The following is an extract from my article on Godzilla: King of the Monsters, published in Cinefex 165, June 2019
As a boy growing up in the 1980s, budding film director Michael Dougherty spent his Saturday mornings glued to the DC Comics animated show Super Friends and Hanna-Barbera’s Godzilla Power Hour cartoon. Thrilled by the exploits of the gargantuan reptile Godzilla and his monstrous adversaries, Dougherty started delving into the character’s long history. “The cartoon acted as a gateway to the old Godzilla movies,” said Dougherty. “In the Hanna-Barbera version, Godzilla was the good guy — a character that the human scientists would call upon when they needed help against another giant monster. So I always saw him as a hero figure. Then I discovered the original 1954 Toho movie. That’s actually a very somber and mournful film, the opposite of the colorful movies they released in the ‘60s and ‘70s when they were actively trying to make Godzilla a character for children. The idea that he started off as a villain and became a hero only made me love him more.”
Dougherty studied at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts, specializing in traditional cel animation. He went on to direct the low-budget comedy horror features Trick ‘r Treat and Krampus and was co-writer on films including Superman Returns and X-Men: Apocalypse. In January 2017, Legendary Pictures announced Dougherty’s appointment as director of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the latest installment in the production company’s growing ‘monsterverse’ franchise that began with the 2014 reboot Godzilla and continued in 2017 with Kong: Skull Island.
Michael Dougherty penned the new film’s script in collaboration with writing partner Zach Shields. The story pits Godzilla against a legion of Titans — mythological giants awoken from thousands of years of slumber and bent on taking control of planet Earth. When the three-headed Ghidorah commences a reign of terror, scientists from the cryptozoological agency Monarch ally themselves with the essentially benevolent Godzilla in a desperate attempt to restore the world’s natural order. “Mythology has always been part of these films,” observed Dougherty. “I think that’s what makes the Toho creatures different than the other giant atomic monsters from the ‘50s, like Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis or The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms — they were actual characters with personalities and histories and rivalries. If we were going to evolve this monsterverse concept, we had to dive more into that mythic aspect.”
Foremost among the film’s new creatures — and the chief villain of the piece — is Ghidorah, who first appeared in Toho Pictures’ 1964 feature Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, in which he battled not only Godzilla but also the winged Rodan and insectile Mothra, who made their feature debuts in 1956 and 1961 respectively. Reuniting the titanic trio for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Dougherty and visual development supervisor Matt Allsop gave Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. the job of roughing out initial concepts for the three monsters. Dougherty subsequently divided the work, assigning Ghidorah to concept artist Simon Lee and Mothra to Legacy Effects, and retaining ADI to work on Rodan.
ADI artists including Mauricio Ruiz and Justice Joseph imagined Rodan as a gigantic flying creature with a wingspan approaching 900 feet — a mind-boggling size that forced a compromise between scientific plausibility and what looked cool. Drawing from nature, the director encouraged the team to study birds of prey. “When you look at the huge, hooked beak of a bald eagle, it’s sleek and beautiful but still very vicious looking,” said ADI co-founder Tom Woodruff Jr. “We also wanted a vulture look, with a neck that brings the head jutting out in this predatory attack mode. For wings, we looked at bats.” ADI sculpted textures that betrayed Rodan’s origins inside a volcano. “We pursued this idea of cracked, blackened skin. As Rodan moves, those calloused areas break apart and reveal a glowing interior.”
While most of the design work was done digitally, Woodruff saw an opportunity to present ADI’s Rodan concept in a more traditional medium. “We were doing everything in Photoshop and ZBrush,” Woodruff related, “but there was something about Rodan that I couldn’t quite get my head around. I asked Legendary if we could do just one physical sculpture incorporating everything that we felt positive about. Tim Martin developed a pretty sizeable model — probably 18-20 inches tall — with gigantic wings spread out. Michael Dougherty was completely delighted with it; in fact, I think it ended up in his office!”
