‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ unsurprisingly required thousands of VFX shots

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has delighted audiences since its release last week, and now, its crew is explaining the process behind the creation of the quirky superhero film. With its connections to the cosmic side of the Marvel universe, and its various alien locales and characters, the James Gunn-directed film is a visual marvel in and of itself. Creating that cinematic magic took a lot of time and energy, however.

In a new feature posted by Variety, the publication explores the behind the scenes making of the movie, which ended up requiring 10 visual effects houses, including Weta FX and Framestore, to craft 3066 visual effects shots over the course of the 15 months of production.

Stephane Naze, VFX supervisor for Framestore, spoke about some of the unique challenges in the film. One of them was the character of Cosmo (Maria Bakalova), a sentient cosmonaut dog. The team behind character’s creation used real dog movements for reference, but found that Bakalova’s performance was the vital piece of the puzzle. “Everything came from her,” Naze said. “She was saying the lines and it was super important to feel that. So, we analyzed her performance shot for shot and what was the best way to translate those emotions.”

Alexis Wajsbrot of Framestore London, meanwhile, explained the process behind the film’s ‘stampede’ sequence. “That was a huge effects moment of fire, debris and sparks, as well as all the animals. Despite the sequence being only 17 shots,” Wassjbrot said, “There was a lot of detail in the stampede from fur, to the turtles, to a monkey on top of a pig. They’re flowing and bouncing off one another and reacting to the Guardians. It was a lot of hand frame animation to get that.”

Wajsbrot also addressed Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) heart-rending story. In order to capture the emotional beats of the story, Wajsbrot says that Framstore London had to give Rocket more anthropomorphic characteristics, like shoulders. Wajsbrot does say that Gunn’s filming techniques helped a lot during this sequence; the crew did not motion capture the actors, instead motion capturing the cameras “so that we [sic] could edit the scene and know exactly what we needed in terms of coverage.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is clearly a labor of love. Not only has it enchanted casual fans, it’s helped assuage some who were growing weary of the current state of the franchise. Given the sheer number of workers who crafted the VFX shots, it’s definitely a wonder of creation.