VFX team seamlessly integrated 99 individual shots into a 22-minute oner spanning a prison escape, car chase and train crash; directed by Sam Hargrave and written by Joe Russo, the action-adventure is now streaming on Netflix.
Award-winning VFX studio Digital Domain created 99 individual shots for Netflix’s action thriller Extraction 2, the sequel to its 2020 release of Extraction, directed by Sam Hargrave and written by Joe Russo. The team completed all transitions, traditional VFX work, and invisible effects for the three sequences that comprise the film’s oner.
After barely surviving the events in the original Extraction to then become a recluse, Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is forced out of retirement in the sequel. He is sent on a mission to help a mother, Ketevan Radiani (Tinatin Dalakishvili), and her two children escape from the Tkachiri Prison, where they are held unwillingly by her husband, Davit Radiani (Tornike Bziava), the leader of a vicious Nagazi crime gang.
The Digital Domain team was tasked with creating an immersive 22-minute oner, including a prison escape, a car chase, and a train crash sequence. The studio’s team of artists seamlessly integrated 99 individual shots to create the non-stop sequence.
Part 1 - The Prison Escape
Rake enters the prison from an underground tunnel and finds the mother and her two children in a cell. They immediately get spotted by an inmate, and soon, the entire prison fills with commotion and clamor. A security breach is announced, and the action begins as Rake tries to get the family out of the prison safely.
To complete the action-packed oner, Netflix and the Russo brothers called on Digital Domain Visual Effects supervisor Jean-Luc Dinsdale to draw from his previous experience creating the oner recently featured in episode 103 of the Marvel Studios series Loki. Because of the constantly moving action and chaotic handheld camera in the sequence, the method needed to complete each transition was unique.
“Each transition required a combination of plate retiming, performer manipulation, and background replacement - most often all three - in order to make the transitions smooth and not distract the audience's attention from the action,” explained Dinsdale. “I am proud of the team’s phenomenal work, including all the behind-the-scenes and invisible effects work that went into executing each one of the shots for the film,” Dinsdale continued.
Part 2 -The Car Chase
After successfully getting the children out of the prison, Rake reaches the courtyard, where chaos resumes as he tries to find a way out for himself and Ketevan. The two enter a battlefield as a prison riot begins and fight themselves out of the prison with the help of Rake’s handler, Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), and her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa). As they try to make it to safety, they find themselves in a car chase and another gunfight, this time through the forests of Georgia.
The evolving damage to the hero vehicles during the car chase sequence was another challenge for Digital Domain’s VFX team. After initial testing, the team retooled the project’s vehicle damage pipeline to incorporate dynamic FX destruction, animated over time to match the action on screen, which then got baked into multiple iterations of the CG car models for continuity. Different portions of the vehicles were rendered in multiple dynamic lighting environments to mimic the proper light refraction and reflections within the damaged portion of the car windows and the multiple layers of bulletproof glass. Because of the intricate nature of the work, the car sequence part alone took two and a half months to perfect.
Part 3 -The Train Crash
Rake, Nik, Yaz, Ketevan, and the children get forced out of their vehicles and run for cover in a nuclear power plant. The chase continues as the team boards a train and races across the countryside while Rake fights off pursuing helicopters. Through a barrage of gunfire and explosions, gunmen exit one of the helicopters and make their way onto the train. The extraction team fights them off in multiple brutal and vicious fights inside and outside the traveling train. Finally, Rake takes down the last helicopter before the train ultimately derails and crashes at a port facility.
The Digital Domain team was tasked with destroying the pursuing helicopters and for the ultimate crash and destruction of the runaway train while supporting all action inside and outside the train. Numerous transitions were blended to the exterior train shots, shot on location, with the interior train shots completed on a bluescreen stage, as Rake runs from the outside of the train back inside to prepare the family for the crash. Transitions for these shots relied heavily on selectively patching different parts of the plate photography together, with CG elements created by the team, including animated CG characters, CG background replacements, and both CG models and 2D environment patches for the interior and exterior of the train cars. Digital Domain artists also relit shots and added interactive FX elements to support all the action in the sequence.
Environments and Invisible Effects
In addition to these tentpole moments by the Digital Domain’s Environments team, the studio’s FX team executed an extensive list of "invisible effects" elements to enhance practically every shot in the oner. In addition, the studio’s Digital Human Group applied the studio’s proprietary Charlatan face replacement technology in a handful of shots. At the same time, Digital Domain’s postvis team flushed out the details for the epic train crash at the end of the oner.
Watch how they did it, in Digital Domain’s Breakdown Reel:
Extraction 2, now streaming on Netflix, is Digital Domain’s second collaboration with the Russo Brothers within the year.
Source: Digital Domain
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
