Post-production uncovered: Union on Saltburn (feature)

Union has revealed the VFX that went into Amazon MGM’s Saltburn. 

Starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver and Carey Mulligan, the film tells the story of a young university student in England in the mid-2000s, played by Keoghan, who becomes obsessed with his wealthy schoolmate, who subsequently invites him to spend the summer at his eccentric family’s estate.

The VFX for the film were required to be subtle, and VFX supervisor Dillan Nicholls and his team created numerous digital doubles, a CG champagne bottle, CG rain, multiple environments and landscape enhancements.

Nicholls comments “A key scene of the film takes place in a huge maze in the garden of a stately home. Four of the main characters run along different paths through the maze, emerging at the centre to discover one of the many twists and turns sprinkled throughout the story.

“The key shot in this sequence is a top-down drone view of the maze which required a 2.5D DMP environment with a full CG build of the maze hedge and digidoubles to replace the main cast, complete with accurate costumes, hair and so on. The digidoubles had to navigate through the maze and the CG shot had to cut seamlessly into the following in-camera shot of them arriving at the centre.”