With Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, the latest installment of Zack Snyder’s burgeoning sci-fi saga, hitting Netflix recently, I got the opportunity to sit down with the film’s VFX supervisor, Marcus Taormina, to discuss his work both in the VFX industry in general and on the new film specifically.
Also Read: Rebel Moon: Part 2 – The Scargiver Review: Dazzling Visuals Can’t Save The Most Boring Heroes In The Galaxy
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“It’s not just me looking at the script. It’s a lot of whiteboards, a lot of notes.” – Marcus Taormina
To start off, I talked to Marcus about what his role as a VFX supervisor, the primary liaison between a VFX studio and a film studio on any given movie or TV show for the unaware, meant in regards to the Rebel Moon films. He informed me that he “looked over the script line by line” in order to determine which shots would most likely need visual effects.
Then, after discussing his ideas with Zack Snyder, as well as Snyder himself providing his own ideas of course, his primary duties were working with “various VFX facilities all over the world” to determine who could do the best work on a given scene and ensuring that each studio had a fair and manageable workload that could be delivered on time for both films.
For example, when working on the creature effects for Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, he was primarily in communication with Weta Digital in New Zealand, which should probably not be surprising given the studio’s incredible creature work on the recent Planet of the Apes films among other projects. Meanwhile, for the more action-heavy Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, he largely worked with Framestore Montreal, who worked on Top Gun: Maverick, A24’s Civil War, and the upcoming Deadpool and Wolverine just to name a few.
“264 slow-motion shots in Movie Two.” – Marcus Taormina
Given Zack Snyder’s propensity for slow-motion, I had to know what kind of VFX challenges that style presented and after he gave me the hilariously specific stat seen above, Marcus informed me that the biggest challenge with the slow-motion shots was “keeping them alive.” The footage they shot for the final battle in particular was just the actors “alone on a smoking bridge” so incorporating things like slag, the glowing swords and so on while making sure everything looked real and flowed properly proved to be rather difficult.
Speaking of swords, one of the most unique visual effects in the Rebel Moon films is the smoking effect seen on the Oracle Blades, the franchise’s equivalent to Star Wars‘ iconic lightsabers. When I asked, Marcus told me that the effect was primarily inspired by “light painting” with a “long exposure at night.” And putting the effect together required adding layers of sparks, “sword popcorn,” and the aforementioned smoking effects.
He then went on to discuss how proud he was of the work he and his team accomplished on the Rebel Moon films, discussing how much of a “behemoth” both films were and how much work was involved in completing them, but also how much fun it was and how much of the time they focused on just trying to make “cool, fun shots.”
After discussing some of his dream projects including a biopic and a new entry in the James Bond franchise, Marcus left me with some insight into the upcoming 3-hour director’s cuts of both Rebel Moon films to end things off. He and his team have approximately “a month and a half” left of work on VFX for the director’s cuts before they wrap and they “shot a lot more footage than what is currently available on the platform for Movie One and Movie Two,” so fans of the franchise should have plenty to get excited about.
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