By Iain Blair

It’s been over 90 years since the classic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front was published. When the book was adapted for the big screen in 1930, it won the Oscar for Best Picture. Now, the new German film of the same name, directed by Edward Berger and streaming on Netflix, has been nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Visual Effects.

Frank Petzold

I spoke with VFX supervisor Frank Petzold, a Tippett Studios alumnus (The Legend of Tarzan, The Ring, Armageddon, The Golden Compass), about the challenges of creating the VFX, which was also recently celebrated at the European Film Awards — Petzold, UPP VFX supervisor Viktor Muller and Cine Chromatix VFX supervisor Markus Frank were recognized.

Let’s find out more…

What were the big challenges of creating the VFX for this?
I’d worked with Edward Berger before, so I sort of knew how he wanted to approach the VFX and the technology. But for me, the biggest challenge was taking on this iconic book and the responsibility of doing it right. It wasn’t like any other war movie, where every department does their thing and then you make the VFX louder, brighter and bigger. With this film, every department understood immediately that we had to tell the story in the most authentic way possible, and it had to be absolutely photoreal.

We also had to give our lead actor the perfect stage so you don’t get distracted by stuff in the background. We had to be careful in that way. With that philosophy in mind, we wanted all the technology to take a back seat and try to get it done with photographic elements as much as possible. Of course, we needed particle and smoke simulations and so on, but right away in planning it all out with the producers and AD, I wanted to have time on-set to get all the explosion elements.

How did that work?
We shot at this airport outside Prague in winter. The set was so huge that we were able to set up an outdoor greenscreen stage and set off real explosions — all the effects guys were at the end of a runway while they were shooting dialogue. That was a huge help. We were able to create hours of explosions and then drop them in as needed later.

With a war movie like this, you typically need a deep background of running soldiers, so you usually create CG doubles. But I had the outdoor greenscreen stage, so I used a couple of customized treadmills that were painted green, and when the stunt guys weren’t working, I’d get them to come over. We had six Red cameras set up at different speeds, and we’d shoot running soldiers — some charging and some throwing themselves off the treadmills as if they’d been hit. That gave us another big database of elements we could insert into the shots, mostly in the battle scenes.

Our set was gigantic, but even a gigantic set ends somewhere, so we always had to fill in the backgrounds. Edward wanted the battlefields to look endless and infinite but at the same time feel claustrophobic for all the soldiers running with guns going off all around them. You never knew where you were.

Is it true you 3D-scanned all the locations and sets?
We did. It came about because I really like to work with UPP in Prague and I did a project with Victor Muller before. They have all the scanning equipment and experience to be able to take on a show like this. And when you’re shooting in winter, everything is unpredictable, so I had to make sure we were totally prepared for anything.

After the battlefield was built, we took a few days to scan it all, just to have it. We used parts of it, but we didn’t use as much as we thought we would, as we didn’t have to. There are a few beautiful, wide-angle, bird’s-eye views that were matte paintings, and for that kind of stuff, we relied on the scans. We also scanned tanks and buildings because for some of the sets, we wanted it all to be destroyed. Having the scans allowed us to be able to apply texture quickly.

Then there was a scene (based on a true story) where the Germans and French exchanged prisoners, pulling up in trains in the forest, and we found that actual train and steam engine at a museum. So we scanned that, and again, it was about being totally authentic and creating a historic document that you could show people 100 years from now. It was also very important that we didn’t overdo any VFX — especially when it came to wounds. We wanted it all to be real but not so horrific that you couldn’t keep watching the film.

Give us some sort of breakdown about all the VFX and what it took to accomplish them.
We had about 500 VFX shots, but some of them were extremely long, such as the opening sequence, which goes on for nearly four minutes with, I believe, only two cuts. The rotoscoping alone for some of those shots took three months to do, and many of the background shots had so many layers, with bits of smoke and different explosions and so on. I divided the work up between two shops: UPP with Victor Muller, who did most of the heavy lifting and most of the shots, and Cine Chromatix in Berlin with Markus Frank.

I chose UPP because I love working with Victor, and I’d done the Ridley Scott show The Terror with him. We get on great, and we both love to improvise on-set and tinker with stuff. Then Frank and Cine Chromatix created shots for stuff we hadn’t really planned. There was a sequence where two soldiers are eating eggs, and it starts snowing. When we arrived on the set in the morning, we hadn’t planned for any weather, and suddenly we had the most beautiful snowfall – big, thick Christmas flakes. It gave the scene this wonderful sense of calm after the battlefield scenes, but by noon the sun was out, all the snow stopped and melted, and it looked like summer. So Frank and his team had to use VFX to change the seasons for that. They also did a lot of environmental work, like messing up buildings and caving walls. They’re great at that.

This film wasn’t like Avatar — we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel or come up with new VFX tools and technology. It was mainly Maya for the all the tank animation and stuff breaking apart. We also used lots of Houdini, and I love to use Nuke myself for shot layouts. In the end, it took about eight months to complete all the VFX work.

You’ve worked on a lot of huge projects. Where does this rate in terms of complexity and challenges?
It’s right up there. I was talking recently with Weta FX’s Joe Letteri about all the challenges of working on the Avatar films, and, of course, he’s on the other side of the spectrum in terms of dealing with the enormous technical demands. On this film, I actually felt more like a filmmaker than a VFX artist, as we’d look at the shots and really think about what they needed.

Look, I worked on Tarzan and creating all the animals and fur and so on. You get so absorbed in the detailed animation that at some point you have to slap yourself so you can stand back and see the actual film again. This was so different, and I always love being on-set — I’m probably one of the few VFX supervisors who likes that! I love improvising and coming up with a great VFX solution on the spot.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.