Apex

Apex’s first climbing sequence takes place on the Troll Wall in Norway, Europe's tallest vertical rock face. Visualising the sheer drop from the 1,700-metre summit was an early challenge for the teams in London and Mumbai. 

“The client travelled to the Troll Wall to shoot helicopter photography and gather as much data as possible,” says McKenzie, “they also built an 18 metre high set piece of the wall to shoot on-set in Australia. It was our job to build a vast CGI environment around that footage, with lots of snow and wind effects simulation.”

During pre-production, Framestore Pre-production Services (FPS) — led by FPS Supervisor Darrin Hofmeyr — received LiDAR, aerial photogrammetry and Digital Elevation Map data of the Troll Wall. Using Autodesk’s Maya, they built a lightweight Postvis asset of the wall, texturing it with Substance Painter, and blending in footage of the actors on set. With this, they gave the film’s key creatives an idea of the final shots, while the VFX teams prepared to create a screen-ready environment. 

When it came to building the Troll Wall, balancing its stomach-churning steepness with the sequence’s wintery weather and atmospherics became a challenge.

“To convey the sheer drop beneath our characters and avoid the audience looking at a flat wall, we’d typically tilt our CG wall slightly towards the camera,” says McKenzie. “But that would have misaligned all the snow particles that we had resting on the various rocks and ledges. Instead the team created a dynamic virtual camera. This allowed us to frame the environment in a way that maximised the perception of depth and height. Specifically, it enabled us to view the world from the steepest, most precipitous angle possible.”

The Troll Wall climb is cut short by a devastating night-time blizzard, creating an ice-cold nightmare for the characters and a creative challenge for Framestore’s FX artists. 

To replicate the disorientating effects of the blizzard, the FX team inserted a snow simulation that would be lit only by the characters’ head torches. This meant capturing the precise movement, rotation, and orientation of each actor’s head to accurately recreate the light beams and their interactions with the snow particles.

For the actors’ safety on-set, they were fitted with fully-functioning safety apparatus, separate from the prop climbing ropes they were acting with. This further complicated the sequence for paint artists, who forensically removed safety wires, matts, and harnesses. To keep the audience believing that the characters are really hanging from their ropes, the props were augmented with realistic tautness. 

As the blizzard worsens, it thrusts the climbers into increasingly deadly situations, many of which had to be performed on-set by stunt performers. This necessitated full face swaps to keep the audience immersed, fortunately, the sequence’s freezing cold weather gave the team an unexpected advantage. 

“To climb in those harsh conditions, the characters are covered head-to-toe in cold weather gear,” explains McKenzie. “Only their faces are visible, which meant we could do a completely seamless face swap without a lot of the additional work that’s usually required.”

Apex’s climactic climb takes place on the treacherous cliffs above a colossal gorge, somewhere in the Australian outback. For Framestore’s London and Mumbai teams, this meant extending the in-studio rock face to create the cliffs and the surrounding environments. 

“All the action preceding this climb was shot on location in Glenbrook Canyon just outside of Sydney,” says McKenzie.

The main challenge became integrating the vast CG environment with the live action plates captured on-set. Because the climb was shot in broad daylight, with the sun moving around between shots, Framestore’s lighting artists had to relight the sequence to create consistency. 

When some of the sequence’s stunts proved too dangerous to be captured convincingly by stunt performers, Framestore created a realistic digital double. A process that began with the animation team, who presented several realistic falling motions to the filmmakers.

“When we had the preferred motion, we built a physically-accurate digi-double and matched it to the lighting. The goal was to be completely seamless, so that the audience doesn’t doubt for a second that these characters are in danger. In the end, we were able to create a fall you want to look away from, but can’t.” 

Apex is now streaming on Netflix.