This Halloween season, Netflix presents Nightbooks, a fantasy-driven horror film from Director David Yarovesky and Producer Sam Raimi. Based on the 2018 horror-fantasy children's book of the same name by J. A. White, Nightbooks centers around scary story fan Alex (Winslow Fegley), who must tell a spine-tingling tale every night, or stay trapped with his new friend (Lidya Jewett), in the apartment of a wicked witch forever (Krysten Ritter).
This Halloween season, Netflix presents Nightbooks, a fantasy-driven horror film from Director David Yarovesky and Producer Sam Raimi. Based on the 2018 horror-fantasy children’s book of the same name by J. A. White, Nightbooks centers around scary story fan Alex (Winslow Fegley), who must tell a spine-tingling tale every night, or stay trapped with his new friend (Lidya Jewett), in the apartment of a wicked witch forever (Krysten Ritter).
MPC Production VFX Supervisor Matt Glover and MPC VFX Producer Sanchia Currie worked alongside Director David Yarovesky and the talented MPC team to bring to life the thrilling, fantasy world of Nightbooks. The MPC team spent almost a year and a half working to deliver over 480 shots for the feature across their Adelaide, Bangalore, and Toronto facilities. From CG creatures to full CG 12 story libraries, the team worked on a range of sequences to deliver the mysteries of Nightbooks.
Early discussions with Yarovesky determined the approach needed with the visual effects to capture the wonders of children’s horror. “Dave wanted to make a horror film, first and foremost. says VFX Supervisor Matt Glover. “And not a ‘kid’s horror film, but a real horror that kids and families could watch together. We weren’t going to pull any punches with the creature/character design or the scares.”
Brief in hand, the MPC team began to work up early concept designs to start development for one of their biggest and most complicated sequences – The Shredder attack in the Night Nursery. Set in a garden of magical plants lit only by UV black light, the sequence sees a CG pulsating egg sac rip open to open to reveal The Shredder – a skull-like creature with razor sharp blades as limbs that attacks the film’s heroes.
“One of the biggest challenges faced while creating this character, was how it reacted to its surrounding elements and the UV light of its habitat within the Night Nursey,” says Glover. Once the final design was approved by the director, a maquette was built for the MPC team to reference accurate lighting. Working in collaboration with partner studios on creature design and previz, the MPC team created a highly sculpted and fully CG asset, carefully developing the look of how the creature moved and reacted to its surroundings.
“As the name suggests, The Shredder scurries through the Night Nursery, destroying all things in its path,” continues Glover “We did a lot of testing in lookdev to balance the right amount of glow and still allowing internal detail and shadow to keep it feeling organic. There was also a lot of interaction with the environment and cast too.” As such, the team needed to take over any objects with CG versions for the tiny but dangerous creature to destroy. The roof of the Night Nursery was also digitally extended, through a combination of DMP and asset work.
Another significant challenge was Lenore, the evil witch’s hairless cat and sometimes invisible spy. As certain scenes required the cat to interact with the protagonists, the team set about scanning the real-life animal actor, and animating its CG replacement. Being a hairless animal meant that a huge amount of sub-surface detail was needed, along with particular attention to the skin folds and wrinkles, to allow the cat to move and interact realistically with the cast and environments.
Alongside the full CG character development, environment work and set extensions made up a large portion of the work MPC delivered. This included a CG establishing shot of New York city through a combination of CG asset work, DMP and CG rain.
One of the most complex sequences the Adelaide team handled was The Library – a 12-story set extension that contained thousands of books, cobwebs, and set dressings.
“We were only building 2 practical floors and redressing the 2nd level to be the 12th floor – so all the coverage and angles looking up and down needed to be pre-planned,” says Glover.
The biggest shot was Alex’s (and the audiences) big reveal of The Library – as the Steadicam leads Alex into the space and spins up to reveal the full height in all its glory. To complete the look, the team digitally extended and virtually decorated the vast space.
The team in Adelaide also handled the extensive magical FX elements throughout the film including the Witch’s magical powers. Working in collaboration with the Yarovsky, the teams went through several iterations of the lookdev before the final look was achieved – ensuring the elements felt real and grounded in line the director’s vision and overall production design.
Nightbooks is now streaming on Netflix.
