The Hunger Games - The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Led by VFX Supervisor Martin Gaardeler, Ghost VFX proudly provided visual effects services on the film, a prequel to the 2012 blockbuster The Hunger Games.

February 29, 2024

plot

In this prequel to The Hunger Games, a young Coriolanus Snow — decades before becoming the tyrannical President of Panem — battles his instincts between good and evil as he mentors Lucy Gray Baird in the 10th Hunger Games.

scope

Ghost VFX artists in Copenhagen worked closely with production Visual Effects Supervisor Adrian De Wet and Visual Effects Producer Eve Fizzinoglia to deliver more than 200 shots spread across multiple sequences.

“Most of our shots contained some kind of creature or animation work. Often this was front and center, making you forget that the backdrop was also fully digital environments or heavily augmented. As an example, we had hordes of cg snakes crawling about in a largely fully synthetic arena. We also designed and built a large drone and ran a number of action driven digi-double shots.” - VFX Supervisor Martin Gaardeler

“We worked on a very complex sequence in the arena where a huge canister filled with snakes would be unleashed to hunt the remaining tributes. The fast-moving snake herd was a difficult challenge solved through simulation and animation. The snakes needed to interact with the arena, the actors, and themselves; on top of that, we also had to create cloth simulation for the shots where they are crawling on the actors. The FX team did a great job of bringing the snakes to life, and in some of the final shots there is hardly anything left of the original plate. It was an honor for our team to help fulfill Director Francis Lawrence’s vision for the film and to work with Adrian (De Wet) and Eva (Fizzinoglia) again.” - VFX Supervisor Martin Gaardeler

IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS

Ghost VFX provided concepts and designs for several creatures and also collaborated with other visual effects vendors on building a cg arena. The team was tasked with creating a swarm of snakes, and completed several shots in a lab where the snakes were created. For other creatures that Dr. Gaul created, Ghost VFX visualized eels swimming around in a small pool in the floor, among others.