How Scanline VFX crafted a range of 1980s-inspired effects shots, many of them of the invisible variety, for the Eddie Murphy film.Mark Molloys Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, now streaming on Netflix, sees Eddie Murphy as the titular character return to Beverly Hills and take on a new set of adversaries.Given the films origins in the original 1980s and 1990s franchise, many aspects of the filmmaking preserved that buddy cop era look and feel, including even the visual effects. Long shots, zooms and a particular approach to stunt scenes all informed the VFX effort.Here, Scanline VFX visual effects supervisor Bryan Grill tells befores & afters about preserving this old school style, as well as taking advantage of new tools to produce many invisible effects shots.b&a: When I was watching the film, I really enjoyed the nostalgia factor. I mean, its a film made for 2024, but it regularly feels like it pays homage to the style of the original Beverly Hills Cop movies, of course.Bryan Grill: Well, the director, Mark Molloy, grew up knowing those movies. He lived in a rural town in Australia, but he got his stuff from VHS, like all of us. Plus, Jerry Bruckheimer was the producer of most of the Beverly Hills Cop films. Mark pitched to him and sold himself on this movie and it worked. I think it shows in the final product of how thoughtful he was of the story and the characters. I was pleasantly surprised with how it hit all the nostalgic notes.b&a: One thing I really liked was there were a lot of slow zooms or pullbacks like you might have had in 80s films, which you had to replicate in several visual effects shots. And some of the lensing felt very familiar. How did that impact you directly, perhaps aside from just making sure you were tracking the shots really accurately?Bryan Grill: Those types of movies back in the 80s and early 90sthe buddy cop moviesthey really used those super long anamorphic lenses, which gave you a sense of being right there in the middle of the action. Thats exactly how the director and the DP, Edu Grau, wanted to do this movie: if you were to shoot this in 2024, but imagine youre in 1984.They actually found some older anamorphic lenses, these C-series lenses. A few of the zooms could quite possibly have been used on any of those movies from the 80s and 90s. They were taking it that far to recreate that feel.Along with that, theres the way you actually shot movies back then. There were really no visual effects, and what you did was establish your wide, and then you got in tight with your actors. If there were stunts, the stunt was designed so that you could see the action but you couldnt tell if it was the actor or not. There were also very quick cuts. That was how Mark wanted to approach everything. Granted, he now had an arsenal of new toolsets for visual effects, but there was a very strong intent to try to get everything in camera.b&a: I remember seeing some behind the scenes of how the helicopter sequences were filmed, and that was kind of cool to see a partial chopper with the actors in it being driven down the street. Tell me a bit more about how the helicopter city shots were orchestrated.Bryan Grill: In the script, Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) used to fly helicopters, had a crash and now has a problem flying helicopters because of his confidence. When the script said the helicopter is at ground level scraping the streets, I thought, Wow, that presents a whole bunch of challenges when it comes to flying a helicopter on a city street that low. Also, Id never really seen that. I did a full deep dive into as many movies as I could from the 70s through now of helicopters that actually flew that low to the ground. If they did, it was in a field, for example. Michael Bay did do a movie called Ambulance where the helicopter went along the LA River. Sometimes you might see a helicopter go under a bridge, but I couldnt find any reference to a helicopter on a city street that low.The only thing I did see was the Air Force or the Navy having done some nighttime training where they actually came into LA and landed on a city street. Somebody had footage from their apartment watching these helicopters land, but they werent travelling.What we ended up doing was our special effects team built as close to a one-to-one buck of the real helicopter, but then were able to put it on a driving rig. One of the Dark Knight films did something a little similar with the Bat vehicle. They had taken the Bat, put it on a crane and flew through the city, but then they also had it on a gimbal driving down the street.It was a beautiful set-up because you can actually get the actors in there and youre at street level, which is part of the story. It also just really helped put the comedy inside that sequence because we didnt have to shoot it in a way that was forceful. It allowed the actors to act for long periods of time, and it wasnt a big visual effect.b&a: What things did you need to augment this setup with, say, rotor blades?Bryan Grill: What was great was we got reflection, but the type of glass that was used was different from the real helicopter, and we were getting a rainbow discoloration, so we had to take that out. We had to add the rotors, the pulsing and a little bit of that reflection. There were some areas of the buck that were a little wobbly which we had to stabilize. But for the most part, all that stuff in the buck, we just kind of embellished a little bit. And then we added some things in the background to give it a sense that it was blowing up particles and dust. We also added some cars that were closer than what we were able to get.b&a: Where did Scanline need it to go further with building a CG chopper?Bryan Grill: Well, Fred North, who is pretty much the King of helicopter flying, did a number of flying stunts in downtown LA. But what we learned was he would come in and do his practice runs and on the very first practice run, any garbage or anything that was in the street would get blown away the first run. When we finally got to shoot, none of that really cool interactive material was there anymore because it had been blown away by multiple practice runs. So thats what Scanline came in to add all that.Also, there were times where we had a camera in the chopper, so we would have to remove the camera and the cameraman. And then, of course, we had to turn Fred into Bobby and Eddies stunt guy into Eddie. Most