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Covert Operation: David Vickery talks about Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Paramount Pictures VFX supervisor David Vickery takes us behind the scenes of the effects created for Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation...

by David Vickery on 12th August 2015

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Paramount Pictures VFX supervisor David Vickery takes us behind the scenes of the effects created for Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation...

Tom Cruise (Risky Business) has developed a reputation for performing his own stunts, but even the fearless actor needed some digital magic conjured by David Vickery (Furious 6) who supervised the visual effects for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015).

"The marketing campaign has focused on the practical effects, and that is fair to a certain extent because Chris McQuarrie's (Jack Reacher) mantra was always do it for real, get it in-camera, and no CG for CG sake,” notes Vickery, who was responsible for over 1,200 visual effect shots. "But inevitably there are portions of the movie that rely on visual effects to enable them to be brought to life.”

Hang on for your life

A particular example comes to mind. "You could have had Tom Cruise at the side of the A400 with wires everywhere which aren't much fun to see. Visual effects steps in and paints the rigs out. In addition to that the vision of the filmmaker was to make the location more acceptable to the story. We filmed it in the UK but the A400 environment was supposed to be a disused military airfield in Belarus. We replaced large portions of the background, reorganized the structure of the airfield, and put in grass covered hangers and fencing.”

"We did previs for the A400 because Airbus was going to be picky about where we could put our rigs and mounts,” states David Vickery. "We knew exactly the shots we were going to get, exactly where Tom was going to run on the plane, exactly where camera angles needed to be, and the speed the plane would be travelling."

Solving issues with VFX

"The M3 Chase through the streets of Casablanca and the Bike Chase across the highway were previs more from an action than a technical perspective. We wanted to get a read on how that would be filmed. The Torus was both a creative and technical exercise. Initially, the sequence was going to be one continuous take with no cutting, and there would be a split-screen device that would enable the director to tell concurrent stories. But in the end it was cut into four main shots that span about four-and-a-half minutes. We had to neatly work out how to put together the various takes to make a continuous one.”

A variety of formats had to be integrated seamlessly. "We're working with anamorphic and spherical film as well as digital footage,” remarks David Vickery. "If it's a drama shot the DI will step in and try to re-grade or upgrade to match the stocks. If it has been scanned for visual effects, then the tendency is to get all of the post-production houses to do the work of matching the stocks together. The Torus Sequence was shot on ALEXA 65, but if we didn't make that look like anamorphic film then we were going to end up with one digital sequence in the middle of a film look. We needed to apply all of the film tricks like aberrations, lens distortions, and grain.”

Interactive light plays a pivotal part in blending together practical and digital elements. "About 60- to 70-percent of all of the passing traffic was digital in the Motorway Chase. But we've got the rest of the 20- to 30-percent in-camera, so that was great lighting reference. We shot lighting passes up and down the road everyday so that it would match the lighting conditions depending on the day the plate was shot.” Textures were captured off the road surface and reflections placed onto the CG vehicles to add to the believability of the action scene.

Taking to the streets

"We built a substantial portion of the Torus interior wall which Tom could perform against,” remarks David Vickery. "Our underwater DOP Pete Romano (Inception) was able to film fantastic visual references of the various areas of the Torus from different angles and in various lighting conditions. The tank was about 40 to 50 feet in diameter. We were able to look at how the diffusion in the water changed the colour and saturation and would light things differently. The different currents that ran through the water would change the refractive properties and distortions within the water surface. The Torus was a complete CG rebuild.”

No digital double was required for Tom Cruise. "The difficult part was that you're underwater and Tom can't have any air. We thought about a breathing apparatus but decided early on that it would obscure large parts of his face.” Previs was essential in making efficient and effective shooting decisions. "We could say at the end of take one, ‘Tom, we need you here. The camera is five feet away from you and your arm is stretched out to grab the wall. At the beginning of take two we need you to be at the same place and we're going to try to get you as close as possible.' That's exactly how we did it. We would run over the end of take one so when we went to take two we had lots of overlap. Tom was fantastic and would perform long takes for us.”

