Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 visual effects production supervisor Stephane Ceretti has spoken about filming Rocket’s intense flashbacks from the Marvel Studios sequel.
How were the Rocket flashbacks in GOTG 3 filmed?
While speaking with ComingSoon, Ceretti was asked about working on the scenes that involved four animated talking animals. He explained that they shot the flashback scenes early in production using the four actors who would also provide the characters’ voices. The visual effects supervisor also noted that director James Gunn was always open to questions and excelled at planning.
“We wanted to capture that as soon as possible. So we got the four actors — we had Sean Gun, we had Linda Cardellini playing Lylla, Asim [Chaudhry] was playing Teefs, then Mikaela [Hoover] was playing Floor,” Ceretti explained. “And we just put them in that oversized cage, which was the right proportions for them. We shot them acting for the first two days. I said to James, “This is the acting we’re going to use, so it needs to be you directing them, the camera doing the thing you want it to do.” We motion-captured the camera. So the motion of the camera was motion-captured … We don’t do motion captures for Rocket, for example. We animate. It’s hand-animated by the people at Framestore in London that have worked on this sequence.
“We just really took our time, and that’s why we wanted to shoot that first, because we knew that would be very complicated. And as you said, that’s the core of the film. If that doesn’t work, nothing works. So we had to be very, very specific about everything. And James is amazing with visual effects. He plans, everything. He is very on top of everything. We can talk to him all the time. If we have questions, he’s there. We have meetings with the vendors and him and me and everybody, and we all work together and to get all that emotion out of every single moment, and that was great.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was once again written and directed by James Gunn. MCU vets Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Sean Gunn, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel returned to reprise their respective roles as Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Kraglin, Nebula, Mantis, Rocket, and Groot, while Maria Bakalova returned as Cosmo the Spacedog. The sequel also featured the introduction of franchise newcomers Will Poulter and Chukwudi Iwuji, who portray the roles of Adam Warlock and High Evolutionary.
