Having already won himself a trophy at the Hollywood Film Awards and the Seattle Film Critics Awards for Doctor Strange‘s Visual Effects, VFX Supervisor Stef Ceretti is up for an Oscar tomorrow – the second time the French native has been up for the accolade (the first being for another Marvel film – Guardians of the Galaxy). Ahead of the awards, and the film’s home release on March 1st, we caught up with Stef while we were in the USA to talk about the film, the team behind it, 3D conversions and the nomination.
First of all, we’re anticipating the home release of Doctor Strange. As we’re quite a few months after the theatrical release of the film, how do you feel about the film now when placed against the impressive catalogue of films you’ve worked on?
I think, when you finish with a film like this, you just want to get away from it. You watch it thousands of times in the production process. Then the film gets released and people seem to like it and then you tell yourself, well great – we haven’t spent two years killing ourselves for nothing! And as you’ve mentioned, it’s been four months since its release now, and I feel very proud of the work we did on the film. It was very very challenging, but I think it holds up and people have been responding very well to it. And we’ve been getting a lot of award nominations which has been very welcomed. I’m very proud of the work we did and very happy for everyone involved that we’re getting that recognition now. I feel that people look at it and feel it’s a very special film in the Marvel universe, and that’s definitely what we were trying to do. So it feels like we’ve done something right *laughs*
And yes congratulations on the Oscar nomination. That must be a nice icing on the cake so to speak.
Yeah it is. We’ve got that, and the BAFTA as well and some others! As I said, working on a film like this is a huge effort from a massive amount of people, all over the world, so I’m very pround we all get that recognition.
You’ve been working with Marvel for a long time now, across different projects and in different VFX roles. When it came to Doctor Strange, when you stepped into the role, was it familiar territory – I note you’re working on Ant-Man 2 at the moment – or is it a different experience every time?
We do try to keep the people together as much as we can, we’ve got such a great team, so it’s like a family. And so looking at Doctor Strange we were filming in London, and I started working for Marvel in London, on Captain America. And them most of the people who are working on Doctor Strange in London have been working on Marvel films for a long time. So we’ve got all these groups of people that work together. So in that sense it’s very familiar, and the Marvel family of people that we have here – the studio execs and the Producers, we all know each other very well. It’s actually a very small group of people. So there’s the familiarity with the people, but then there’s the project, new actors and new ideas and new expressions. So it’s like starting something new with all these people that you love to work with. It makes it easier, because every time there are new ideas it’s like “oh my God, how are we going to do that?”.
I came into Doctor Strange having just finished Guardians of the Galaxy, which was another new entry into the Marvel Universe, and then I remember talking with Victoria Alonso, one of the VP execs, and she told us “OK we’ve done the Galaxies, now we’re going to do the dimensions”, so we took on something new and we dived into it. We met Scott Derrickson, the director, and learned his visions for the film, and it was all very challenging, filled with new ideas. But it was exciting. So I went with a group of people who I like very much, on for a new adventure that we didn’t know anything about. And that’s actually very, very fun.
Especially with the last few Marvel films, 3D has become a more and more important element in terms of the release of the film. As someone who works in VFX, how has the 3D release changed the way you approach the effects – or has it affected it at all?
It’s affecting it in many different ways. First of all, there’s a design aspect of the shots in the terms of the 3D that we look into when we do a pre-vis and design the shots. We always try to think about what’s shot, and how it will look in 3D. We have the same 3D conversion teams on every Marvel film, we know them very well, and we work very well together. The 3D pipeline is very well integrated into the VFX pipeline, because we have to work hand in hand. Especially because we have such a short post production window for these films. Doctor Strange was done in less than 6 months. Which is very short for a VFX heavy film like this. And that includes the conversion. So if you think about it, we really need a tight pipeline between them and us, in terms of how to we exchange information to have the best 3D possible, without rushing it – even though we might have to rush it sometimes. So by working so closely, it allows us to push the VFX as far down the line as possible, while they still have enough time to pick it up and do the conversion at the end, and keep the 3D as interesting as possible.
Is that a process that you enjoy?
Yeah, it is. Towards the end of the project I’m invited to some of the 3D conversion reviews, and I like that. You work on this film intimately and then you get to the end and you look into the 3D world, and see something that’s even cooler than what you’d been working on. I remember having a shock when I saw the 3D IMAX version, because it was so overwhelming. It was like looking at a different film than the one I’d been working on. It was a different experience, on that big screen, in 3D.
And that’s saying something, because the VFX in Doctor Strange is very much a character of its own…
That’s what we were trying to do, and that’s why even when the script was being prepared, there was constant feedback loop between the VFX team to the storytellers. Scott (Derrickson) allowed us to do that and the studio gave us the time to do that. I think it paid off, because I think it would be a boring film if it was just about the visuals. But because the visuals are so entwined into the story, I feel like we made these worlds work together very well. And that was our goal. So I’m glad you were saying you liked it!
Doctor Strange hits DVD and Blu-Ray in Australia on 1st March 2017. It’s available digitally now. The Academy Awards will be held on Monday, from 12noon, AEDT time, and screened live on Channel Nine.
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