Visual Effects in “Constantine” (2005)

The topic for this week’s lecture was VFX, also known as Digital Visual Effects (DFX) which means to use computer hardware and software to create effects. VFX technology is also often associated with CG or Computer Generated effects/elements. The advantage with using CG and VFX is that the costs using it are low and it adds flexibility and realism to the movie creation. Almost all Hollywood movies uses VFX to some degree to enhance the look of the movie, create sceneries and situations that can not exist in real life. When using VFX in movies there is a wide range of tools and techniques available to create the scenes and situations that former just have existed in imagination.

Constantine stars Keanu Reeves who is a kind of exorcist who can see demons and angels and also helps people being possessed by evil creatures by using relics. In the movie he travels to hell to help a police detective finding out what happened to her sister and also find out that demons from hell are getting closer contact with the world. So he has to find a way of fighting them off.
This movie required an enormous range of visual effects to be able to make the action scenes, meeting with demons, how you travel to hell, what hell looks like, how angels look like and how demons interfere in the world. I thought the movie has succeeded in a great way with the creating and visualising of these things and made the movie look very realistic.
In the class we also watched some of the extra material for the movie. The movie has a great special feature part showing the creation of the visual elements, the production face, how “Constantine” was conceptualised from being a cartoon figure to a movie character and also about the cosmology behind “Constantine”. These clips showed what kind of VFX combinations they had in different scenes of the movie. They also showed the great range of physical objects and robots that had to be made for the movie to make the scenes look real and these clips answered a lot of the thoughts I’ve formerly had about how it is possible to make certain scenes look so incredible real, because there are several times I’ve been thinking in movies that there is no way all of this is just made on a computer.
It was fascinating to see the big and detailed process the film team made to visualise hell in the movie and how they actually had to create a big part of it and its figures. Another thing these behind the scenes material taught me was how they created a lot of the creatures of the movie. I found it fascinating how it is the combination of different elements, costumes, actors, computer generation and 3D markers that makes these creatures look real, and it also tells how much work it is to make the elements look real.
My favourite scenes in the movie is first when Constantine meets Gabriel in the library when you suddenly see the enormous wings behind him which gives him an extreme authority and you can see why he is God’s archangel. I also like the scene when Constantine visits hell and the uncomfortableness the scene creates and makes you feel. I also like the final scene when Satan arrives and you see his feet dripping and landing before he gets to Constantine, you know he is Satan and how superior he is. I really like how the movie has managed to create great authority to the characters because it is dealing with some of the supposed greatest authorities in the world.