After we here at STARBURST were blown away by Michael Dougherty’s GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, we were lucky enough to sit down with Alejandro Diego von Dorrer; the leader of the team at Ollin VFX who were one of the teams responsible for creating the stunning visual effects for the latest film in Legendary’s MonsterVerse, to talk about what it was like to work closely with Michael and what parts of the movie that he and his team were in charge of .
STARBURST: Congratulations on the film, it’s fantastic – how rewarding is it to see your work in all its glory on the big screen?
ALEJANDRO: It’s absolutely amazing. It’s so rewarding to see our work on the big screen and to know that people have really enjoyed it.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your history in the industry and some of the other projects that you have worked on?
We are a company that started over 20 years ago in Mexico and our dream from the very beginning is to work on big Hollywood movies. So, at first we worked on advertising in Mexico and it wasn’t until 13 years ago when we felt like we were ready to try and crack the Hollywood market and opened an office in LA. Now we basically dedicate our time and work to the US market and Godzilla: King of the Monsters is easily the biggest film we’ve ever worked on in our history. We’ve been lucky enough to work on many different films but in this project, we did over 530 shots which is double what we’ve done in the past. So, it was really exciting to get to work with Michael and his team on this gigantic film.
What was it like working with Michael Dougherty and helping him bring his vision to life through state-of-the-art special effects?
What I really loved about working with Michael is that we got to work in such an organised way. When you do twice as much work as you are used to a lot of things can go wrong especially in visual effects. Every film is different. Everything with Michael went really smooth and he was so professional. He’s a hardcore fan of Godzilla whereas I, of course, knew about Godzilla but have never really been a fan. It was really nice to see how involved and how much care Michael took with everything that went into it. You can definitely see that in the finished film – after working on it, you can consider me a real fan of Godzilla now [laughs]. He gave very clear direction and knew exactly what he wanted – we had meetings all the time which helped us out immensely because we could get feedback on what we were doing straight away.
What part of the VFX process did you and your team work on?
We actually did not work on any of the main battle scenes between the monsters – we really did everything else that goes on around it. We did a lot of set extensions, a lot of environments and atmospheric scenes (basically adding snow and thunder) and when they were in the ARGO flying around the world, we were responsible for showing the world outside the windows to make it feel that they are flying around. They originally wanted to do some of that practically by having a plane fly through some clouds but then Michael gave us the task to recreate that in CGI and of course they liked it so much because it looked photorealistic that they used us for a lot of similar bits. One of the scenes from the trailer where Rodan is coming out of the Volcano, we were responsible for adding the lava, smoke and fog – fun fact, they actually shot that in Mexico City! So, we did everything around the big shot to make sure there was continuity. Our artists in house were given a direct link to the director to work hand in hand with him so it was overall one of the best experiences we’ve had as a group. Another fun fact is that in the scene where Emma Russell is on the big screen saying that the Titans should be set free, that is actually two different takes – because the second take was lit differently, we had to overlap the second Emma with the first in order to keep in within continuity which was a challenge but incredibly rewarding. At the end of the film, we were responsible for about a third of the overall shots that you see!
With Godzilla being such a global phenomenon, did you feel any pressure to please the fans when taking on this project?
Absolutely – it was clear to us that we had to help take this film to the next level. Michael was the shepherd of the whole story but we as the herd had to make sure that we helped him achieve his goal to make a film worthy for fans of Godzilla. There’s a long legacy before us and there is a huge fanbase for this franchise, so everyone involved felt pressure but was definitely up for the challenge to take it to the next level. It was hard but a great challenge.
If you could work on any other franchise, which one would it be and why?
Oh wow, that’s a big question! I think for me, more than a franchise, as long as we get to work closely with a passionate director who has a crystal-clear vision, then we as a team are happy to work with them. Obviously, we would love to work on other fantasy movies including any Marvel movies but having a hard-working team is ultimately what we look for. We’ve worked multiple times with David Fincher over the course of 13 years and he has so much attention to detail and that elevates everyone around him which makes it a rewarding experience every time we work with him. Also, as stated before, we have loved working with Michael and would be thrilled to work on any other projects he does in the future.
We end on one of the most important questions for fans of the MonsterVerse – When Godzilla meets King Kong next year, who are you rooting for?
I, of course, have no idea what is going to happen [laughs] but I actually don’t think there’s going to be a winner – I think they are going to end up working together against a bigger evil. They’re probably going to fight at the beginning but will have to team up towards the end of the movie – that sounds really cool to me. At the end of the day, I think the audience will win whatever happens.
GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS is still in UK Cinemas – our review can be found here