Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Entertainment, Film and TV, Netflix, Squid Game, Technology, Social Media
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Entertainment, Film and TV, Netflix, Squid Game, Technology, Social Media
The visual effects studio behind Squid Game revealed the before-and-after of certain scenes in a video breakdown shared online.
You may've already binge-watched your way through season two of the hit South Korean survival drama, but are you enough of a fan to know how much computer generated imagery (CGI) and visual effects (VFX) Squid Game really uses?
Well, Gulliver Studios - which did the CGI and VFX for the hit series - has since revealed a breakdown of certain scenes.
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In a video shared to YouTube by Movie VFX, the 'VFX Breakdown by Gulliver Studios' reveals the set for the infamous 'Red Light, Green Light' game looked a bit different to how we see it on the screen.
Instead of the walls really being painted to look like a landscape, the breakdown shows them as being a solid blue.
Compositing supervisor at Gulliver Studios, Seok Jong-yeon told Foundry: "The hardest thing was making the unrealistic places that didn't exist look as if they really existed. It was challenging to create a non-existing environment based on concept art, as each episode had a different concept and location. For example, the playground was filmed at an actual outdoor playground but all the walls surrounding it were CG. As the time passed while filming, the shadows and shades changed, so we had to put a lot of effort to match them all equally."
The whole outer perspective of the arena of the games is also a product of special effects, alongside the big dome which fills with prize money hanging suspended over where the players sleep in their dormitory.
It probably won't massively surprise you to know Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) didn't end up with a real rat on her shoulder and nibbling away at her, but that the long-tailed animal was a product of CGI.
And the last game is starkly contrasted to the image we ended up seeing on our screens, the background even more cavernous, but the world impeccably built and blended so most of us wouldn't know any better.
Although, another video by Looper reveals certain elements of the first season which may shock you to know weren't the product of special effects.
It may've been easier to fake the amount of players taking part in the games with a helping hand of some special effects, however, Looper's video reveals a whopping 300 extras were actually hired and can be spotted in their masses in the first game.
In the first game, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) ends up nearly falling over but is saved by Abdul Ali (Anupam Tripathi), who grabs the back of his hoodie, Gi-hun suspended in air for several moments.
Abdul may be one of the season's heroes, but no one has that superhuman strength in real life and rather than special effects being used to edit Gi-hun into the position post-production, it turns out a wire was actually used to hold Jung-Jae up in the position and then the wire was edited out after and the uniform was tweaked too due to the wire shifting the material in a certain way.
It's incredible just how much of the first season was built as a set but the exhibit of certain special effects tweaks and finishing touches to connect certain spaces and create more expansive backgrounds is impressive to see - and it's not taken long for fans of the show to weigh in.
One social media user commented: "Wow. That is some damn fine compositing. Well done!"
"CGI still blows my mind, like I can't wrap my head around how much they can do and just how realistic it looks now," another added.
A third wrote: "I can only imagine what it would be like to be one of these actors, and then watch the show back to see what the post team did to the set!"