The Witches
This project was completed by Method Studios in 2020. Method’s film and episodic teams in Montréal, Vancouver and Melbourne are now a fully-integrated part of Framestore.
Innovative, Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis' approach to his film, The Witches, based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name, called for extensive animation and VFX work to bring the story to life. While the 1990 version, starring Anjelica Huston, primarily made use of practical effects to tell the story, Zemeckis wanted to make use of all the digital technology developed since then to create a much more photoreal film. This would require extensive character and creature animation, set extensions, compositing, face replacement work, and more to create a magical world filled with frightening witches and children transformed into mice.
VFX supervisor Kevin Baillie, who previously collaborated with the director on highly-inventive features such as A Christmas Carol and Welcome to Marwen, chose to bring the entire job to the creative studio because the company, which had recently acquired VFX powerhouse Atomic Fiction (co-founded by Baillie), possessed the needed production capacity; the talent and studio locations around the world, possessing the eclectic skill sets necessary to handle the massive assignment, were perfectly positioned to provide the type flexibility Zemeckis demands of the VFX process.
The Witches is currently streaming on HBO Max. The film was nominated for three VES (Visual Effects Society) Awards including Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature.
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