Over the weekend, Anssi Määttä (Live-Action & Cinematics Director) shared a behind-the-scenes video showing how he and the team captured the footage of the "vortex" effect shown in Alan Wake 2.
Anssi introduces the video, describing it as "the making of Vortex (reality switch transition) and Dark Presence. 8mm bts footage from 2022-2023." The embedded footage shows a two-minute recording of the preparation that went into the scenes. In the first clip, we see someone mixing various liquids together in containers as another person adjusts the lighting for the shot. Later, the cameras and lights are adjusted around a tall metal blender with a clear tub. The last scene shows one of the overlapping images, as smoke rises, lit up like a lightning storm by a flashing lamp off to the side.
Retweeting the video, Sam Lake (Creative Director at Remedy) added, "Because we are crazy, we wanted to lean into practical effects with our live-action material in Alan Wake 2. To build the actual sets, and to use practical effects to draw from our arthouse inspirations. This exploration was led by the [fire emoji] @AnssiMaatta and our DP Mikko Riikonen."
The making of Vortex (reality switch transition) and Dark Presence. 8mm bts footage from 2022-2023. @alanwake @remedygames pic.twitter.com/GyR18yWRwj
— Anssi Määttä (@AnssiMaatta) August 4, 2024
If you watched the Alan Wake 2 Dev Stream focusing on Cinematics and Live-Action, the community first got a little teaser into the process when they tackled the subject of organic effects.
In the broadcast, Vida Starčević sat down with Anssi Määttä and Mikko Riikonen (Principle Cinematographer). Prompted by a question, Annsi begins to describe the filming process of the vortex, "...you can see vortex 1.0 in the last Control DLC [AWE]. That was kind of like the first vortex we did, and it's also all live-action, as is the cinematics with Wake. This time we wanted to take it further to [bring in] all sorts of custom tools and whatnot. But basically, the vortex is a slow-motion shot, inside of a custom-made blender with, yet again, different kind of liquids that Heikki [Häkkinen] did for us and then we- I think it was something like 1,200 frames or something like that something like that? So very high speed. So super slow [effect]. I remember I had this button I needed to... I don't know why we did it that way; some sort has to do something with the camera, but I needed to push it when I felt like it, and then it used the last 10 seconds or something. And then [those] 10 seconds became like.... I don't know how many minutes because of the frame rate. Then on top of that, we had this lens called..."
During his answer, Annsi looked over to Mikko beside him who takes over to describe the lens, "I can't remember, but [it was] like a super long, wide angle lens that could go, for example, into this mug." He picked up a nearby mug and showed how the camera would be placed on top, looking in. "So, it went into this uh blender that was about maybe this high," he placed down the mug and moved his hands approximately 40cm apart for the audience. "And then we had a dolly doing a camera move towards the bottom of the blender." After describing the setup, Anssi took over the description again, "And [the blender blades] went like really fast; because it's [shot in] so slow motion that, in the final product, it's going very slow down."
After the description of the blender and how it influenced the scene, Anssi moves on to another layer; the electric strikes. Continuing he says, "And then the vortex has electricity, if you look, there's this electric arcs; those [were] scanned in my bathroom. So basically, we scanned - or really there was just me in the bathroom - but yeah, we scanned static electricity; [taking] a 35 millimetre film in a dark bathroom, and then I got this static electricity generator kind of thing. You do this," he describes moving a hand in a circulator motion as if turning a crank, "and then there are these arcs coming. I borrowed it from a school, a local school. Then, basically, just feeding the film in between the arc. We developed the film and then created a kind of, stop-motion animation because of the arcs moving. That was mixed into the blender footage. Then we just blended and blended and explored, but it's basically fully in-camera effects, the whole thing. So, there's no like CGI, there's editing, but it's basically a very organic thing."
(The above transcription was edited for clarity and precision. You can watch the broadcast and answers in full on the Remedy YouTube channel.)
