DNEG’s VFX supervisors Anelia Asparuhova and Sebastian von Overheidt talk about creating a massive forest environment, mysterious fog and awesome nuclear explosion for ‘The Gorge’.
Two VFX supervisors from DNEG worked with production VFX supervisor Erik Nordby on Apple TV+ movie The Gorge, creating the vast forested wilderness where this story takes place. Two elite snipers from separate governments have been ordered to guard a deep gorge, all but lost within the forest, without knowing what is hidden inside. One of them, Levi, guards the west side of the gorge and the other, Drasa, guards the east, each occupying a separate watch tower.
They have been ordered not to communicate or leave their towers, but eventually they do meet and discover more about the gorge than they could have anticipated. As well as the forest environment and the towers, DNEG was also responsible for the ever-present fog seen hanging over the gorge, shrouding the mystery and danger inside it, two types of drones the characters encounter, and the awesome nuclear explosion that finally destroys everything within the gorge.
DNEG’s VFX supervisor Anelia Asparuhova was involved from the beginning of the shoot and had a chance to briefly visit the studio at Leavesden where the sets for the two tower interiors had been built up practically on a stage. VFX supervisor Sebastian von Overheidt joined a couple of months later.
Where in the World
Some previs had been created during pre production, especially for the gorge itself and the main sequences. But the first question Anelia and Sebastian wanted to answer was where in the world the gorge was located, because that would affect everything about its look, vegetation and lighting. “It isn’t mentioned explicitly in the script,” Anelia said. “But we figured that, because this was a story about two worlds, east and west, both interested in keeping whatever is residing in the gorge from getting out, it was most likely to be in a border region, making that goal equally compelling for both of them.”
They first wanted to understand what features are essential for gorges, and looked at reference material for dozens of gorge types. They also noted that the production had used scans of forests in Norway as backgrounds to block action sequences during pre production. The Norwegian government puts scans of nearly the whole country online and makes them widely available. These, of course, include fantastic gorges that the team could use as a start point, and from there they aimed to give the terrain a more mid-European than purely Scandinavian look.
Hidden Forest
As they looked over their options for tree species, they wanted to avoid going ahead randomly. While this ‘country’ does not exist, it did need to look real. Consequently, DNEG hired a geologist for the first few weeks who was a great help to make sure their choices made sense and didn’t contradict the growth of real-world vegetation.
“We also wanted to communicate a claustrophobic feeling by creating imposing geography that would be difficult to navigate,” said Anelia. “This would make it seem more logical for the character Levi to risk traversing the gorge on a zipline instead of trying to find a way around it on land. We added a waterfall on one side, and a large impenetrable wall on the other. The whole environment was surrounded by high mountains as well, to make accidental discovery from outside even less likely and to enhance that enclosed, hidden feeling.”
The forest scans gave them the low resolution geometry of their world surrounding the gorge, and Erik Nordby gave them higher resolution scans of rocks and other elements to define the textures and detail. Because trees are almost impossible to scan effectively, and would need to be distributed carefully, they worked with trees from DNEG’s huge vegetation library, choosing both conifers and deciduous types.
They were keen to differentiate between the two sides of the gorge – Levi’s side and Drasa’s side – and always wanted the audience to be able to recognise which way the camera was facing, even when the characters were looking through binoculars. Not only were the towers built on two quite different designs, but the designs of the view through each one’s binoculars also contrasted, as well as the composition of the forest vegetation and foliage. According to the geologist, Drasa’s side over in the east would logically be expected to receive more sunlight, leading to a higher proportion of deciduous trees.
Forest Up Close
Up to this point DNEG’s work, led mainly by Anelia’s team, gave viewers a sense of place, and the overall look and feel of the forest in wide establishing shots and from inside the towers. But in some sequences, the environment needed to be rendered much closer to the camera, with a much higher level of detail. Sebastian’s team focussed on these sequences by splitting off parts of the forest into individual chunks that were simpler to manage.
This team visualised what that world looks like from inside it. For example, when Levi and Drasa are out in the forest chased by drones, the actors were captured performing in an outdoor location that DNEG’s team replaced with the forest environment. The trees needed to show enough detail to identify their species, and the ground foliage had to be in place everywhere so that the practical plates could be extended into the distance, or to allow the action to cut between a plate shot and a fully digital shot.”
Lighting the Forest
Cutting from live action to CG would happen when Levi travels over the gorge on a zipline to meet Drasa, for instance. The action always started from a plate, shot on an exterior set in daylight. From that moment, he would jump out of the practical environment and into the full CG environment for the rest of the shot.
Lighting and compositing turned out to be a challenging job that required a lot of back and forth and collaboration between the teams. The plate lighting was always subject to change due to weather and to time of day, changing the angle of light. In that deep, complex forest world, lighting was never simple. Sebastian said, “If we were to just go ahead and match the lighting to the live action, our CG environment may not look particularly interesting,” said Sebastian.
“Furthermore, the high, surrounding mountains may prevent much light from reaching into the environment at that particular time of day, or cast awkward shadows. The position of the sun was always in question. All details had to be tied to the photography and from shot to shot as well, but in the end, of course, beautiful environment shots were always the goal.”
For Sebastian’s team, analysing light in detail, shot by-shot was a key part of the project. They worked on shots captured at a real location, often from sequences taking place around the base of the tower, whereas Anelia’s team worked on shots captured on a set representing the tower interior, at the top. She said, “We were lighting the environment as seen from that set, and had more opportunity to establish the lighting for a scene and then maintain that across a number of shots. The job then became a matter of ‘connecting’ the look from the upper tower, with what was happening at the base of the tower.”
