Baton Rouge visual effects artists played a role in the creation of the Netflix hit movie Bruised, which marked the directorial debut for actress Halle Berry.
Berry has signed a multi-movie deal with the streaming service following the film’s success, which could lead to more work for the local effects team.
“Me and Halle have established a pretty solid relationship through the project,” says Kolby Kember, VFX supervisor with Crafty Apes Louisiana. “We’ll find out once it comes down to it, but we’d like to think that she would certainly call us back if she needed any additional VFX work for a movie she’s directing in the future.”
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Crafty Apes, which has several locations nationwide, opened its Baton Rouge office at Celtic Media Centre early last year. Bruised is one of the biggest projects the local team has worked on, Kember says.
In the film, Oscar winner Berry plays an MMA fighter “who reclaims her power in both the ring and in her life,” Variety says. While it was not initially planned as a VFX-heavy project, COVID-19 restrictions limited the number of extras who could be used for crowd shots.
“How do we make these 25 people look like they’re filling an entire arena?” Kember says, adding that blood effects also came into play.
Bruised debuted in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was Netflix’s top film in the U.S. in late November and was the No. 2 English language film around the globe, ranking as the first choice in 71 countries and was watched for 47.7 million hours in its first five days of release, Variety reports.
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Kember says 32 artists are based at the Baton Rouge office, which is working on a number of projects he can’t discuss yet.
Read a story 225 published about Crafty Apes last year.
This story originally appeared in a Dec. 7 edition of Daily Report. To keep up with Baton Rouge business and politics, subscribe to the free Daily Report e-newsletter here.