With its richly textured environments, enigmatic characters, dark secrets, sinister ghosts and tense plot, Comflix Studios immediately saw the potential for a unique custom video for director Guillermo del Toro's new film Crimson Peak. Comflix seized this opportunity to come up with an original and eye-catching concept that would support del Torro's vision for the film and tie in with Legendary Pictures and Universal Studio's promotional campaign. We had the opportunity to catch up with the Comflix crew and get their thoughts on the trailer and film.
Knowing that del Torro wanted to promote Crimson Peak with a delicate subtlety that alluded to the nature of the film without giving anything away, director David Sheldon-Hicks turned to the film's themes of crimson, romance, blood, ghosts and the dark brooding house for inspiration.
“We wanted the narrative and look of the sequence to add something extra to the Crimson Peak universe without giving anything away,” says Sheldon-Hicks. The resulting trailer is beautiful and disturbing in equal measure, drawing on the rich Gothic imagery of the sinister house in a snowy landscape as a backdrop to a flow of crimson liquid that carves delicate images in the white drifts.
The nature of the liquid is deliberately uncertain. “We felt it was important to preserve a sense of mystery, so we never intended it to be blood in any obvious way, behaving more like wine as it flows.” This sense of mystery also appealed to Universal, as a way to draw the audience into a story that they haven't seen yet.
Because everything was built in CGI, most of the work was about making the visual elements feel organic and other-worldly. “We wanted real atmosphere and tension to properly reflect the film's own characteristics.” And del Torro's Gothic universe provided an extraordinary collection of striking thematic elements to work with. From snowflakes to skeletons, ruins to butterflies, the imagery is dramatic and romantic with a sinister ribbon of red running through the landscape.
In terms of design process, key 2D artwork from the film was provided and 3D elements, such as the house and steam digger, were modeled from 2D blueprints. The visual elements of the main characters and plot devices needed to be drawn out in red fluid, seeping through snow and the biggest challenge to get the color, look, and feel of the red liquid coming up through the snow exactly right – making it feel as though it was being moved and controlled by an ‘unexplained force'.
“We did quite a lot of R&D to achieve the right consistency of the liquid element as it flows and seeps up from below.” 3D motion designer Duncan Dix initially started with fluid and particles tests, using mattes to drive X particles fluids that would "eat" away at snow textures. To achieve the necessary level of detail for certain images in the snow, such as the characters, he created them using a combination of mattes. “The setup was two planes of geometry, a plain snowy texture just above an undulating ‘blood' texture. I then used a displacement matte to push the plain snow texture down, revealing the red, with an additional matte run through the top snow layer adding further ‘bleeding' details into the snow.”
The resulting visual narrative is beautifully realized with a filmic style that evokes both romance and horror. Perfectly timed to the haunting lyrics and mournful piano of PJ Harvey's Red Right Hand, the trailer perfectly evokes the Gothic atmosphere and human drama at the heart of Crimson Peak.