New Line Cinema's new feature The Conjuring: Last Rites is set in 1986, when a pair of paranormal investigators travelled to Pennsylvania to excise a demon from a family's home. The film was directed by Michael Chaves and was supported by Digital Domain (www.digitaldomain.com), whose visual effects specialists handled set extensions and face replacements, as well as a number of unique FX.
According to VFX supervisor Alex Millet, the Digital Domain team played a key role in bringing Abigail Arnold’s haunting smile to life through facial replacements. Working from concept art provided by Chaves, the team started by recreating the concept for different lighting conditions, then developed a range of smile variations, from neutral to fully extended, with all the subtle variations of a facial performance. After reviewing the options, the director selected a specific version that the compositing team integrated into plates.
"We used this process across three key shots, each in a different lighting environments, seamlessly enhancing the original performance and transforming it into a more disturbing visual that aligned with the film’s horror aesthetic," Millet recalls.
The studio was also responsible for creating the entire neighborhood the Smurl family lived in. The production crew built three houses on-set, and the rest of the street needed to be created digitally.
"We began with concept work, then used a combination of 3D, 2.5D and digital matte painting to create the environment," says Millet. "The main street on either side of the practical houses was fully built as a 3D asset, then lit and rendered to match the set across multiple sequences and different lighting conditions. To keep it alive without being distracting, we added some subtle wind in the trees, cars driving in the street in the background, and haze to match the on-set atmosphere."
In the background, the factory needed to feel omnipresent and looming over the town at all times.
"We used a mix of 3D and matte painting enhancements to build the factory, and then added lights for the nighttime shots," Millet explains. "The factory needed to feel like it was constantly running, so we created different smoke plumes for each sequence, constantly emerging from the silos."
In some cases, elements of the movie set and other unintended objects were reflected in the cars. To address this, the Digital Domain team created CG versions of the cars and completely replaced the reflections with their versions of the CG neighborhood environment.
"The big oner shot flying over the Smurl house was a particularly challenging one," Millet notes. "The shot needed to seamlessly transition from the original plate photography to a dynamic aerial shot overlooking the entire neighborhood — all with progressively increasing levels of CG atmosphere and rain throughout the sequence."
Some of the studio’s additional work included the hallway and wedding changing-room sequences in which the figure in the mirror comes to life and starts chasing the characters while destroying everything in its way.
"We created a digital mirror that we could animate in shots to match to the actors’ performance," notes Millet. "To destroy the hallway, we first built a CG version of it, added some geometry for the inside of the floor and walls, and then we used FX simulations and smoke to create the destruction."
In the wedding changing room sequence, the VFX team was tasked with replacing the ceiling. This was particularly challenging since the room was made of mirrors, and each mirror reflected the ceiling multiple times in every direction. Again, they used a mixture of 2D and 3D - 2D to create the new ceiling matching the provided reference, and 3D to create all the accurate reflections.
Digital Domain was also responsible for bringing the Annabelle doll to life, a first in the Conjuring franchise, creating the CG dog that was thrown against a wall, and several invisible effects.