem solving and technical innovation. Whilst Iloura's highly regarded reputation has been built around its character animation work, the studio also produces outstanding results in matte painting, compositing, FX animation and motion design for the film, television and advertising industries.
The 100+ team is passionate about producing the best impact on screen - from the production of high quality, fast-turnaround pre-visualization through to a flawless final shot or sequence. Creative, flexible and results driven - Iloura provides services from both studios in Melbourne and Sydney. Clients respect Iloura's skills and experience and consistently praise the team for their professionalism and flexibility. Always hungry for a challenge and a reason to push the boundaries on its creative skills, Iloura grows better and stronger with each experience.
Firstly, can you tell us about Iloura and the type of VFX work you do?
Iloura is part of the Omnilab Media Group and has been operating for around 25 years, starting out primarily servicing the commercial market. We still work on commercials, but 10 years ago we began developing a team that would be solely focussed on the feature film industry. Today our film unit has numerous film titles in our filmography and a base creative team of 40. We cut our teeth on Asian features like House Of Flying Daggers. Our first US feature film was Charlottes Web for Paramount Pictures in 2005 where we were awarded the fully digital Wilbur character shots. Our portfolio has steadily increased since then working on projects such as The Bank Job, Australia, The Pacific, Where The Wild Things Are, Don'tBe Afraid Of The Dark and Priest, to name a few.
What exactly did your work on Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance consist of and how big was the team that worked on it?
Iloura was the main vendor on the show, our primary role being all the Ghost Rider character and related ghost rider fx - i.e. The hell bike , the hell truck and the hell crane being vehicles he commands as Ghost Rider throughout the film. There are a number of shots for the Blackout character as well where we had to design the moulding fx that he inflicts on his victims. Included in the award were many green screen comps and digital environment work.
You have a fairly diverse range of movies that you've worked on in the past. How did Ghost Rider differ to those?
As a vfx company working remotely in Melbourne, Australia, we have to have a diverse range of skills to offer to our US clientele. Ghost Rider was probably our first intensive fx driven project, entrusted to us by Sony due to a test that we delivered to the directors in order to convince production that we understood the look they were after. Ghost Riders' uniqueness for us was really to do with the fire fx , and once we produced the winning test, we had to figure out how to propagate that look in its various incantations, economically through our pipeline. These simulations by their nature are hard to predict and difficult to manipulate and the rendering grunt required to get these simulations through was a particular challenge unique to this project.
How closely did you work with the directors, Neveldine/Taylor?
We were lucky enough to work very closely with the directors. We had an Iloura supervisor out on set for some of the scenes we were working on so we were able to interact with them on set and get a feel for their shooting style. Once in Post Production we would review directly with them on a regular basis which was great because we could cut to the chase very quickly on any shots and really cash in on their direct no nonsense style.
Can you clue us in to exactly how much of the movie is divided up between practical and visual effects?
Roughly 85 % of the movie is cg enhanced.
What would you say the biggest challenge was in the process of working on this film?
One of the biggest creative challenges was to define a look and a behaviour for the fire that best illustrated Nicholas Cage's performance and once defining that with the directors maintaining that across sequences with the simulation software we were using, which in this case was Fume fx. Often different sequences needed to have a different feel to it depending on the mood of the character. We customised processes to minimise the rendering overhead, but this was still a difficult pipeline to manage.
The other challenge was more related to the 3d stereo pipeline as we had to slot into a process that utilised the expertise of other facilities globally. Yannix (motion tracking facility in Thailand) took care of most of our tracking requirements which were substantial, whilst Vancouver company Gener 8 were responsible for taking the shot mono plates and making them Stereo. Yannix would supply Iloura the tracking data for the shots, Iloura would take this data into our scenes which we would supply to Gener 8 to utilise in their 3d pipe. Gener 8 would return to us the stereo plates for us to render our final fx to. We could work in mono until they arrived which meant that all these processes could work in parallel churning out the necessary data and creative in tandem, but it was a massive scheduling feat to make sure all these parts intersected at the right moments.
Would you be interested in working on another comic book movie in future?
Absolutely! We would love it...
What else is next for you guys?
Currently we are working on an R rated comedy for Seth MacFarlane – his first feature film "Ted" which is a character based film for MRC Productions/ Universal Studios. Beyond this we are looking at a number of great projects with a diverse range of fx work for later this year.