Visual Effects Case Study: Dead Man’s Hand
Actors Mo Brings Plenty and Jack Kilmer inserted into a digital environment for Dead Man’s Hand. Move the slider to toggle between before and after.
Project Type
Feature Film
Production Company
Grindstone Entertainment Group
Director
Brian Skiba
Producers
Randall Batinkoff
Jim Burleson
Michelle Hartly
Louise Linton
“Foxtrot X-Ray is the most professional group of creatives in the VFX business. On time, on budget and their work looks amazing.”
Dead Man’s Hand follows Reno, a newly married gunfighter seeking a quiet life with his bride. When Reno kills a bandit in self-defense, he finds them both pulled back into his old ways. Clarence Bishop, the corrupt mayor of their locale will not let his brother's death go unpunished. The film stars Cole Hauser, Stephen Dorff, and Jack Kilmer. (IMDb)
Foxtrot X-Ray created 30 VFX shots for director Brian Skiba’s film adaptation of the Western graphic novel Dead Man’s Hand, including creating a mystical cave environment containing a massive golden stalactite. Actors Mo Brings Plenty and Jack Kilmer can be seen in the entrance to the cave above.
In the early stages of the project, VFX Supervisor Paul DeNigris and VFX Producer Jai Sathyan decided that this would be a great beta test for incorporating Unreal Engine into Foxtrot X-Ray’s pipeline. The budget and schedule didn’t have much room for lengthy iterations and the real-time capabilities of Unreal were seen as a major benefit.
The cave environment was created by VFX Artist Gabe Vigil in Unreal, with some custom modeling done by our 3D Supervisor Seth Wise. Below you can see some of the interim steps in Unreal as Gabe created the environment. (Click to embiggen.)
Director Brian Skiba was able to collaborate in real time with the Foxtrot team over Zoom to give feedback on the layout and camera angles, something which would have taken much longer with a conventional 3D pipeline. Skiba was able to ask for changes to the camera and see them immediately, just like interacting with his cinematographer on set.
Unreal Engine features a remarkable toolset for real time rendering. By utilizing two of these systems, Lumen and Nanite, Gabe was able to quickly create high quality 3D renders. We were especially thrilled with how the Lumen lighting system created dynamic light bounces off of the cave’s central golden stalactite.
Once approved by the director, the renders from Unreal Engine were then brought into Nuke by for final polishing and the addition of effects such as depth of field, atmosphere, flaming torches, optical effects, and film grain. A final composite of a detail shot of the cave’s altar can be seen below.
Foxtrot X-Ray also contributed other effects such as enhanced pyro for the film’s explosive action sequences (created in part with Cinema4D’s X-Particles system), digital embellishments for aerial shots of the mining camp and native village locations, gunfire, cleanup, and more. See below for some more before and after sliders.
Using VFX to create gunfire is an effective way to maintain safety during production. To learn more about firearms safety on film sets, listen to Paul DeNigris discuss firearms and VFX with multiple filmmakers on the VFX for Indies podcast.
Other projects featuring similar effects by Foxtrot X-Ray include “Count to Zero,” Vendetta, and KillHer.
Lastly, check out the trailer below, or catch the film on Amazon Prime Video.