93 - Mission Impossible 7 - VFX Supervisors - Jeff Sutherland & Simone Coco

Hello to those of you who celebrate it. Merry Christmas. Welcome to episode ninety three of the film We mentor his podcast. This is Jamie Benning talking to you from my grotto, well my house here in London, UK. Welcome or welcome back.

I'm going to skip all the usual talk of ways that you can support the podcast, because you've had a year of that, just to give you and me a break from saying it again and you listening to it again, So let's leap right in. I was recently given the opportunity by folks at ILM to talk to two VFX supervisors that worked on Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part one. It's a mouthful namely Jeff Sutherland and Simoni Coco, so as you might imagine, I jumped to the chance, and within I think it was less than twenty four hours, we were chatting on Riverside, the platform that I used to record my podcasts these days. In this conversation, we discussed their work on Mission Impossible Dire Reckoning Part one and the unique challenges they faced.

They talk about the impact of practical elements on their VFX work, the importance of creating scale and believability, and the balance between realism and creativity. We also discussed the collaboration with stunt teams, the adaptation to new camera technology, and the always evolving role of their work in the filmmaking process. They share their experiences in finding creative solutions and maintaining freshness and objectivity. I'm always interested to ask about so just so that you know, Jeffrey is the first to speak after me, and Simone is the one with the Italian accent, as you might imagine. So here's my conversation with Jeffrey Sutherland and Simoni Coco, VFX supervisors at ILM on Mission Impossible, and I'll be back at the end for a brief bit of jabbering on.

Thanks for joining me. Guys. There was a time when a director and their team would sit looking at a script saying, Okay, here is a hero fighting a top of a train, or here's a hero jumping a bike off a mounting and speed flying to the ground. And you knew, as VFX supervisors, okay, that's entirely in our realm. But with the Mission Impossible is it's a little bit different, isn't it.

Yeah? I mean you're lucky if you see a script, I think at a certain point, and it's they definitely do a lot of improvising on location for sure, when they're shooting, and to a certain extent, I mean not obviously this isn't true all the time, but you do do a lot of reacting to what they got in camera. I think, yeah, but you know the fact that these films use a lot in camera, how does that impact What are the challenges for you in terms of having those kind of practical elements. Does that make your job easier to have something to anchor to or does that make your job more complex because they're using new cameras that didn't exist even six months beforehand. I think it helped to make it more viable because it's everything, you know, even the reaction of the actor and stuff.

If they got something there that they can react to, it does make our life easier. Does make it easier to make it believe everything, you know, For the trend sequel and stuff, they all shot you know, everything for real. Then we had to extend, for example, the train with extra coverages, so I altered the environment to match you know, different different locations that they shot. You to imagine to one location, it's it just I think it's easy. It's easy for us.

I guess everything's really grounded in the physics of the actual shot. You know, if you had to have a camera there as opposed to a virtual camera, and you know, it sort of keeps it real, keeps it you know. Basically, there's not a lot of guesswork as what would happen kind of thing. It's you know, exactly what would happen. It's about enhancing it from there.

Yeah. I spoke to some of the guys that worked on and Or, and I think it was more and Leo in particular that said, even if they'd replaced you know, ninety percent of a shot that was in camera in Wales at a damn you know, Doubling is an imperial base. Just having that anchor that really helped to kind of draw the eye away you needed to look and where the effects needed to be added. Did you find that with those shots that were shot in Norway and then the other locations for this movie. Oh yeah, yeah, quite a lot.

And I guess as well as is what the director or what the filmmaker won't you shoot? You know, they they go the camera, they go, they go accept that look what their focus need to be on why they need to shoot, and that's kind of anything easier. Absolutely. I guess the one thing that sometimes gets a little more complicated is, you know, if you know it compared to like an all CG shot or something like that, or sequence where it's quite predictable when you're putting a sequence like that together, that you know the elements you need to produce, you know, the camera angles, you know that you can put the wherever you want it, and it becomes a little bit more kind of like assembly line, and you can put together the shots that way and in a collectable way.

