Ingenuity Studios Delivers 300 ‘Eye Bulging’ Shots for ‘Weapons’

Ingenuity Studios delivered 300 shots for the recently released horror film Weapons, from Warner New Line and Zach Cregger.

In Weapons, there’s something wrong in Maybrook. When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

One particularly gruesome aspect of Ingenuity’s work involved CG eye bulging for actors Benny Wong, Austin Abrams, and Alden Ehrenreich, who are put under a spell in the film. The team worked on the entire eye area, which they dubbed the “raccoon mask.”

To achieve this, Ingenuity opted for a tracking marker-free approach, a technique they also used on The Watchers. Two or three witness cameras were set up around the scene to capture the motion, tracking facial and body motion to get a close digital representation. 3D scans captured all of the actors via a scan truck. The team then created levels 1-10 on how intense the eye bulge could be, depending on the needs of each scene.

Check out a scene of the bulging eyes now:

In another sequence, which the Ingenuity team dubbed the “kid train,” a group of bewitched kids break out of a basement and attack another character. Ingenuity created previs for the scene, which determined safe conditions (stunt paths) and used adult stunt actors of shorter stature, instead of creating full digital doubles. There are three shots of the kids breaking through windows, as well as a shot of them bringing the gate down on a fence with 20 kids rushing through. The shots involved a combination of special effects, stunts, and VFX.

The witness cameras used were Black Magic Pocket Cinema Cameras, and on the post side, the team used Houdini, Maya, and Nuke.

“Working with Zach, New Line, and the Vertigo team was pretty amazing, and from the moment the script landed in my hands, I just knew it was going to be a game-changer,” said Diego Rojas, VFX executive producer, Ingenuity Studios. “Zach knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish with visual effects, and trusted our team to get it done. We're so proud and grateful for the collaboration. Seeing the film hit #1 at the box office makes it all the more rewarding.”