Roland Emmerich Breaks Down the Visual Effects Used in "Independence Day: Resurgence"

(inhuman screeching)

[Woman] Why are they screaming?

They're not screaming.

They're celebrating.

(crashes) (missiles launching)

Hi, I'm Mike Seymour from fxguide.com for Wired.

Independence Day: Resurgence picks up the action

twenty years on from the original

Roland Emmerich blockbuster.

And there are some epic shots, and an epic alien.

But to start with, in this film our heroes need to overcome

a 3,000 mile wide alien mothership.

To help with such a vast undertaking,

Roland Emmerich used a new N-cam system on set

to allow him and the actors

to see exactly what it was going to look like

when the blue screen was replaced with the VFX.

Well it's actually something

which I really was looking forward to

because I heard about it like already 6, 7 years ago.

And I used it a little bit in White House Down too.

And then I kind of made the decision

to go for big kind of like crew there,

because it's a little bit crew intensive,

and the interesting part about it

is if you know how to use it,

it's like an incredible tool.

But a lot of directors have not the patience

you know quite to use it.

Because you have to adjust it,

you have to always measure every (mumbles) and stuff.

So there's a lot of things you have to have patience for.

But I always have the patience.

And when N-camera is not working,

I'm shooting real fast something else.

And then go back to that.

Well, much has changed.

The effects are bigger, the ship is bigger,

and the alien is bigger.

When we discover that the hive is driven

by one mother of an alien.

She has arrived.

Who's she?

The film was supervised by Volker Engel

who has worked with Roland Emmerich on most of his projects.

Now while there are many companies that are contributing,

including uncharted Territory and Scanline and many others,

for the end alien bus sequence,

it was in fact Weta Digital that Volker turned to.

Led by Joe Letteri and Matt Aitken.

Let me ask, the first time you worked with Weta?

Yup, first time.

And I will work with them again.

(laughs) And so how did you do that process?

Well it was,

first of all what we did was we shot a lot of stuff

on the salt flats.

And mainly as reference

so we knew exactly what a bus could do

and we have a couple of these shots.

But not many, because Weta convinced us

it's much better to also create the bus in CG.

And then we had just--

I did storyboards and (mumbles).

And then, you know, we went from there.

But Weta is a very unique company.

Because they make absolute creative suggestions.

They said, Ah, this shot we could do better

when it would be like this.

And then they show you how it could be

and then you say, Fantastic!

You've always collaborated with your visual effects teams

and your art direction teams.

Yeah, sure.

But some times certain companies

who just only want to do what you give them,

and others, they say well, we could do this better

in that way or better in this way.

Well if you thought that end sequence looked pretty real,

in fact almost all of it was CG.

Weta came and replaced live action shots

with fully CG shots at a higher kind of rate

than they've done in almost any other film recently.

One of the reasons for this

is they have this really great new exterior lighting tool

that lets them work out very accurately what's happening

in exterior shots.

Contrast ratios and how the fill would actually work.

This of course then feeds into

their relatively new Manuka renderer.

On this end sequence with the queen, the bus,

and the attack on Area 51,

Weta Digital did over 230 shots alone.

Well don't forget to subscribe

for more behind the scenes action.

I'm Mike Seymour for Wired.

[Man] Today we celebrate our inde--

(static)

That is definitely bigger than the last one.