Again, like I was saying about being kind of reactive to what they shoot, you can kind of have a little sequence of shots where you're you know, where you base that they have to see what was captured in camera, and then each shot becomes its own little puzzle a little bit in terms of what's needed to make it work. Yeah, And I guess having the practical shots and the nature of that means that you get those happy accidents as well that you wouldn't necessarily get if you were doing it all as a visual effect. Yeah, there's there's inevitably, I mean, even in the parts. If you know, say you need to maybe use a CG car to remove a rig, camera rig or something like that. Or you very often see things in the photography that you really want to hold on to and so you make an extra attempt to do that.

And like whether it's a glint or just a you know, whatever it might be. It could be something little that really makes the shot. Yeah. I think a couple of them they had a couple of accident or something, but they kept in the movie because it was you know, it ended up to be quite nice. They wasn't supposed to be there.

Yeah. Again, it kind of grounds it doesn't it makes it believable for people. And even though you know, of course the mission impossible and Paramount are very good at and Tom Cruise of course are very good at publicizing that this stunt that's happened is this big event moment. I think there's a tendency for people these days to just kind of think, well, everything's done with visual effects. But these films, there's now an expectation, isn't there with these films for people to go and see something that they've not seen before.

I mean, I think, you know, I grew up in the eighties. I think of those big moments in the Bond movies and you'd see a documentary about how somebody actually jumped off the Eiffel Tower or whatever it was. Each time that one of these movies comes out, do you feel the kind of the pressure of those expectations to make sure that there's not only bigger moments, but that your work can sweeten those moments as well. Yeah, definitely. I think you know, one example of that, you know, I'm thinking about the train sequence when that you know, sort of after the bridge explosion, the trains kind of make the bridges crumbling underneath, the train kind of makes its way over the edge, and there'sh there that you know, where the train carriage goes completely vertical and they're just hanging there.

And a great part about having built you know it was it was basically a partial build of a giant carriage that they literally suspended and turned vertical and you know, and it basically gives the perfect platform for the actors to kind of perform the stunts with to make that totally believable. And then we kind of come in and you know, we have that you know, like you said, we have that to kind of live up to basically, we have we have a bar that we know we have to hit. There's a you know, but we are you know, building a digital carriage to kind of extend that practical carriage or to do things you can't do with it, you know if it's not digital. But you have perfect reference in the shot for what it needs to look like.

You have the actors having actually you know, been hanging there off of that piece of the carriage or whatever, and now you're bringing it in doing it, you know, some sweetening digitally at you know. You it's like said, is perfect reference. The physics are all there, it's all you know. It's easier in some ways, but also does kind of raise the bar on it in terms of the details. Photography.

Yeah, and the same thing that I remember hearing, sorry, so go ahead, so many just the same thing for the jump sequence. You know, Tom risk his life to jump, you know, from that mountain that he made all for real. Yeah, you know, they build the build a ramp, They build a huge ramp and on top of them, on top of the mountain. But every you know, we just needed to replace the ramp at the end of it. But everything else was real, So we just had to augmentally the ramp, but we kept everything as it was and that make it, you know, an amazing performance.

Yeah. I watched that behind the scenes again today and although I was kind of aware that Tom had done it and he'd done it multiple times, just seeing the scale of that ramp, you know, there's that side on shot where you just see the drop and you see the ramp and you see this tiny little figure on a bike, and the scale of it is something that's really important in this movie, isn't it? And I think, what is? How do you how do you kind of add to those scenes to kind of build on that scale and make sure that people understand what the characters are going through? Because your job really is to help drive the story, isn't it?

And serve the story? What are some of the things that you can do to kind of make something already spectacular even more spectacular. I've kind of asked it already, but I feel like there's something more there. Well that the goal for us is just making sure that the viewing you know that the viewers it doesn't if there's anything strange, everything is you know, you concentrate on the act or it concentate on the action that is happening. And that's why you know, in this especially in the jump sequence, we went through a you know, there were a few variation of how this amounted was supposed to be, how we created that the edge, how well it moving this the ramp, But I think it's in a way it just makes can should that the attention is on Tom, nothing is destructed from me, so it's his life for it.

