Gravity Creates Dramatic and Unique Visual Effects for Universal Pictures' "The Adjustment Bureau"

Gravity Also Designs the Romantic Thriller's Main and End Titles

Gravity (formerly RhinoFX), an international creative content and brand communications company, has created highly dramatic and unique visual effects for the new Universal Pictures' romantic thriller, "The Adjustment Bureau," it was announced today by Zviah Eldar, Gravity's Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer. In addition, the company also designed the Main and End Titles for the film that opened on March 4.

Karin Levinson, Vice President of Features & Television, Jim Rider, Visual Effects Supervisor, and Yuval Levy, CG Supervisor/Digital Effects Supervisor, oversaw Gravity's New York-based visual effects team that was involved with "The Adjustment Bureau." As the lead visual effects house on the picture, Gravity's work was primarily comprised of "door transitions" and digital set extensions. Many of Gravity's visual effects shots depicted "magical" door transitions, in which the film's characters seamlessly cross from one environment into another. Variety's review of the film mentioned the following: "These inter-dimensional doorways are playfully surreal set-pieces, with odd visual flourishes that are well integrated…they keep the viewer off balance for a spell."

To accomplish this effect, Gravity presented writer/director/producer George Nolfi, the film's other producers, and visual effects supervisor Mark Russell, with a test that combined 2D and 3D techniques. Nolfi had prefaced that he didn't want the door transitions to appear as normal green screen effects, but rather as natural passages from one environment into the next. Gravity combined practical set reconstruction effects and 3D set extensions to create these transitions, which presented varying degrees of complexity. The most dramatic of these transitions depicts Emily Blunt's character as she seamlessly passes from a restroom into a 3D enhanced Yankee Stadium, and then onto a busy 6th Avenue intersection in Manhattan.

Rider and Levy said, "We developed what we believe were the best possible solutions for these transition scenes – beginning with practical photographed elements, and then incorporating 3D tracking, 3D computer-generated images, and 2D compositing, to complete these seamless effects."

Gravity's visual effects team also created a number of digital set extensions, most notably doubling the length of the reading room inside the massive New York Public Library building, and duplicating the number of people appearing at a crowd scene shot at Fordham University. Gravity's team lengthened the library scene by shooting the room, then digitally extending it and populating it through the use of green screen and compositing. Gravity also produced a match-move of Matt Damon's character running through the library room.

For the Main and End Titles Design, Gravity stylized graphic elements to coincide with the look and feel of "The Plan Book," an actual book featured within the film that represents the life paths of the lead characters, and depicts blueprints similar to alien hieroglyphics. The "Plan Book" graphics, which were represented in an Art Deco style, were highlighted by animated rays of sunlight breaking through cracks in overhead clouds.