Behind that stunning visual effect in Deadpool & Wolverine where Cassandra moves her hands through Paradox, Wolverine and Deadpools faces.Few icky visual effects shots have resonated so widely as the moments that Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) uses her powers to run her hands literally through the faces of other characters in director Shawn Levys Deadpool & Wolverine. These include Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds).For befores & afters, production visual effects supervisor Swen Gillberg breaks down, in his own words, exactly how those shots were achieved, including reference gathering, concepts and previs, shooting, and the final execution. As a special bonus, he also describes the moment Cassandra rips off Johnny Storms (Chris Evans) skin.From the comics: Early in prep, I came across these really crazy images in the comics of Cassandra putting her hands through peoples faces. Im like, Wow, thats wild. There was one specific image we saw of her hand going up through Paradoxs face in the comics. We used that as a style guide. Our goal was to create a photoreal version of the comics that was really true to comics. Obviously comic books and real life dont look alike, so its an interpretation, but that was the goal.We also did a bunch of early animation tests just to try to figure it out. And early on, along with the comic book reference, we scoured the internet for all the gross reference that you can imagine. Getting the performance: Having worked on Thanos and having Josh Brolin there as Thanos meant that one of my mantras was to always get the actors to act together to get their performances so they can look each other in the eyes. And so, we had to come up with a way to shoot these Cassandra scenes so that these actors are together and not in separate rooms.There was early talk about making a buck that Emma Corrin would put her hands through. But it was more important to me that Matthew Macfadyen and Emma could look each other in the eyes. So, we had to figure out a way to shoot together. Now, one thing to note is that that whole Cassandra through Paradoxs face scene was probably three times or four times shorter, as originally scripted. Through reshoots, it lengthened considerably, we added a ton of dialogue to it, so it just needed to be ready for changes. We needed a fluid shooting methodology.I worked with Emmas stunt double first to try to come up with a way for them to be together. Basically, it ended up being, just put them together. I originally had made these prosthetics like a fake arm that Emma could hold and push into Matthews face but I abandoned that. What we ended up doing was quite simple in that we just had her put her arm off to the side, trying not to block something to camera. Id have her put her hand on his hip or on his shoulder, and then we would do clean plates and digitally remove her arm and replace it from the shoulder down. That meant it was a digital arm up through his face.Building Paradox: ILM did the hands through Deadpools face in Cassandras lair. Framestore did the shots through Wolverines forehead and through Paradox. In order to get the effect working well, I think we spent six months on the asset of Paradox. We scanned Matthew at Clear Angle Studios and then Framestore took that and made an incredible asset that matched Matthews principal photography look exactly, and it had to hold up for extreme close-ups.Myself and visual effects supervisor Matt Twyford at Framestore wanted to be able to leverage Matthews original performance. So the double needed to directly split with itselfit needed to be an exact match. Indeed, in post, we used as much of Matthews plate photography as possible. We replaced most of it, but if we kept his hair or one ear, we would so that the match had to be just right.Incorporating reshoots: Interestingly, when we did the test screenings, we found that with the Cassandra character, the audience needed to relate to her more. So we gave her a bunch of additional lines and that became her and Matthews scene. Because our timeframe was tight in post for reshoots, we really wanted to keep the principal photography of Matthew. So we reshot all of Emmas new dialogue with both of them, but we shot it in such a fashion that we could reuse Matthews original plate photography. So, most of that scene is original plate photography of Matthew and new photography of Cassandra. We used poor mans motion control to match each frame, split her out, put her into the original plate photography, and married the two.Proof of concept: We storyboarded the whole thing, then we previsd the whole thing. Previs was a great learning experience. We had to figure out which side she was on him and how she would drag him, and if their hands would be fingers up her fingers down or to the side. We figured out a lot of the mechanics in previs and then we post-visd the whole thing after we shot it. During principal photography, we did gross keyframe animation and it was just gray shaded. We would do a picture and picture of the plate, and then wed do a gray shaded version just showing where her hands were roughly going. I would do notes myself and Shawn would do notes, and we kept honing that in.How the shots were done: The steps towards final started with blocking animation. Then we would do one more pass of more refined animation before final keyframe animation and locking it off. Then wed do a simulation on top of that and that we would get all of the creases and a next level of detail of hand interaction. There was then a creature pass, which was a detailed modeling pass where we get the intersection of her fingers with his skin, and then we did a final pass on skin thickness and intersection.I really wanted to make the skin very thin in order to see the detail of her knuckles under the skin and her cuticles over her nails. We needed to keep her hands below the skin, but make it as thin as possible so we could see the details underneath. Very late in the game, we added in that shot of her hands going under the eyes. Originally the hands went over the eyes and we put them under the eyes to make the eyes bulge out, which I think was a great addition.What we called the effect: We were not super-elegant, we called it hands through face. We did call it Cassandras Magic for a while, but I always found that confusing with her other magic, and there were a bunch of other magic powers that didnt make it in the movie. We were trying to keep her grounded. Along with really trying to creep the audience out, and it was our goal to make the visual effects not take you out of the storytelling. Its my favorite visual effect in the movie, and we put a lot of effort into those assets and to make it really, really, really solid. That other effect: There was also the moment she rips Johnny Storms body skin off. ILM did that shot. For that, we had to do some terrible internet searches that you never actually want to look at. We storyboarded it first, and we used that as a guide, then we searched the internet, and then we really took creative license and dialed the look of the skinless Johnny. We removed his stomach muscles so we could see inside him. We took creative license to get this iconic image that we had in our minds, where we wanted to see his intestines, which you technically wouldnt see if you took the skin off. We also played with different amounts of blood coming off.The eye blinks were in the original storyboards. Originally, it was thought they were too campy, but I kept putting them in and putting them in, and we finally all just laughed our butts off and it stayed in.I think the trickiest part was getting the simulation of the body falling right, not just falling straight on the ground. We did a simulation and then we ended up handcrafting itPut the liver here and then have it tumble over, etc.When we were shooting that, Chris Evans had such a blast. Hes always taken so seriously because hes Captain America, so he loved getting his ass kicked in this one. When Cassandra rips his skin off, he would duck out and run away. And I was standing right here, and Ryan was riffing on the lines, as he always does, and he came up with the, Not-my-favorite Chris. And Chris couldnt contain himself. He just was crying, laughing.The post We called it hands through face appeared first on befores & afters.