As I say so, it's that's what was our main point. And we had you know, the team on the the BFx team an ALEX, the Visual effectiblevis Or client. Then they took coundreds of images and the andres of the photogramhmetry the top of the mountain, making sure that all the details ben there so we could recreate it and make sure that was all it seems integrated. Yeah, a couple of details there. The you know, the rap is a is a clean ramp, so we're adding dust in the breed kind of that it's kicking up as the tires go across the land, that sort of thing.

So nice little detail. A little bit of suspension mounts was was added there just to the lower part of the motorcycle kind of make it, you know, that much more believable in terms of the terrain that he was going over. Mm hmmmm, as opposed to the smoother rap. Yeah, because you've watched those behind the scenes things and there's that that red line up the middle of the ramp and Tom is pretty much on it on one shot until it's ever so slightly a couple of injuries to the right. You know, he's a perfectionist and you're adding in imperfections almost to kind of make it believable so that he is more believable than the reality.

Well, he was probably reading the wind so he knew no, no, yeah, thats the only that on the bike. We only change you, right do we changed that the suspension or way, But that was it just to give a late the bit of movement. But that was we kept a torment performance was we haven't touched all of that. I I remember Steven Spielberg saying to Dennis Murrean on e T if you can't make it look real, make it look beautiful. Now you have the ability to do both of those things.

How do you find that balance? How do you rain that in? You know, because you're creative people you're working with a creative team. They want to not show off their skills, but they want to showcase their skills without being distracting. How do you how do you strike that balance?

Yeah, I mean I think that's definitely consideration, you know, Like, you know, I'm just thinking about like the the Norway shots, the shots that were standing in for the Alps that were shot in the in the valley in Norway. You know, those are really beautiful shots, I think, and I think at a certain point it's you know, there were some of that photography was shot in Norway and some of it was shot back in the UK, so there had to be a lot of environment work to kind of you know, basically type of locations together for those shots, and I think, you know, the team the environment are just really kind of yeah on some of those shots really got a chance to really show like you know, basically the wide establishing shots of the of the valley kind of were really beautiful and they got a chance to show off a little bit there.

I think in those shots for sure. I was also thinking about, you know, I've been reading a lot of history about visual effects and two hundred shots in a film not so long ago, was a lot of shots. We're talking upwards of two thousand. I mean, how many do you know how many in this movie? Well, so I can't remember the totah, yeah, il Amded I think was eleven hundred, eleven or twelve hundred.

And then on top of that, there were other houses that were evolved as well. So you know, as far as the total number, I'm not sure. But how how supervisors and supervisors there's multi there's several of you. How do you keep a handle on all of that stuff and make sure that not only the pipeline to get the work finished is you know, smooth, but also to all be in sync with each other. In terms of the visual nature of the film, well, well, I guess production play a big part of it.

I think it keeps us on a line and then and then me and Jeff will together quite quite closely on you know, on some specific short and making sure they all that they all you know, they were looking the same things like that. But I think production is the one that is take a big role on that especially, But you got so many shorts, and then you've got the city supervisor, they too, the supervisor that you know, they all making sure that everything is looking the same. Yeah, just a bigger level of complexity than a decade ago or five, even a couple of years ago. Yeah, for sure. And we have had to work pretty closely with some other facilities as well for some of the work, particularly the graphics work that's in the review, which I was done by Blind and they, you know, thinking there was one scene in particular, with literally hundreds of CRT monitors in their kind of command center that all had to be you know, had to have graphics put in there.

And so they worked on the graphics and we had to do a lot of back and forth with establishing the pipeline for that, you know, and making sure that they were you know, it wasn't just like a hundred times like your standard screen replacement. It was like basically mapping out the graphics across a whole array of monitors, and so that took a lot of collaboration with them for that. And you're collaborating with so many different departments as visual effects supervisors. How is your action with the stunt teams, the practical stunt teams that are actually on the ground doing these these these big stunt moments. Do you have your people on the ground at the same time.

