Production Focus: Feel the Payne

Summary Make no mistake: Detective Max Payne is one tough mother. That’s especially true when he’s angry. And somebody has made him very, very angry indeed. Such is the cursory premise of director John Moore’s Max Payne, a big screen, live action version of the popular video game starring brawny actor Mark Wahlberg in the title role. When you throw in a mercenary and corrupt pharmaceutical company; a hallucinogenic, hyperaddictive drug; and hordes of truly gnarly flying demons and…well, you know things are going to get complicated.

Toronto-based Spin VFX knew from the outset that Max Payne would be a complex project, and they went at it with gusto. Harnessing their design, animation, and modeling expertise, not to mention their prowess with several Autodesk Media & Entertainment products, the Spin team helped transform the dark premise into a stylish, sleek, and bravely brooding piece of graphic novel-style art.

Spin Visual Effects Supervisor Jeff Campbell, Senior Effects Artist Tim Sibley, Rigging Supervisor Glen Chang, and Modeling Supervisor Erin Nickolson sat down with Autodesk to talk about the challenges and triumphs of the films.

The Setup Spin’s initial introduction to Max Payne came when Everett Burrell, the film’s production supervisor approached the company – and ten others – with a series of HD plates: “The plates were preliminary shots for a huge and terrifying drug sequence,” says Campbell. “Everett basically gave them to eleven different companies and let us go at it. I actually used Inferno as a tool for design and experimentation for our pitch. I love the system’s interactivity, and it enabled us to bring in entire sequences, try effects, and find out immediately what was working and what wasn’t. In the end, they liked our look best, and we won the job.”

The pivotal scene in question here sees Detective Payne emerging from the icy waters of what looks like New York’s Hudson River, where he has come close to drowning after eluding two men who want him dead. His body temperature plummeting, Payne realizes he must ingest two vials of Valkyr, an illicit drug that makes its users feel superhuman before dropping them into hopeless addiction, if he is to wreak his vengeance on the men who murdered his wife and infant son. read more..


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