Gravity (formerly RhinoFX), an international creative content and brand communications company, has created highly dramatic and unique visual effects for the new Universal Pictures’ romantic thriller, “The Adjustment Bureau,” it was announced today by Zviah Eldar, Gravity’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer. In addition, the company also designed the Main and End Titles for the film that opened on March 4.
Karin Levinson, Vice President of Features & Television, Jim Rider, Visual Effects Supervisor, and Yuval Levy, CG Supervisor/Digital Effects Supervisor, oversaw Gravity’s New York-based visual effects team that was involved with “The Adjustment Bureau.” As the lead visual effects house on the picture, Gravity’s work was primarily comprised of “door transitions” and digital set extensions.
Many of Gravity’s visual effects shots depicted “magical” door transitions, in which the film’s characters seamlessly cross from one environment into another. Variety’s review of the film mentioned the following: “These inter-dimensional doorways are playfully surreal set-pieces, with odd visual flourishes that are well integrated…they keep the viewer off balance for a spell.”
To accomplish this effect, Gravity presented writer/director/producer George Nolfi, the film’s other producers, and visual effects supervisor Mark Russell, with a test that combined 2D and 3D techniques. Nolfi had prefaced that he didn’t want the door transitions to appear as normal green screen effects, but rather as natural passages from one environment into the next. Gravity combined practical set reconstruction effects and 3D set extensions to create these transitions, which presented varying degrees of complexity. The most dramatic of these transitions depicts Emily Blunt’s character as she seamlessly passes from a restroom into a 3D enhanced Yankee Stadium, and then onto a busy 6th Avenue intersection in Manhattan.
Rider and Levy said, “We developed what we believe were the best possible solutions for these transition scenes – beginning with practical photographed elements, and then incorporating 3D tracking, 3D computer-generated images, and 2D compositing, to complete these seamless effects.”
Gravity’s visual effects team also created a number of digital set extensions, most notably doubling the length of the reading room inside the massive New York Public Library building, and duplicating the number of people appearing at a crowd scene shot at Fordham University. Gravity’s team lengthened the library scene by shooting the room, then digitally extending it and populating it through the use of green screen and compositing. Gravity also produced a match-move of Matt Damon’s character running through the library room.
For the Main and End Titles Design, Gravity stylized graphic elements to coincide with the look and feel of “The Plan Book,” an actual book featured within the film that represents the life paths of the lead characters, and depicts blueprints similar to alien hieroglyphics. The “Plan Book” graphics, which were represented in an Art Deco style, were highlighted by animated rays of sunlight breaking through cracks in overhead clouds.
About “THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU”
Are we in charge of our lives, or are decisions made for us long before we consider them? Do we control our destiny, or do unseen forces manipulate it? Oscar® winner Matt Damon and Emily Blunt star in the romantic thriller “The Adjustment Bureau.” In the film, Damon plays a man who glimpses the future planned for him and realizes he wants something else. To get it, he must pursue the only woman he’s ever loved (Blunt) and defy the agents of Fate—a mysterious group of men exerting control over their lives. For more information, please visit www.theadjustmentbureau.com.
About GRAVITY:
Gravity is an international creative, content and brand communications company with proven expertise in three integrated divisions: Features & Television, Commercials and Digital. With 250 talented professionals across offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv, the company is a widely renowned generator of high-end visual effects, creative content, motion graphics, animation, branding, and digital strategy.
Gravity’s powerful combination of innovation and design are consistently aligned to help brands drive meaningful, dynamic connections with consumers – whether they experience them via television, cinema, websites, social media or mobile applications.
The company’s clients include DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, GM, Mercedes Benz, Verizon, Pantene, MGA Entertainment, Carlsberg, Kmart, and Braun. In addition to “The Adjustment Bureau,” Gravity’s feature film credits also
include “The Other Guys,” “Salt,” “The Reader” and “Ghost Town.” The company’s television credits include HBO’s “Bored to Death,” “The Sopranos,” and “Sex and The City.”
Gravity’s New York office is located at 315 Madison Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY, 10017. The phone is 212/986-1584. The company’s newly opened West Coast office is located in the Lantana Building, 3000 West Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica, CA, 90404. The phone is 310/264-3909. For more information, please visit www.gravityworld.com