Are you there, for instance, in Norway or in the desert when they're riding the horses, usually there, Yeah, Alex, Alex was on set all the time, So Alex was wasn't set, it was so it was there for all the old short he directed with the with the team I did that week while Alex wasn't available, So I did a week on set just covering him. And but yeah, I was Yeah, they always talked to you and stuff and you know, trying to but it was all over. So I had that Joe Bonnett, and that was the same for you, Jeff as well. Yeah, and like like Simony said, Alex was on set for most of the time, so we were out on set very much. And yeah, but I know, I mean, definitely there was a lot of you know, collaboration with the stunt team for sure.

You know. As like I'm thinking a little bit about the the driving sequences in Rome where Tom Tom was doing a lot of that driving. I think I think I'm pretty sure he did like all of his driving handcuffed to Haley. Yet well, yeah, but then there was other times when maybe some of the other actors were you know, that didn't do all, you know, necessarily all their driving. There was a stunt driver rig in the back of the cars that was you know, was really kind of a cool thing to see basically driving from the back seat on those and we did a lot of CG removal on those shots.

Yeah, I was forgiven that. Sorry, I was just going to say it was pretty amaze though on how much the driving that Tom actually did. Yeah, he really does get in there and do what he wants to do. I look at those shots, particularly those ones in the car, of course, and we're so used to as an audience understanding that they might be face replacement because we know that can't really be the actor in there because you know, of insurance reasons, or because they don't want to do it and there's a stunt person there to do it for them. Given that his face is there and it's in, you know, it'll screech up to the lens, you know, slam the brakes on, and there his faces kind of filling sixty percent of the frame.

Does that mean you can diver your efforts and perhaps budgets to sweeten different parts of the shot because you're not having to replace Tom's face. Yeah, definitely, I mean, I think I mean, and that kind of goes to what I was saying earlier about each shot being its own little puzzle in a way. You know that just the way that these shots were shot, they're very often multiple rigs on the cars. So it's all to capture Tom doing the stunt basically and getting really nice shots of that. But very often, you know, big portions of the car might be covered with a camera rig so in there and you know, with our digital bridge of the car and using that to kind of clean clean the rest of the shot up.

Basically. That was a big part of our own chase sequence work, those camera rigs that you mentioned, Like I said it earlier on, you know, there were camerags used in this film which probably weren't even the cameras weren't even available even two years before. How does that affect and impact your work? Does it mean you have to rebuild some of your tools to kind of cope with that technology? Are you constantly keeping across the practical camera market?

Yeah, I mean, pipeline wise, it definitely has a big effect just in terms of, you know, the number of kind of lenses used in camera camera backs used. I mean it was pretty immense on this movie, especially, you know there with the threshed out production schedule on everything, there were COVID delays and stuff that, you know, I think when they kind of picked up shooting, and very often it was a new set of cameras or whatever, and so it was kind of like, you know, the number of combinations of lenses that needed to be you know, gridded and that sort of thing, and ingestion pipeline. Just the mechanics of making you know, the show run was definitely tricky because of that for sure. Yeah. I imagine the recording devices as well, for those cameras that could be all sorts of different codecs potentially, and different formats, different frame sizes, which you then have to kind of build a virtual lens to kind of replace elements in the shots as well.

It must be so complex. And the amount of footage just the just the sheer amount. You know, if you've got five cameras strapped to a feat five hundred, you've got five times as much shots as you might have had otherwise. My goodness. I don't envy your work.

I'm very interested in your work, but I don't envy your work. I work in live TV. It happens, it's done, and you just kind of dust yourself off and move on to the next thing. During my lifetime, of course, the practical camera shots and visual effects were two very separate things. And you know, we made that suspension of disbelief, didn't we When we saw a castle on the horizon, we probably knew it was a matte painting by Chris Evans and Mike Pangratzio or one of those guys these days, and and and in a way we sort of look at that work and we admire that work.

Your job now, and the job has always been to make your work invisible in the effects, your job now is even more invisible. How does that impact the way you work? Is it? Like, yes, we made it invisible and nobody noticed that that was an effect. I mean, I'm sure there are effects in this movie that people wouldn't even know of visual effects, right probably?

