The Marvel series »Daredevil: Born Again« with its ninth episode has presented one of the most technically impressive and most brutal scenes of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
Together with a dedicated special effects team and actor Vincent D'Unofrio, the directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead created a remarkable effect sequence. In interviews withBrandon Davisand (fittingly)Bloody DisgustingThe two Daredevil showrunner dealt with how this scene came about.
Before we respond to the technology of the Daredevil scene, the mandatory comes hereSpoilerwarnung: In the following we treat part of the action from episode 9"Off to hell".
Daredevil: Police chief Gallo in the center of the cruel scene
In the relay finale of "Daredevil: Born Again" there is a brutal confrontation between Wilson Fisk (Vincent d'Unofrio) and police chief Phil Gallo (Michael Gaston), which ends in the fact that the mayor Gallos crushed his head and literally.
Instead of focusing on digital effects, the Daredevil team opted for a more practical approach with a specially made dummy.
The special effect team scanned Gaston's head and created a lifelike doll based on this data. In contrast to traditional living casts, the effect artists used 3D scanning technology.
The technical implementation of the head squeezing
The Special Makeup-Effects artists Lisa Forst and Brandon Grether were significantly involved in the creation of the photo-realistic head.
"We have in several parts 3D print, put all parts together, re-shaped and then we were able to make the final casts from this form," Grether explains. This can be divided into the following steps (apart from various test runs):
- 3D scanning of the actor in the required pose and digital post-processing
- 3D printing of the head in several parts
- Composition and creation of a new form
- Development of an optimal fracture pattern for the final effect
- Individual familiarization of hair with needle technique for mustache, eyebrows and eyelashes
- Installation of blood pipes and 3D printed nozzles for organic blood effects
»We inserted hair for hair individually with a needle in our head; This was made for the mustache, the eyebrows, the eyelashes and the sides of his head, ”Forst describes the manual work. In order to make the effect even more realistic, even the actor's teeth were scanned and faithfully reproduced.
The intake of the Daredevil scene
Two take -offs were necessary for the final recording. »When the first recording, only the way the blood splashed went wrong for us. It became a little too expressionist, «explained Moorhead.
On the second attempt, the team increased blood pressure in the lines and completely filled the head with a brain mass, so everything would burst out if D'UNOFRIO crushed it. This was otherwise involved in the considerations for the scene and probably also had a lot of fun:
[The scene] described the crushing of a skull, but I didn't want to participate in something that we otherwise see in such film scenes. It's always about thumb in your eyes and things like that. I just thought that it was important to reach the undisguised raw brutality of the beheading from the original series.
This was also pretty good - we just take the claim at this point.
Even the Gallo actor Michael Gaston took his spectacular serial death with humor: »I died 21 times in front of the camera, and that was the 20th time. [This death] is the most colorful and dynamic of my career «.
