Blast from the Past - Batman Begins VFX

In light of the latest trailer from Christopher Nolan's third and final installment in his 'Dark Knight' trilogy, I managed to watch Batman Begins all over again! Although I can recall scenes from most of the movies I saw that year (2005), strangely I couldn't remember ANYTHING from Batman Begins. >:O


The film seemed brand-new and never-before-seen, not to mention the fact that I just saw last year's 'Batman: Year One'. 


It's dark, gritty, and at times even scary. Batman Begins is rich and wholly adapted from the lore with a few tweaks here and there but nothing too drastic. Christian Bale, as always, does a fantastic job as Batman, and Gary Oldman's 'Gordon' is flawless. And the rest of the cast does an incredible job of bringing the corrupt Gotham City to life, backed up by Hans Zimmer's breathtaking scores. 


As usual I went out searching for VFX breakdowns, and surprisingly I wasn't able to YouTube anything flashy but the one video I found appears to do justice. 


Here are MPC's VFX Breakdowns for Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins' 




I found this very educational article on the work by Double Negative: Double Negative on Batman Begins. 


DNeg worked extensively during pre-production and on more than 300 shots for the movie. They created the CG Monastery 

Background Plate

Final Comp

Final Comp With Digital Snow

Double Negative is known to take things a step further. An example of this is the 3D garage they built to comp over the crew clearly visible in the shot instead of simply erasing the unwanted items. 

Before

After

40 x 80 feet miniature of the island

One of the more obvious aspects of course was 'Narrows Island'. Double Negative composited the miniature model (complete with wires and such) adding details to windows, practical lights, making use of their in-house 3D compositing tool inside Shake called, 'Plane-it'.

Cityscape made entirely in CG - accurate representations of Chicago

The CG Train that can be seen around Gotham

"With the exception of the final crash scenes, the train was created entirely in 3D by Double Negative VFX artists. The surface shaders featured specialist anisotropy routines and detailed displacement maps and surface textures. The train had a fully detailed 3D interior complete with peeling advertising posters, graffiti and flickering lights. The model was built with a fully articulated suspension system and procedurally animated carriages that automatically leant into corners at speed. In most cases the train exterior was rendered as a single beauty pass, the interior and lighting fixtures were rendered separately. Additional passes included a Z depth buffer and ID passes for the trains components." - FXGuide

Final Composite

DNeg turned an originally bland looking shot of the Wayne Enterprises Private Jet on a wet runway into an "exotic mountainous' location." 

Before

After

For Part 2 or the brilliant VFX work on Batman Begins, you can follow FXGuide's article:  Batman Begins VFX Part 2