Yeah, But yeah, I mean because it's because you've got a photooph you know, you've got plate photography for everything, So that makes it very difficult for people to know which one is real which one is not. Have our job is making sure that that is is a success. People doesn't know that that is real dies as we said, if they are not, they cannot you know, we spend so much time to make sure that everything match to them, to the plate, photography, every single tree that they are some of the three, everything to make exactly as it is in there. So I think it is I personally perfectly when people doesn't know if it's real. Lot, it means somewhat job is done until you get to award season and then you can show off a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Is there a particular instance in making this film where you have to find a kind of unexpected creative solution to overcome a particular moment in the movie one of the maybe one of those stunts. I think about it for a minute. I mean that's sort of like you've kind of described every day to a certain extent. Yeah, I mean I think about like the sandstorm sequence.

There was a lot of you know, sort of figuring out that stuff. It kind of coming up with solutions for those shots, you know, they shot in the desert, and then I think a lot of a lot of the challenge for that came with marrying the kind of wider shots with the close up shots where you're kind of feeling the grid of the sand blowing around, and we're adding elements to elements that they also shot on set as well, and then kind of you back up and kind of like you get the more establishing shots of the geography. Is kind of like marrying our digital effects storm in with those close ups so that you know, kind of in the sequence if you remember, it kind of approaches during sequence. It kind of like it kind of descends on the desk town at the same time that Ethan does, and you kind of want all that to kind of like hit it once.

And so there's a little bit of choreographing that, you know, kind of balancing the sunlight, the amount of sunlight that you feel kind of burning through the blowing sand, you know, kind of you know, I like I said, just making the shots, kind of making the sequence work as a sequence. You're not really thinking about it from shot to shot, but you're feeling it and you know, and and there were lots of different kinds of challenges to make that work shot to shut. It wasn't like, you know, apply sandstorm here and you know, and then it just works. It's a lot of playing with it to make it feel right mm hmm. And when you're viewing these visual effects as a team, sometimes online, I'm sure, sometimes perhaps in person, you're seeing these things again and again and again and again.

You can get to a point where you can't see the wood for the trees. Do you maintain a kind of freshness and a clean set of eyes to look at this, you know, objectively and understand it from the audience's perspective? You know, do you walk out the room and come back in and just glance at it, or you know, is there is there a technique you used to kind of keep fresh eyes. That's funny. I think everybody has their own tricks through that kind of thing.

I mean, I remember when that Dennis Brown used to do a lot was basically flop the shot. So you looked at it for months. Yeah, suddenly you fop it and you look at it again, and it feels like a brand new shot, and yet it in different ways, and it really it does kind of loosen things up a bit. It's kind of like tricks like that are kind of good. And then also just and I actually this was another dinisperient thing that named up, but I remember once that when we were, you know, in a show and you know, we were kind of looking at something.

It was kind of a particular problem we were trying to solve, and he basically sent one of the production people out into the hall to just grab the next person walking by right in the company. It pulled them in to look at somebody else's eyes. Yeah, is there what do you think? You know, what do you see? You know, kind of thing that I got.

So I think there's just tricks like that that help. Yeah. Yeah, I I've interviewed a number of editors before we've talked about just removing the sound for a moment, just to see if it works. You know, from geographical point of view, obviously you're doing your work without the sounds and without the music. At what stage do you actually get to see those elements integrated into your work or is it like when you go to the cast and crew screening.

I think it depends on the on the on the project. Really, some time you get the sounds earlier, sometime you get the sounds, so then it's various. I think for this one specifically, we didn't have the sound going. You know, for most of the production. The has kind of funny, because I mean some of some of the things I really loved about this movie was, you know, there are a couple of scenes in particular where the chemistry between the actors is really good.

One of it is like the piano drop sequence when there's a lot of suspension building. Another one is the one down in the Metro Tunnel when at the end of the Fiat Cars between Haley and Tom and it was really interesting because and this is one of the first kind of sequences that I've seen where even without the sound and without knowing what they're saying, you could watch that chemistry and really feel it and kind of you know, like get it. And I kind of realized that there was some kind of magic happening there a little bit, and it's kind of funny would kind of make up what they were saying in my head, but you know, not knowing what they were actually saying, but you know, but it actually, you know, you could feel like the scene working even without the dialogue.

