The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Visual Effects Breakdowns

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Visual Effects Breakdowns

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is an upcoming American fantasy drama film directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston and written by Ashleigh Powell and Tom McCarthy. It is based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, about a young girl who finds a Nutcracker doll among the family’s gifts and is charged by her parents to take special care of it. The film stars Keira Knightley, Mackenzie Foy, Eugenio Derbez, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Misty Copeland, Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman. It is scheduled to be released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 2, 2018, and is planned to be shown in Real D 3D and Dolby Cinema.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms VFX by MPC

Lead by overall VFX Supervisor Max Wood and MPC VFX Supervisor Richard Clegg, MPC’s artists crafted more than 1000 shots for Disney’s “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.” The scope of the work was wide-ranging, from CG environments including palaces, forests and rivers, to large-scale FX work and extensive digital character builds and animation.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms VFX by Rodeo FX

Our team created a 1.20 minute long, fully CG, opening sequence for Disney’s adaptation of the Holiday classic, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

For this grand opening sequence, we merged the Walt Disney Pictures logo with an animated Christmas postcard showing a bird’s eye view of 19th Century Victorian London. Using archives as reference, and Geo Terrain Data as a base, we created a point cloud scene in order to build an exact replica of London and key landmarks. The landscape enfolds over a wide range of terrain and environments, from an iced-over Thames River with skaters, to Christmas markets, traditional paved and brick streets, snowball fights, Santa Claus parades and carollers.

We designed the FX snow in stereo to make the audience feel the snowflakes coming towards them. As the camera comes closer to the buildings, a series of different rooms are visible, created with props and crowds in order to deliver more detail and realism. We lit and comped the shot using deep methodology for holdouts, depth of field, grading and stereo. From the owl in flight to horse-driven carriages, our artists created more than 1200 props and buildings and over 2600 crowd to bring to life the 2700-frames shot, which we delivered in stereo, pushing the limits to the extremes of both our technologies and our artists.

Director: Lasse Hallström
Release Date: 2 November 2018 (USA)

Production VFX Supervisor: Max Wood
Special Effects Supervisor: Chris Corbould

The VFX are made by:
MPC (VFX Supervisors: Richard Clegg & Max Wood)
Luma Pictures (VFX Supervisor: Brendan Seals)
Rodeo FX
DNEG
Nvizage (Virtual Camera Supervisor: Hugh Macdonald)
One of Us (VFX Supervisor: Tyson Donnelly)
Baraboom! Studios
Mackevision
Audiomotion
Ncam Technologies

Video by Walt Disney Studios

For more info:

Official IMDB page of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms