Director Luca Guadagnino on the set of ‘Challenger’
Niko Tavernise/MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection
In Luca Guadagnino’s tennis thriller Challenger, starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor litigate their love triangle both in court and in the bedroom. Therefore, this sport must remain interesting.
Guadagnino previously told Little White Lies he doesn’t like watching real tennis because it’s boring. “The method [the sport] what is displayed is a bit undynamic,” he said. Challenger — punctuated by the camera’s near-constant frenetic movement — appears to be an attempt to remedy this failure.
“Luca’s vision for this film was to make tennis action in general very kinetic,” Challenger VFX Director Brian Drewes tells it Hollywood Reporter. The camera sweeps up and down the field, jumping on the beautiful, sweaty faces of its subjects and filled with a visceral energy that sent the internet and critics into a frenzy when the film was released. This kineticism reaches its peak at the end of the film, when the camera becomes a ball, and the audience volleys back and forth between O’Connor and Faist in a dizzying movement pattern that is definitely No “not dynamic.”
How do they make it happen?
Challenger falls into the category of films whose VFX are not immediately visible. “This is the kind of film that the audience feels a little different for some reason,” said Drewes, co-founder of Zero VFX. “It’s subtle, but it has a big impact. You say, ‘Oh, something’s different.’”
Drewes and his team touched up every tennis scene (and then some) in the film, helping the game’s dynamism with CG help from balls, hands, rackets, faces, background actors, and more.
“We really wanted to focus on the actors,” says Drewes, “to really be able to showcase all the work they’ve done.”
In the case of the POV scene, Drewes begins with a previs pass (a computer-generated 3D previsualization) of the entire scene, edited to real-world audio and the pace of an actual tennis match overseen by Brad Gilbert, Andre Agassi fame. tennis coach and Challenger tennis consultant.
“He wrote down all the tennis action for the film in great detail,” Drewes said. “Where the ball goes and the nature of the volley is determined by him.”
Mike Faist enters Challenger
MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection
The previs helped Drewes and Guadagnino understand what the scene would be like. “I’ve never seen it before,” Drewes said. “There is no reference to it in the real world.”
Once previs was complete, the team filmed the scene with two stunt doubles for about five hours on Sunday. “This time in court is invaluable,” Drewes said. “Luca said, ‘As long as you shoot what’s in previs, I don’t mind,’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir.’”
Although for the most part Challenger shot on 35mm film, Drewes used an Arri Alexa LF camera for the POV and some other tennis scenes given the speed required for the film’s most turbulent shots. (Another example? The corkscrew zoom at Faist became so popular because of the film’s viral trailer.)
The camera is mounted on a 30′ crane whose recording will later be reset to match the predetermined speed. The end result moves at the same pace as a real-life tennis match.
In the post, the team combined 23 shots for a 24-second scene. When they put them together, each image also had to be relighted to account for daylight changes that occurred during the shooting hours.
To complete the final model, Drewes scanned the tennis court with lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) and photogrammetry and added more than 100 additional photos of scanned backgrounds to fill the stands.
“We had 900 shots in this film,” he said. “You would never guess that.”
How similar is the final product to the original previs? “I’m 100 percent sure that Luca wouldn’t have agreed to it if it wasn’t in his mind,” Drewes said, but added, “it was a very collaborative process to get there.”
In fact, he adds, collaboration is often the key to VFX success. “When it becomes part of the story, that’s when it’s really successful. Sometimes that means it takes center stage, sort of Angry, where you know it’s there but you can enjoy its beauty. Then other times, you don’t realize it. You’re involved in the process, seeing it with the filmmakers,” he said. “We love surprising people.”
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