By Ben Mehlman
Bullet Train is a neon-infused, violent and hilarious Agatha Christie-style romp starring Brad Pitt and an ensemble of who’s who, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sandra Bullock. The film follows a plethora of assassins whose different missions all coalesce around a common thread: White Death, the leader of a Yakuza-like crime syndicate. It all takes place on a bullet train speeding from Tokyo to Kyoto.
Stephen James
The film is directed by David Leitch (Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde, Hobbs & Shaw) and based on a 2010 Japanese novel of the same name. At the center of this action-packed blockbuster are eye-popping visual effects. I recently spoke with DNeg VFX supervisor Stephen James (Dune, Deadpool 2, Blade Runner 2049) about the film, its challenges and the 1,015 shots the studio oversaw.
Tell us about your working relationship with David Leitch. What were your initial conversations like?
I worked with David on Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw, under Michael Brazelton, who was the VFX supervisor on those shows. Conversations started as I was finishing up work on Dune: Part 1, so I was able to jump on as they were wrapping up the LED pre-production phase of the film.
Can you elaborate on what was built during the LED pre-production phase?
We used LED content on-set for hundreds of shots. Since it takes place on a train, mostly at night, with a lot of repeating environments passing by, we decided this was the perfect use for LEDs. Due to the film’s tight schedule, we came at it from a few different approaches.
They filmed an array of footage traveling down Japanese highway systems for practical backdrops for the LED content. This allowed a realistic range in detail for the environments, but since you can’t attach cameras to a real bullet train, we had to heavily stabilize the highway system footage to make it feel like a smooth and fast ride.
Since we’re traveling so fast, we created long stretches of prerendered CG environments using Clarisse and Unreal. We built city blocks, parks, track structures, overhead structures, everything close to the track — things to give you that sense of speed. Then everything that was filmed, as well as the pre-rendered environments, were rendered out between 12K and 20K resolutions, split out into massive LED panels running around the on-set cars. On-set, they could pick the content they wanted to use, swap it out, speed it up or slow it down. In real time, Michael Brazelton could add or remove layers — like a train passing or a tunnel to go through — if it was necessary for things like action or lighting cues.
Were any greenscreens or bluescreens used?
At night it’s all LED, with an occasional shot if they couldn’t quite get it in-camera. Then they would use the LED screens for a clean, beautiful bluescreen. Once the sun rose, we switched to LED bluescreens and greenscreens. We picked that point because the LED screen brightness isn’t quite there yet and once the train leaves Kyoto, things get really crazy.
What software and hardware were you using? Did you use Unreal?
The postviz team used Unreal to fly cameras around and try out different ideas so David could give quick feedback and have it rendered in a way where you understand what the shot’s going to look like. As far as hardware, we used Disguise to handle the massive resolution and allow us the flexibility for playback and adding layers to the environments. For anything pre-rendered at DNeg, we use Clarisse, which allows us to have massive environments where we can scatter thousands of our tree, building and street assets, which are necessary when travelling across vast distances.
Tell us about creating the train collision.
We called the moment when our train collided with the oncoming train “The Can Opener.” That sequence was fun because it’s so over the top. We treated the physics of the train peeling over our hero train almost like a wave, which plays into the movie’s theme of bad luck versus good luck. We built our train with this destruction in mind, accounting for the various cars and interior contents like chairs, snack trays, etc. We also decided what materials to use to build the train, taking into account how the elements would warp, shred, split or explode. A lot of time went into building all those assets for this destruction and then making sure all the materials behaved realistically.
One of the tricky parts is that trains in Japan are super-clean and they travel on tracks extremely smoothly. Secondary motion and dirt can be useful for us; they help add some complexity. So since the trains are so clean you have to do a lot more to make it realistic and focus on the finer details, like giving every panel individual screws, surface scuffs, subtle bends across the surface.
How did you create the shots of Brad Pitt flying through the train in slow motion?
There was a lot of previz — led by DNeg head of previz Alex Cannon — to make sure what they filmed was going to work with VFX in post. They shot Brad, The Elder (Hiroyuki Sanada), his son and some chairs in front of a bluescreen. Everything else was CG. At that point we had completely taken over the train interior because we wanted to have pieces of it shearing away, and it’s way too dangerous to film anything like that with an actor. So they built this rig for Brad so he could fly in the air and moved in any direction needed while hitting the necessary comedic beats. For example, they knew they wanted him flying out of the driver car, getting smacked in the face with the coffee pot and safely crashing into the Momonga costume. Even the costume ended up being fully CG.
Speaking of comedy, quite a few VFX moments are super-funny. Can you elaborate on creating VFX that are intended to get a laugh?
It can be difficult. You have to find the right artist who understands that kind of humor. Already having worked with David on Deadpool 2 helped. I think they even make fun of the VFX in the narration of those films (laughs). So we had a good head start on that stuff.
What was the most difficult VFX sequence to crack?
I’d say the third act, when things were very CG-heavy, especially the train crash outside Kyoto. Normally, a lot of the environments would’ve been filmed, but because of pandemic restrictions, no one was able to go to Japan due to their strict lockdown. We worked with a Japanese company, Jaid Productions, who talked remotely with our set supervisor, Dan Kunz, who taught them to use shoot kits we sent to Japan. Jaid then went out and captured these varied environments that we had to build, such as rice fields, the mountains surrounding Kyoto and more. We were guiding them remotely on exactly what to shoot. That ended up being a fun experience.
Do you have a favorite VFX moment?
It’s funny because I love and am proud of all the big stuff, but I think it’s some of the smaller, more intimate sequences. There’s one where Brad Pitt and The Elder are talking and we’re traveling through rice fields as the sun’s rising, which was our CG environment. It’s a nice moment in this beautiful environment and it worked really well with the lighting of the scene.
Ben Mehlman is a writer/director. His script Whittier was featured on the 2021 Annual Black List after being selected for the 2020 Black List Feature Lab, where he was mentored by Beau Willimon and Jack Thorne. He has interviewed Oscar-nominee Peter Sciberras, Emmy-Nominee Amy Duddelston, Emmy-nominee Nona Khodai and many others.