of those were medium to wide, so it wasnt too difficult because we got all those close-ups out of the buck moving down the street. And then, when they were flying up high, we had another buck that was on a separate gimbal that we did bluescreen work on. That took a little bit more work because we recreated the windshield, we added in the rotos and then put in all the backgrounds to match the wide shots.I think thats really where Scanline shined. Ive been doing this for a long time in visual effects, and I couldnt tell you how proud I was that those visual effects shots blended so well into the movie that you couldnt tell that they were bluescreen.b&a: Thats something I was going to mention, too, Bryan, is that this feels like an invisible effects film. Sure, you had to come in and do some helicopter work, but a lot of that and a lot of other work is VFX that I dont think people wouldve had any idea involved visual effects work at all. One of them is when Axel gets pepper sprayed, for instance.Bryan Grill: Yeah, that actually is one of my favorite sequences because we had to spray Eddie with tear gas and, well, you dont spray Eddie. We had a version where it was just a stream of water, and we showed him and he started laughing and said, You aint shooting that at me. His make-up artist had a little Evian spray bottle. She had used it just to add some moisture to his face for sweat and what have you. I said, Oh, maybe if we dress that... Im like, Eddie, would this be good? Hes like, Yeah, thats fine. So we dressed it as the bottle and then they put a little bit of viscous Vaseline on his face just to make it feel wet.The approach worked great because the actress who was the meter maid had something to use. It wasnt like there was nothing coming out. Stuff did come out. Eddie was able to respond to that. He was able to do his thing.Then when it came to editing, we were able to use that in editing because something was coming out of the bottle. When we went into the post, the director wanted it to be a little bit more of a stream and have it affect him more. So we went in and did that. I really loved that we were able to add more drip and make his face more wet. It was really hard to do, but it works so well, even to the point where Jerry Bruckheimer said, Well, thats too much. So we actually had to bring it down a little bit.I was just so impressed with the work. This was actually one artist on his own using KeenTools in Nuke to do the head tracking. This artist was able to use those tools and then take elements from our library and do it in 2D.b&a: Another kind of invisible effect was stunt augmentation, like the meter maid vehicle going down the stairs.Bryan Grill: For that scene, we were lucky enough to shoot on Rodeo Drive and Two Rodeo Drive, which is that little mall with steps. However, they were very adamant that we could not do anything with those stairs. Even though that meter maid kart had rubber tires, they were like, No.So, we decided to build a buck of those stairs and just have our stunt guys ride down it. We painted them the color of the stairs so we got the proper light bounce. We were going to have to roto it anyway. Budget-wise, we couldnt build the whole set of stairs, so we just had a section.We went and shot a couple of versions, and they were able to use it in the editorial when we did our first cuts. Then we took that as a base and added more stairs and our CG meter maid kart. But theres no denying the benefit of the reference. Its always a place you can at least go back to and go, Look, if you want us to make it faster and bounce higher, thats completely different, but this is what it looks like for real.b&a: I think thats also applicable to the truck that crashes into the mansion at the end, because it starts as a real stunt, right?Bryan Grill: Yes, they set it up so the column broke and the chandelier smashed, but we needed to add a little bit more tension to those columns since they were breaking a little too easy. Also, when they broke, there was nothing coming off, like dust. So we just embellished on something that was worked out by a bunch of departments to create that visceral moment that you get in-camera and knowing that we could add those little things to help it become a little bit more believable.b&a: Was there any kind of shot or effect or sequence that surprised you, maybe one that was harder than you thought it would be, or one that was more effective than you thought it would be?Bryan Grill: I have to say it was the golf course where the helicopter crashes. We shot at a real golf course, and in the original footage, there was the pro shop and the country club right behind the hole where we were shooting. When we got into editing, the director was like, God, I hate that building. I want to feel like were further away because why would they steal the golf cart when they just could have run through the front of the building? So, the director wanted to create this space.That golf course was supposed to be based off of a golf course in Beverly Hills, just off of Santa Monica Boulevard, which is a private course and you cant film on it. We had to film at a golf course at Porter Ranch, many miles away in the Valley.To do the shot, we literally had to roto out our characters and create a golf course, and then put in a crowd, then put a city in the background, and then also Beverly Hills on the other side, which also meant there was a pond for a water hole right there. We had to replace the water because now all the reflections in that were wrong because we were adding a new background.I thought it came out really great, considering where it started. Also, the reasons why we did it made sense from the story standpoint. Thats why I feel like that was a good decision because its all about the story at the end. You dont want the audience to go, Ah, its right there! Why do they have to go do all this stuff just to steal the golf cart when they could have just walked over there? Its all about what we can do in VFX to help tell the story.When we showed that sequence to the crew, we did a private briefing early on and everybody was like, How did you do that? They were like, I was there! That was not the golf course! So when you hear that from your crew members, I think its kind of cool and it served its purpose.The post Going old-school with the VFX on Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F appeared first on befores & afters.