And then when he actually saw the dialogue, it was it was awesome. That kind of paid off for me. Do you ever ever have any interaction with the sound department. I know, I spoke to some other people who worked another big movie that worked on the sounds, and they their sounds kind of influenced the visual effects in some cases. This was a sci fi movie, so you know, they were creating sounds that didn't exist.

But do you ever ever have any interactions with the sound department? Is there a two way street there? I don't know if on this or not. Really, I think we had much to deal with souts because of anything was you know, based, But if you if you go explosion and things like that, then yeah, it took timing the explosion or not. I mean Garan shots things like that.

Maybe, But on my side, we didn't really have much to do without Yeah. I mean a lot of times I think we would be affecting their work a lot more than the other way around, you know, just in terms of what we emphasize as a shot. Yeah, I guess it depends on the pipeline of the movie, doesn't it what sort of what comes first, and who's brought on when and all of those things. As a sort of final little fun question which I usually avoid, but given that we're celebrating your work on this particular movie, there's so many sequences in this film that involve visual effects, like we said upwards of two thousand or so, is there a particular moment that stands out to you as particularly rewarding or challenging and what made that memorable for you?

Why did that scene become memorable for you? I think that, I mean, the trade sequence is huge, it's well, so we split that ony into bit, we split that way into bits. For me, probably the train crash is there is one of the it was one of the challenges and the nice world because they actually shot a train, you know that the prop local locomotive dropping from the from the cliff from a cliff in England, and so we we use so we use all the plates photography of the train. We extract the train from all of them, from all the plates, and we we had to recreate the environment of the clean bridge in Norway. And that was a really fun day.

Affects involved in this environment and and you know it was it was great fun. Yeah for me, it was. Yeah. It was probably the the Spanish step sequence in Rome, so like you know that it's obviously it's quite a long car chase to the streets of Rome and then one of one of the kind of highlight moments of it is suddenly on this historic landmark, which they couldn't actually shoot the cars on the landmark itself. So you know, everything up to and everything after it is all real, you know, location shots, and we had to kind of create you know, the version of the Spanish steps, you know, where you're kind of looking off the edge of that location, you're seeing you know, real realm.

And then you know, we shot the the the steps themselves were It was done on a back lot, you know, building kind of a full scale kind of one third of those steps, sort of one flight of those steps, and then you know you're basically just making that seamless with the rest of the location work. It was pretty fun and rewarding. Nice I said, that was my last question, but I kind of have one more. When you first saw the footage come back from the stunts, in particular, I'm thinking about the jump. What was your initial reaction when you saw that stuff?

I mean, did it kind of blow your mind? First time I saw that, it was like, oh my god. And then they told me that they did like I think he did it it Tom did six times, so seven times a Sally the jump. I kind of remember Oh, I will die of art just just thinking of it. Yeah, there is something superhuman about that man.

I work in Formula one motor racing and working the television broadcast and Tom has actually been in an F one red ball car and the team actually said if he was a bit younger, he could have been a really good F one driver. He's just one of those people that has skills for pretty much everything to do with physicality, isn't he amazing? Well, I appreciate your time today, guys. It's been It's been good fun talking to you, and congratulations on another fantastic project. I'm kind of jealous of you because you get to do action, sci fi comedy, everything you know in your job.

It must be very rewarding. Yeah, it's definitely definitely fine. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you, cheers, Thank you, Joey.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Simoni and Jeffrey there. Thank you to both of those gentlemen for their time, and to the folks at ILM for lining that up. There's a video version of the conversation coming to YouTube, hopefully with a few clips that go some way to showing the amount of work ILM and the other VFX vendor did on the movie, so keep your eyes open for that one. As with the quick intro, I'm going to make it a quick outro. Thanks for another year of support.

Remember you can continue to support the podcast on Patreon dot com forward slash Jamie Benning, or by buying our book The Return of the Jedi Unauthorized Timeline on Amazon in your region. Happy New Year to you all. Thanks for a great twenty twenty three. Lots more to come from film We Mentories in twenty twenty four. Thanks for joining me and I hope you can do so for the next episode of The Filmingmentary's podcast