Tasked with developing Mothra concepts, Legacy Effects had to design not just a single creature, but a complete life-cycle. Concept artist Darnell Isom worked primarily in Pixologic ZBrush, referencing real-world insects and giving Mothra’s cocoon the decorative feel of an Egyptian sarcophagus. Michael Dougherty wanted his Mothra to be feminine, deadly, and strong enough to hold her own against her Titan adversaries. “We looked at mantises and big Japanese wasps, because they feel aggressive,” said Isom. “We extended her legs and made them more opposable — I think that’s the biggest difference that people will notice. Making her look feminine was kind of the easy part, because a lot of insects already have an abdomen that flares out like wide hips.”
Legacy Effects took over Ghidorah duties from Simon Lee partway through the process. Concept artist Glenn Hanz preserved Lee’s designs for the head and overall silhouette, and fleshed out the monster’s anatomy and wing structure. “On the original Toho character, the wings just stick out like fins,” Hanz remarked. “I did some versions with secondary wings inside the main wing, but Michael thought it had too much going on. We ended up with something that’s more or less a bat wing. I kept the middle head pretty much what they sent us, but the two heads on the sides were supposed to be different characters; I made one more brutal-looking and the other one more mischievous.” Ghidorah’s scales resembled those of a gold cobra. In a nod to the Toho films, the final Ghidorah design retains just enough human form that there could conceivably be a man inside the monster.
MPC spent around seven months developing the monster concepts into fully rigged CG assets. MPC art director Loic Zimmermann finalized design work on the new creatures, and refreshed the look of Godzilla as laid down in the previous film. “Mike wanted the back spikes to be closer to the classic 1954 Godzilla,” said production visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron, “so we made them star-shaped and much bigger. We made him a little leaner, his head about five percent smaller, and gave him a slightly more aggressive profile overall.” MPC upgraded its skin sliding and fat simulation systems, and introduced more responsive facial rigging. The team built three scale presets into each creature rig, enabling artists to change the size of the monsters to suit the action. Officially scaled at 400 feet tall, Godzilla stood sometimes at 600 feet, sometimes a mere 300 feet.
Day for Nite and The Third Floor created previs for much of the film. Michael Dougherty engaged enthusiastically with the process, which took him back to his animation roots. “I fell in love with previs,” Dougherty admitted. “It really helped me craft the story, and it helped every department prepare for the shoot. When crafting these gigantic genre films full of otherworldly creatures and environments, the more you can do in advance to prepare, the better.” The director made extensive use of long takes and wide tableau shots, and signaled certain action beats through dramatic changes in lighting, enhanced by dense atmospheric effects. Cameras remained resolutely embedded in the environment, swaying in the wind and shaking when the monsters stomped their feet. For these reasons and more, the previs was refined to an unusually high level.
“A lot of the shots are heavily choreographed,” remarked Guillaume Rocheron. “That’s why we committed to that very advanced previs, lighting all the shots and animating all the creatures far beyond what you normally need. We did a lot of techvis, but on set we didn’t use things like simulcam. We just committed to shooting the previs.” This commitment continued into postproduction. “Once we were done with shooting, we turned over the previs to the vendors and said, ‘Ingest this in your pipeline, merge it with the plates and make it your version one of the shot.’ That allowed the vendors to do what they’re really great at – the final animation and effects and making everything photoreal.”
Rocheron and visual effects producer Maricel Pagulayan steered the creation of 1,535 visual effects shots for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. As lead vendor with 660 shots, MPC handled most of the film’s big action sequences including the all-important monster-on-monster action. DNEG delivered 151 shots across 13 sequences, while Method Studios and Rodeo FX worked on 129 and 150 shots respectively. Ollin VFX delivered around 400 shots embracing tasks such as cleanup and adding digital skies to cockpit shots; additional visual effects support came courtesy of Raynault VFX and Savage VFX.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters opens in an ancient Chinese temple, where Monarch paleobiologist Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and her teenage daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) are studying an enormous leathery egg. The egg hatches and a slug-like creature emerges — the larval form of Mothra. Raynault VFX executed an establishing shot in which the camera pans from Emma’s apartment window to a digital matte painting of the temple nestled amid rainforest.
