Friday the 13th: Compositing Kills at Camp Crystal Lake
There's no escaping the iconic elements of '80s nostalgia forever tied to Friday the 13th and its many sequels. From Jason Voorhees and his hockey mask to the tingle of fear that shoots through an audience when Harry Manfredini's score whispers, "ki ki ki, ma ma ma," the series remains one of the most popular horror franchises of all time. Now, with Platinum Dunes re-imagining the original film for an audience almost 30 years later, how does Jason come to life in a digital world? The answer lies with Asylum Visual Effects, whose work on the project pushes the notion that, when it comes to VFX, less can be a whole lot more.
From the earliest stages of the films' conception, director Marcus Nispel issued the edict that all effects needed to be, whenever possible, done practically, aiming for what he refers to as a "snuff charm" in the style of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper. This meant a lot of on-set prosthetics and quite a bit of blood and gore on the part of the makeup department.
"I have two kids," says producer Brad Fuller in full agreement. "And they know when there's CGI on the screen... In a slasher movie, what we have to do to really scare the audience has to feel very real."
A major part of Asylum's contribution in the pre-production stage was to evaluate the script and pinpoint precise scenes in which vfx could be used to enhance or augment the scares. Asylum's Mitchell S. Drain had a crew of about 10 working on Friday and, in the end, the house only ended up working on about 25 shots total. Still, despite being few in number, their subtlety added a lot to the scare level.
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