Behind the Invisible Visual Effects of "Rush" by Nathan Ortiz (Double Negative)
The next talk that we went to followed on the theme of visual effect for the day and was taken by Nathan Ortiz from Double Negative and he was speaking about the hidden visual effects of Rush. Rush is about the rivalry that occurred between Niki Lauder and James Hunt around the 1976 Formula 1 series and centered around the pinnacle crashing scene in the film. Niki was part of the process and wanted to be there throughout it all in order for the film to be told accurately. The team at double negative got to the seamlessly part of the movie and create rigid body dynamics, create natural phenomena and other effects.
Nathan Ortiz then went through a little bit of background history about him and how he got to be where he is today and it started by him personally having a scientific background with software engineering before becoming a FX technical director, but getting into the industry according to him can even come from doing the small weekend jobs and looking at the smaller things that will help towards the bigger things eventually and I think this piece of advice is very interesting.
During the film process they didn't have a very big budget, in fact they didn't have a lot of money at all and relied on a lot of sponsors throughout to be able to back them. But despite this they were allowed access to a number of Formula 1 cars on hand to be able to film with but they were not allowed to damage these in any way so they had to fake a lot of the car scenes. They had to watch a lot of old Formula 1 races from the past to be able to get a sense of what the tracks looked like and how they used to look in the 70s in particular. For pretty much all of the tracks that they used they had to create FX versions of them as they are either no longer in use or have changed since the 70s due to changes in health and safety and also where the audience used to be about to stand. What they asked themselves throughout the film was 'do we need to film it or is it going to be too expensive?' They had to make this decision quite a lot due to this being an independent film and to compromise this when they did have to film they used a number of different cameras for one shot so that they could get a number of diverse angles. Everything that they filmed by hand was done at the Donington race track in England and they had a very small cast and had hardly any extras so most of what you see has been added in after in special effects.
During the Japan scene they had to add in a lot of water and spray that came off the cars due to the volume of rain that was falling. They also needed water and spray on their helmets too, which had to be seamless from scene to scene. During the crash scene, which features in Japan, they had to use smokeless fire so that it could be added in after so that they could get the direction going correctly in accordance to the wind direction and the other cars that were rushing past and into the car. The physics that they added onto the tires were extremely difficult to get right and they did a lot of research behind this to ensure that the wheels looked like they were moving correctly. They used a driving simulator that they set up and were told to sue at least once a day so that they could get a feel for how the cars would drive and how fast they actually had to drive and how much weight was behind the car at the same time.
Throughout the film there are also a lot of logos that feature to advertise the race and also just in the background of the film to provide something to prove that it is the 70s. This was something that was important to them and they had to conduct a lot of research to ensure that the logos in the background and on the signs so that they were correct to the era of the 70s and also correct to the location as they travel around the world and in certain places, certain products are promoted.
As they knew it was hard to keep track of the drivers throughout the film with the different changing camera angles they had to come up with a way of showing what position the drivers where in. In normal races they have a commentator telling the audience where they are but they didn't want a constant voice distracting from the storyline and also it would have been annoying so they introduces a scoreboard that the camera could cut to which provided an interesting way of showing the drivers positions.
For the big crash scene they had to get it right and they started by watching the crash over and over to ensure that they got all of the small details right as this is what Niki Lauder wanted. They started with just the basic animation to ensure that they could get the scene right and then moved onto adding in the smaller details after. They had to create a lot of damage and ensure that Lauder's car got destroyed and broke up in exactly the right way. Real velocities were put into place to ensure that the fire looked real and they had to divide and conqueror as a team to get it done, but in the end its fantastic to see that the crash was portrayed correctly and accurately so that it tell the perfect representation of what actually happened.
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