The temple set was centered on a section of gantry surrounded by bluescreen. Director of photography Lawrence Sher incorporated LED panels into his lighting design; tethered balloons provided eyelines for the actors. Method Studios added the temple interior digitally, drawing inspiration from the Khmer architecture of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat religious complex. Artists sculpted ornate decorative details, and applied textures in Chaos Group V-Ray using triplanar projections. “We used procedural textures instead of hand-painting because of the scale of the environment,” said Method Studios visual effects supervisor Daryl Sawchuk. “We had moss and vines growing up the walls, based on photo reference of all these ancient temples. It was a massive modeling exercise.” The temple contained an Easter egg for Mothra fans in the form of statues of the Shobijin, twin priestesses who first appeared in the 1961 feature Mothra.
Monarch has constructed a climate-controlled chamber inside the temple, maintaining a moisture-laden atmosphere around the egg. Special effects fogged up the stage and introduced a constant shower of dust and debris, frequently obscuring the bluescreen. Method Studios isolated the actors from the plates and replicated the entire set digitally, avoiding the onerous task of rotoscoping the gantry’s fine mesh. Effects artists then reproduced the look of the live-action atmospherics. “It was a somewhat painful process, but the results definitely paid off,” Sawchuk commented. “Our effects team actually thought this was the best thing ever because they weren’t just adding rain or atmosphere that looked physical and real — it needed artistic interpretation to convey depth and scale and mood.”
With most of the movie’s big scenes playing out in dense atmosphere or storm conditions, the filmmakers kept practical stage effects front and center throughout production. “Because of the natural elements required by the story, it was really important that the movie never felt that it was shot on a clean bluescreen,” Guillaume Rocheron asserted. “I was like: ‘More smoke! More rain!’ It generated more work for us in terms of rotoscoping, but with the digital cameras we were using, like the Alexa 65, we had a lot more bandwidth. I realized this when I did Ghost in the Shell, so walking into Godzilla I decided not to protect things just so we could key the bluescreen. It created a lot of work for my friends in special effects!”
“It was definitely a curve ball,” agreed special effects supervisor Eric Frazier. “As a special effects guy, a lot of times you walk into a bluescreen set and think it’s going to be an easy day. But Guillaume was always saying, ‘You’ve gotta give me more atmosphere, dude.’ It was the first time I’d seen the visual effects technology go to a place where they could really control what we were giving them. I think that’s great. For so long it felt like our craft was slowly going away to where they wouldn’t need us any more. Now, it’s like when I was doing this as a kid again — having fun, getting creative, and doing cool stuff.”
Method Studios developed an 80-foot larva asset in what turned out to be an atypical creature build. “Normally, you’d look for an anatomical reference,” said Daryl Sawchuk. “But things like slugs and caterpillars don’t have much of an internal structure.” To outfit Mothra with an internal bioluminescent glow, artists first attached an array of spheres to a basic skeleton, then converted them into light emitters. “We used V-Ray’s layer shader with a mix of refractive subsurface shaders in order to achieve the required complexity. That gave lighting an easy way to control the bioluminescent color and intensity. That bunch of internal structures also gave us a great external look, even though it wasn’t functionally or anatomically correct.”
Mothra herself provided the main source of illumination in most shots, with around 80 percent of the light coming from the ‘cosmic egg’ pattern on her shell, and 20 percent spilling from her belly. Her movements were keyframe animated, enhanced by dynamic simulations of the silk webs hanging from her body, plus countless gobbets of dripping goo.
Text copyright © Cinefex 2019. Reprinted here with permission.
Graham Edwards 