Storytelling with Light
Both Anelia and Sebastian feel that light is extremely important to mood and story in a film. They played with light from the start, giving the earlier scenes a gloomy atmosphere to express the loneliness of the protagonists. Then the seasons change, new lighting takes over and as the characters begin falling in love, the audience sees many more sunny days and sunsets. On wintry days when Drasa and Levi put together drum kits and send drumming messages to each other across the gorge, the low, romantic sunset lights set the tone.
Anelia comes from a lighting background, having worked as a lighting supervisor, so it was a critical issue for her on this movie. Before becoming a VFX supervisor, Sebastian came from a compositing background, but was always involved with light before handing shots over to compositing. He said, “Right after shot construction, lighting is the most important stage. The better you solve the lighting for a scene and set the mood, the better the composite will work in the end.”
Fog in Motion
The fog that hangs over the gorge like a persistent character is in fact a biological hazard. But the intention was not for it to distract the audience from the human characters’ story or to show any distinctive characteristics, but simply for it to always be there. “We tested various types of fog and chose one that would help us convey the huge scale of this environment. Scaling the detail in a fog and around the edges can really help you do that.”
Once they had created a simulation to generate the fog, its movement within the shots was important. “Keeping a subtle motion in the fog, as well as across the expanse of trees, was key to making the environment interesting. We never like to create static images and always introduce some movement such as light shifting or shimmering in the distance, cloud shadows and so on,” Anelia said.
The environment was always addressed in pieces, in what Sebastian called sequence-based top-ups to the generic environment. These would be separate pieces of the environment created and used on their own, not necessarily patched into the wider world. The amount of geometry and sheer number of trees made it too heavy to render as a single asset. They paid special attention to the level of detail in shots and sequences, applying high detail only where it was warranted according to camera position and distance. The off-camera parts of the forest would be there, behind the viewer or to the side, but only as low-resolution block geometry, mainly to keep the lighting consistent.
Drone Tactics
The vehicles seen in The Gorge are interesting, and DNEG had the chance to work on two types of drone. One was fairly small, seen popping up through the fog, where it was collecting data. The team was handed a rough concept showing how it should look, and then fully designed it in 3D from there. It wasn’t to look shiny and new, but rather well-used and functional.
The quad-copters were handled differently. The production had built a practical example to use on set during the shoot and to use for some special effects work inside the forest. From the design of that practical prop, Sebastian’s team took the design further to complete the CG assets. “We gave it a more beaten-up, grittier look and also made it more tactical, mounting it with a gun and ammunition boxes,” said Sebastian.
“Since we weren’t given any animation reference, we carried out some animation tests for its flight behaviour and dynamics to see how it would look in motion, how much weight we should give it and how to scale it to work within the forest. For a shot when Drasa hides behind a tree in the chase sequence and the quad-copter explodes, the special effects team actually blew up the onset prop, giving us the reference we needed to complete the shot.”
Digital Drasa
Drasa needs a digital double in a pivotal sequence when she jumps out into the gorge to find Levi, who has fallen from the zipline while trying to return to his own tower after visiting her side. It required a process. For the live action, viewers see Drasa exit the tower, walk around it, ramp up and take a leap.
Sebastian said, “She quickly landed on a crash mat, but meanwhile our team created a very tight body track of her as she ran up to the edge and jumped, locking our animation very precisely into the first 10 to 15 frames of the jump to make the transition to digital. Then we shot-sculpted the grooves and folds in the clothing, the position of the backpack, the hair groom and simulation, keeping very close to her throughout the transition. Then after that, the animation and simulation of her free-falling would take over invisibly, in full CG.
“We found we had to address the smallest, tiniest details to avoid anyone noticing the takeover, frame by frame. Each move of the knee, elbow, the snap of the jump made a difference. Our discussions became quite esoteric, but in the end, that work really paid off and her jump preserves the shot’s dramatic intent.”
When Worlds Collide
Anelia was excited about working with DNEG’s FX department on the big explosion that brings the gorge to an end. She had been working with the team on another major FX project just ahead of this one, and was confident they could do it justice. Because this was going to be a nuclear explosion, they looked at a great deal of reference, aware that the main challenge here would be scale and lighting. “The problem is that nuclear explosions never look pretty. They light up everything at the middle to the brightest extreme, obliterating all details,” said Anelia.
“We actually toned it down, just so the audience could read the silhouettes of trees and other objects. We made the lighting work for the viewers’ sake, and for scale as well. We needed to leave some detail visible to reveal the grandeur of this event. We used layering – building a layer for the explosion itself, with plumes of smoke and fire inside of that.
“We also created a shockwave, visualised as a layer of smoke, that hits before the explosion itself. First the environment begins to smoke heavily, then the shockwave wipes out everything – at speed. We did some close-ups of the towers as they were destroyed, wanting to ensure we had enough detail and weight in the shots to prevent them from looking like miniatures. It meant thinking through how the towers were built and then destroying them in layers – starting with small elements like antennas at the top – while trying to imagine what would give way first.”
Reverse Funnel Action
All of the reference they found showed nuclear explosions occurring on a flat terrain, but here it was meant to happen in a space hundreds of meters below the upper surface surrounding the gorge. How would its walls crumble? They had to figure it out. Instead of having all of their effects flowing out to the sides, horizontally, they incorporated a reverse funnel action where everything flows at an angle, almost vertically.
In order to communicate to the audience that the explosion is happening below the surface level and then pushing out of the gorge, they added another dimension to the conventional explosion design, using a further layer and giving it more of a ripple effect. As Anelia said, “Ultimately, the main goal for our explosion was to take everything that we had created – and watch it be destroyed.” www.dneg.com
Words: Adriene Hurst
Images: Courtesy of DNEG © 2025 Apple Inc.