Filming the Vienna State Opera

A scheduling conflict at the Vienna State Opera resulted in some improvising with the visual effects. "Another production was on stage at the time so there was no way we could clear their stage space out and put on our own production of Turandot,” states David Vickery. "We could film the audience and the entrance of the opera house. We had 50 extras. For three nights we had three ALEXAs shooting spherical plates of the interior from eight different positions all the way around the auditorium, so that we could do the crowd tiling later on. The stage was shot at a large-scale production rehearsal facility in West London called LH2 Studios which has an incredibly high ceiling."

"The Art Department built the entire stage and set for the opera, and the front two rows of the opera house. We had a full orchestra and beyond them a green screen. Backstage we had all of the trestles and gantries. Double Negative had to take all of the plates that we shot and re-project them onto the LiDAR of the interior of the Vienna State Opera.” Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson (Hercules) leap off of the rooftop of the actual building. "Tom and Rebecca had a wire rig around them. Double Negative did rig removal and added the flags around them as well.”

Leap of faith

"During the chase in Casablanca there's a shot where the car is reversing down an alleyway and leaps over a set of steps,” remarks David Vickery. "They wanted to do it practically, so on the day special effects constructed an air cannon, put a BMW into it and fired it. It did do some structural damage to one of the surrounding buildings so they only could do it once. The car landed on its tail rather than tumble end over end. We went back to London and looked at hundreds of clips of cars tumbling end over end. No two cars tumble the same way. One of the hardest challenges was trying to convince Chris McQuarrie that we could put a digital stunt into the middle of this practical film and have everybody believe it.”

While assembling the A400 Sequence, Chris McQaurrie and his editor Eddie Hamilton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) decided to alter a shot which was meant to be a satellite POV of Ethan Hunt running across the tops of hangers. "It became more of a helicopter shot. We shot an element of Tom at Leavesden Studios running across the top of a grassy berm using a Technocrane performing a poor-man's motion-control move to ensure that the angle was correct, rotoscoped him out of that plate, and dropped him back into the aerial plate that we had shot with the A400 at Wittering.”

Stunt featurette

"We had a graphic vendor called Spov that did graphics for 250 shots,” remarks David Vickery. "Initially, there was a big collaboration with BMW because they were keen to make sure that everything we did was in the keeping with the aesthetic for BMW iDrive and BMW ConnectedDrive. They don't actually have a passenger window entry system. There are also some fantastic graphics in the film. The initial mission briefing happens in a record store. Tom puts some vinyl down on an old school record player and the graphics are thrown up into a hologram projection onto the inside of the record player lid. Those were graphics supplied by Spov and composited by Double Negative. We looked at current technologies and 3D holographic projection systems and tried the best we could to make sure that it wasn't science fiction.”

Return of the Masks

The signature mask disguises of the Mission: Impossible franchise make a cinematic appearance in the fifth instalment. "We have a new prototyping system that Ethan uses to make a mask for Benji to wear,” remarks David Vickery. "It looks stunning and I'm proud of it. We were tasked when doing mask reveals or mask on shots to come up with a way to do them with as little visual effects as possible. Chris McQuarrie and I hatched a plan to shoot a shot where Simon Pegg [Shaun of the Dead] is putting the mask on in front of a large mirror. The camera looks at him as Tom puts the mask on his head. The camera pans around to look into the mirror keeping Simon and Tom in the foreground. In the mirror you see Tom and Simon now has this mask on his head. Simon has been transformed into this real life likeness of the character he is trying to impersonate. It's done with no visual effects."

"The Art Department built a mirror set with a wall in-between and hole in the wall where the mirror should be. They built shelves on the mirror side of the room that had all of the writing backwards, versions of Tom's and Simon's costumes in reverse. We had doubles for Tom and Simon. In the mirror you see Tom with his hair parted backwards. The finished shot was a treat for me.”

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is out now.

Check out Yuuki Morita's website for more
Head over to the Mission Impossible official site
Learn more from VFX maestros with our interview with Seb Barker in 3dcreative issue #114

Covert Operation: David Vickery talks about Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Paramount Pictures VFX supervisor David Vickery takes us behind the scenes of the effects created for Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation...

Hang on for your life

Solving issues with VFX

Filming the Vienna State Opera

Leap of faith

Return of the Masks

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