He wasn’t wearing any blue garment, just black – which helped with not getting any unnecessary color spill in the set. Our costume designer, Mary Zophres, had the great idea of having him wear a regular shirt where the long sleeves were just folded up, which helped with hiding his arms. It was clear that 98% of all shots would be painting out his arms and legs, so SFX Supervisor Steve Cremin had to devise a way to cut holes into the set and his chair to make it appear he was resting on his stumps. He was performing this poetry while standing in a hole in the ground with his hands behind his back, and went for it take after take, sometimes in the freezing cold. The ‘wingless thrush’ – as he is referred to on a poster in the film – was a combined effort of the art department, special effects, costume design, VFX and, of course, Harry Melling’s incredible stamina.
CG dust and smoke elements helped with the ghost transition. The Lyre was added as a CGI element, which we seamlessly transitioned into the real one from set. BigHug added little touches in the animation, like the stretching out of the wings at the beginning, as if they are waking up. The animation was timed to match the three-quarter beat of the song. We finally settled on a ‘swan-like’ shape in a medium size. The wings, created by BigHugFX, went through a number of iterations for size and shape. Backgrounds were either plates or a mixture of cloud photography and 2.5D matte painting elements. Plates of actor Tim Blake Nelson were shot by the main unit outdoors against bluescreen, with him either hanging from wires, courtesy of SFX Supervisor Steve Cremin, or by placing him on a moving slant board.
But the brothers had a very good idea of how far they really wanted to take the violence. Originally, we went a bit over the top: for example, the thumb wasn’t fully shot off, but still attached to the actor’s hand and dangling back and forth hilariously. Additionally, we used blood-spatter elements and wound elements to enhance the practical make-up. Michael Huber – together with Martin Grassl from BigHugFX – developed a digital asset in Houdini for blood simulations, which we could then re-use and tweak on a per shot basis, adjusting volume, velocity, direction and impact. For the fingers being shot off, we painted out the actor’s fingers and added little stumps of bone. We talked early on about the levels of gore Joel and Ethan wanted to see here – not so much Tarantino, but more Peckinpah with a dash of Looney Tunes.
So we assembled an extensive in-house team under our east side effects banner and worked as the hub for the external work coming in from vendors in New York and around the globe. They were also interested in keeping the VFX close to their editorial, and have us be in charge of dealing with external vendors where it was necessary. These storyboards gave a pretty good indication of what to expect, but there were still a lot of changes due to the nature of the project, such as weather, shooting with animals, and more. Todd Anderson, who has been their go-to storyboard guy since Raising Arizona. The whole project, like any other film of theirs, was storyboarded by J. After that, we started collecting references from other films or real-life footage. We went through the script with Joel and Ethan Coen and designed what we call a ‘VFX Bible,’ which outlined how we think certain effects could be achieved. We were first approached about The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in January 2017.
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