How Wētā FX delivered invisible effects for the thrilling boat scene. From the print Befores & Afters magazine.

In episode 3 of the Netflix series Steven Zaillian RipleyBased on the novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, the deceitful Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) beats his friend Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) to death with an oar on a small boat off San Remo.

Later he ties the dead Dickie to an anchor and throws the body overboard.

All this takes place in black and white on the open waters off the Italian coast.

In fact, however, the scene was mostly shot in a small tank, with Wētā FX tasked with digitally creating the water, augmenting the environment and sky, and also handling some digital doubles, fire elements, blood splatters, and other augmentations for the sequence.

The condition of the water

Wētā FX is certainly very adept at simulating water, especially with recent experience on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever And Avatar: The Way of WaterThe VFX studio has found solutions to water problems in projects like these using many physics-based approaches, including its Loki state machine, which provides a unified approach to the many states of water.

“There are these principles of water that we try to portray as realistically as possible,” notes Christopher White, visual effects supervisor at Wētā FX, who oversaw the studio’s work on Ripley. “It can be a lot of things that you mix in different combinations to get a very different look.” Avatar: The Way of Water was all about the etchants. Wakanda forever everything revolved around the murky water. Ripley was all about highlights and salinity in the water. We try to be as realistic as possible – we learn all the rules – but then we often break them to tell the story.”

The boat shots in the sequences involved both the boat passing by and standing still between the waves. As mentioned, this was filmed in a small tank, which required replacing the tank water with shore water and the surrounding environment, while maintaining (and sometimes replacing) the actors and boat. Sometimes the boat would remain static in the tank for a shot in which it would eventually have to move forward. This was some of the most difficult work, says White.

“Since most of the movement in the plate was transmitted into the camera while the boat remained static, the challenge was to give the boat a sense of motion and movement through the waves. We would add some additional rocking of the boat on top of our CG water and try to move everything through a really dynamic space.”

In fact, Wētā FX set up the scene so that the animators animate the boat, which in turn controls the water simulations. “The animators were able to set the path of the boat and its movement, and then there were some quick dynamics that we know will fit into the final water simulation,” explains White. “The chase boats that are used to film this are also dynamic boats, so it feels like you’re watching from a boat that’s whizzing past alongside. That gives the whole thing the feeling that it’s really being filmed.”

“We also put a system in place,” White continues, “so that the simulation artists who might be working on very similar types of shots can take over the animation and run all the simulations. That way you can consistently look at batches of shots, compare them, and have a baseline for them, rather than having to chase the solution on every shot.”

The appearance of water

While existing tools were of course used to simulate water for this boat sequence, Wētā FX still had to deliver water that fit the show’s particular aesthetic (White says it was about “having some movement in the water, but not having it be too choppy.”) Another example of this was achieving a certain look of highlights on the water’s surface. “We were able to get it right where there really should be highlights, but they liked them so much,” White recalls, “that they wanted them in every shot. So there’s a bit of cheating going on. Every frame has to look nice, and as long as it doesn’t bother the audience, it works.”

The visual effects studio needed to achieve a different look in the water when saltwater meets freshwater. “It’s this phenomenon when freshwater turns into saltwater and it creates a different pattern,” White describes. “Once you notice it, you notice it everywhere. It helped to add a little variety and disruption to the water shots. For this in particular, we developed a technique where we rendered freshwater and saltwater and had the compositor place where those things were happening.”

Wētā FX also faced the challenge of constantly overcast scenes. White notes, “A completely overcast sky can look very boring on the water. A lot of our work was figuring out how to make the water look interesting with the rather plain sky. The director really wanted these little bursts of light and sunlight that weren’t necessarily the sky, so to achieve that we had multiple suns in our scenes.”

Underwater

The camera also goes underwater to get shots of the boat from below and to see Tom himself fall overboard and at one point get hit by the dragging anchor. Some of the shots required a number of digital doubles. “They filmed the stunt actors during the whole sequence, which gave us a good reference for what was happening underwater,” explains White. “That was extremely helpful in executing the whole thing.”

Wētā FX also implemented the “Snell’s Window” look for the underwater shots. This is a phenomenon where someone looks up at the sky underwater and it looks like they are seeing a hole through the water to the sky. “What happens,” explains White, “is that the light can penetrate through the water at a certain point, but because of the different reflection index between the two materials, some of the rays don’t really get out. They get reflected back. So you can see the reflection of the pool or the underwater surface on the sides.”

For example, the team used this effect to follow instructions from the director to see more of the sky underwater. “We changed the internal reflection of the water to make it bigger or smaller to create a pleasing composition,” says White. “That meant we had those controls to meet the aesthetic brief.”

Fire and blood and the use of practical elements

In addition to the digital water and environment work, Wētā FX was responsible for creating a fiery moment in the boat scene when Tom tries to burn the anchor rope using gasoline and his lighter. Here, practical fire elements were an important part of the VFX mix.

“We could have gone with digital fire, but our team suggested we do a practical fire element shoot,” explains White. “They built part of the boat and then tried different fuels, including gasoline and gel, to get a library of elements for rope burning. I always enjoy element shoots because you can iterate for a while on the computer, but an element shoot can also give you great references and happy accidents and things you wouldn’t expect.”

The realistic blood elements also helped when Tom starts attacking Dickie with the oar. “I wanted the blood splatter to be physically correct,” explains White. “Instead of guessing how it would hit the sleeve, our art director Gino Acevedo and his team here got a mannequin with the shirt on and reenacted the blows. Gino also made some scars on the face and thought about how they might drip onto a shirt.”

“Then I created these keynotes that I presented to the client so they could see that we had thought through each of these events and how they would be structured. And of course you embellish it a little bit to create more blood as you go along, but then all of the events on his clothing made sense.”

The final blood additions were tracked and stitched together by Wētā FX using Smart Vectors in Nuke. “In the past, tracking on clothing would have been a nightmare,” says White. “But some of these newer tools help quite a bit.”

Read the full issue of Before & Afters magazine on invisible effects.

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