When Jeff Campbell, a visual effects supervisor with VFX studio Spin, initially set to work on the first “John Wick,” the 2014 action thriller from director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad, he started with an industry-standard test: Establish a single, simple kill effect meant to get a sense of the look of the violence the filmmakers were after. “We did different levels of blood and gore,” Campbell remembers. “Everything up to the look of ‘300’ (2006), where it’s slo-mo blood flying everywhere.”
What Campbell found was surprising: Stahelski and Kolstad, both former stuntmen, asked for the violence to be stripped down, understated and “totally real.” “They wanted us to dial it all back, [using] just a little blood mist and muzzle flashes,” he says. “These are stunt guys, right? They claim they have seen all these effects before. They’ve witnessed broken limbs, gunshots. They’d sometimes catch us and say: ‘That...
What Campbell found was surprising: Stahelski and Kolstad, both former stuntmen, asked for the violence to be stripped down, understated and “totally real.” “They wanted us to dial it all back, [using] just a little blood mist and muzzle flashes,” he says. “These are stunt guys, right? They claim they have seen all these effects before. They’ve witnessed broken limbs, gunshots. They’d sometimes catch us and say: ‘That...
- 5/23/2019
- by Calum Marsh
- Variety Film + TV
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