“We said, sure, we can do it! And we did it, although it was very, very painful.” – David Stinnett, Blur Studio
While it may not have made a splash at the box office when it was released 20 years ago, Stephen Somers’ Deep Rising certainly contained some considerable ‘out-there’ practical and CG creature work. Most of that was tackled by special make-up and creature effects designer Rob Bottin, Dream Quest Images and ILM, with one particularly gruesome sequence in the 1998 film – the ‘half-digested Billy’ scene – featuring some startling digital make-up by Blur Studio.
Blur had only been formed a few years earlier in 1995, but already had established itself as a creative CG, animation and VFX house. It took on the tough Billy shots, in which actor Clint Curtis emerges partially digested yet still alive from a creature before collapsing, and helped generate one of the film’s classic moments.
On Deep Rising’s 20th anniversary, Blur co-founder and CG supervisor on those shots, David Stinnett, recalled for vfxblog the challenges involved, from coming on board late in production, having to hand-track every single frame, and creating the CG with a tool that many people didn’t think was up to the challenge. Continue reading Tracking nightmares: behind Blur’s half-digested Billy shots in Deep Rising – from 20 years ago