John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum
This project was completed by Method Studios in 2019. Method’s film and episodic teams in Montreal, Vancouver and Melbourne are now a fully-integrated part of Framestore.
The third instalment of Liongate’s high adrenaline franchise, “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” finds super assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) on the run with a $14 million price tag on his head. Hotly pursued by an army of bounty hunters, Wick must pull out all the stops from his deadly bag of tricks to keep them from succeeding. Reteaming with Director Chad Stahelski, the artists helped amplify the film’s action, using digital artistry to raise the stakes and shatter a ton of CG glass in the process. VFX Supervisor Glenn Melenhorst worked closely with Production VFX Supervisor Rob Nederhorst to craft complex sequences that seamlessly unfold at breakneck speed.
To keep the visuals authentic and grounded, a small amount of practical glass was used on-set when safe, including a sequence in which Wick faces down would-be assassins in a corporate high rise. Augmenting plate footage shot on location, the artists digitally inserted an extended New York skyline, which is composited into many layers of practical reflections; removed crew reflections; and added digital doubles to blend shots or for more dangerous manoeuvres. The team also completed a considerable amount of shattering CG glass, which was fundamental to the glass office block sequence and also key to achieving Wick’s intimate knife fight in a narrow hallway lined with weapons cases.
The creative studio also helped create a fully CG New York alley, and the urban chase sequence, during which Wick races down a traffic-lined bridge on horseback while being pursued by a gang of sword-wielding motorcyclists. While Melenhorst and his team are known for awarding-winning CG horse work, their efforts for this sequence focused on removing safety rigging and protective barriers used to film a practical horse as well as adding CG motorbikes and riders, and CG vehicles.
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