The studio delivers 235 shots for the fifth installment in the ‘Indiana Jones’ franchise, including a frantic tuk-tuk chase sequence through the streets of Tangiers, Morocco.
Ever since Indiana Jones hooked his bullwhip to the undercarriage of a speeding truck and dragged himself back up to reclaim control of the vehicle in Raiders of the Lost Ark, death defying stunts remain an important trademark of the franchise. A new wrinkle for the fifth installment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, directed by James Mangold, was that Harrison Ford would act his real age except for the prologue, which through the magic of ILM FaceSwap, returned him to his previous circa 1982 self.
The movie stars Ford alongside Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag); Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory); John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark); Shaunette Renee Wilson (Black Panther); Thomas Kretschmann (Das Boot); Toby Jones (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom); Boyd Holbrook (Logan); Oliver Richters (Black Widow); Ethann Isidore (Mortel); and Mads Mikkelsen (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore).
A signature moment in the film involves a chase through the streets of Tangiers (actually shot in Fez, Morocco) where Jones has to leap from his tuk-tuk into one driven by his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Waller-Bridge) before it crashes into an oncoming truck. Production VFX Supervisor Andrew Whitehurst handed the assignment to Soho VFX with the work supervised by studio co-founder Berj Bannayan and Keith Sellers.
A prelude to the chase is Indiana Jones’ arrival in Morocco. “This is the only time we see Hotel L’Atlantique from the outside,” states Bannayan. “We built a 3D extension for it. It wasn’t tall enough. We cleaned up and relit. We added a lot of lights as well as people inside of the windows. Production had some footage of people inside the casino from later shots. We were able to roto out some people, but we didn’t get too specific about the action. It was more about making it feel full.”
The scene involved the practical shooting of numerous vintage cars. According to Bannayan, “The only thing that we did were some reflections of Christmas lights on the side of the cars. Everything we touched was above the heads of people aside from Indy where we had to get bits of building around him. There were several pieces that had to be tracked in and built. It was built in the context of only this view. On the whole show we had a lot of LiDAR, texture photography and HDRI footage that was taken. I was there for the Morocco shoot on second unit, which was responsible for the bulk of the pieces that we did. We had a team from Clear Angle which went everywhere with their LiDAR and cameras. It was great. We had LiDAR of every street that we went down, and vehicles, food stands, stalls, and carts.”
Outside of the hotel shot, Soho VFX’s work was divided into two main areas: exteriors of the stunt vehicles and performers where cars had to be added because there was not enough traffic or for safety reasons, as well as extra people, market stalls, and trash; and the interior tuk-tuk shots of the principal cast which were captured against bluescreen. “Production had a little electric racing car-looking thing that would zip around with an array of eight RED cameras pointing out in all directions and one with a fish-eye lens pointing upwards,” explains Bannayan. “We would stitch all of that into a big panorama so that the camera can look wherever it goes and then it was matter of finding that speed that felt right. Adding a bit of motion blur, having dust flying by and vehicles passing by so it felt like there was some dynamics to it because if we just slapped everything together, they would be making a Sunday drive.”
The live-action footage was captured a couple months before the bluescreen shoot. “They were able to get a general look of the lighting baked in well into the bluescreen plates,” Bannayan adds. Where Phoebe Waller-Bridge smashes the back windshield of a car and pulls herself up, he shares, “We added the glass in, but it was married to the real stunt that was shot in Morocco, so we have a ground truth for how everything is supposed to look to match the two shots together.”
Extensive previs was created for the tuk-tuk chase. “When we were shooting it in Morocco, the previs was already there and I’m pretty sure that we shot beat by beat the entire previs,” recalls Bannayan. “We had a good idea of where we were going. Once it came to the final edit there were a lot of changes in the coverage and interior shots because of how James Mangold wanted it to go. But we had a lot of reference. I was onset so I knew what things looked like, where it was, we were shooting, and what reference we had collected. It made it much easier to say, ‘This piece was shot on that road.’ Editorial would give us their mock-up to start working from, they would pick a piece of background that looked okay but it wasn’t necessarily the correct one so I would go through and say, ‘That’s the road we should be on, and this is the background we should be looking at.’”
Bannayan wasn’t present for the bluescreen shoot in London. However, he notes, “They had all the material and knew where in the world and time it was supposed to be. Because there was a lot of dialogue you wouldn’t get, ‘This one shot is meant to be at the end of the sequence ended up being at the beginning.’ There was a progression for the characters, where they were travelling and what was happening. Everything stayed where it was.”
No digital double was needed for the tuk-tuk leap. “There was a tuk-tuk that the stunt actor jumped out of, but we did replace his face with Harrison’s,” reveals Bannayan. “We added in the van and did the takeover of the CG tuk-tuk just before it gets hit. There was safety rigging for him, and he jumped out of that tuk-tuk. I was there when he did it. It was a crazy stunt.” For the tuk-tuk travelling down a set of stairs, the environment had to be rebuilt in CG. “The only thing we kept from the photography was the people in the tuk-tuk.” A wire coming from a tree was attached to the motorcyclist for when he collides into a cart of bamboo. “Bamboo had to be added and we cleaned up all of the stuff,” he notes. “The stunt team was great. There wasn’t a lot of rigging, and it didn’t get in the way of anything. It was well planned. The bike riders had these cool helmets that looked like hair.” Harrison Ford has remained fit and was actually able to wear his original costume. “I’m 50 years old and I can’t do half the things he was doing in his 70s!” Bannayan laughs.
Air conditioners, modern signs, and satellite dishes had to be painted out because the story is set in 1969. “The roads were long enough that in the context of one specific shot we had the right amount of footage,” states Bannayan. “We took the LiDAR and photography we had of Fez and did kitbashing of buildings.” In total, well over 100 individual assets had to be constructed. “It is more than usual because we had to build a lot of different vehicles. When it comes to shots, we did 235 and most of those were in the tuk-tuk chase.”
Maintaining consistency through the shots was the biggest challenge, Bannayan says, including “getting everything to feel like it’s all of the world whether it was bluescreen or live-action stunts.” “There was a lot of effort on our part from building the assets, rigging them and animation,” he concludes. “In terms of what I would like people to see, I’m always excited by the stuff that people don’t realize are visual effects. The big flashy stuff I love too but there is a piece of me that has a certain point of pride when somebody looks at it and goes, ‘I had no idea that was a visual effect.’ I love it when we can fool people because our job isn’t to make big flashy visual effects that people notice. It should all feel like a piece of the movie for the moviegoer.”
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.
