Dev Patel’s action thriller Monkey Man has proven to be one of the year’s most popular action films. Receiving praise for its intense fight scenes and stylish visuals, the picture had a rocky road to completion, having to overcome Covid lockdowns and on set injuries to make it onto the big screen.

Shot on sound stages and a backlot in Indonesia, post-production on the film was split between Vancouver, LA, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Following a successful previous collaboration on The Portable Door, Production VFX Supervisor Murray Pope again tapped Future Associate to produce a complex, stand-out sequence for Monkey Man – with the VFX house lending their skills to complete the film’s iconic axe fight.

Preceding their VFX work on the scene, the team at Future Associate had the challenge of merging a range of different shots into one cohesive sequence that could then be digitally enhanced.

“Early work involved a lot of plate stitching and dual screening,” explains Future Associate’s VFX supervisor Lindsay Adams. “In order for us to start compositing we had to combine multiple different takes to achieve continuous shots.”

With sequences lined up, Future Associate was then able to begin working on the central prop axe used in the fight scene, digitally manipulating it to give it more visual weight. “This scene was so fast and intense, that it was an obvious decision on-set to use a lightweight stunt axe,” explains Adams. “The only tell was the way it would bounce on hits and not dig into surfaces, so our task was to sell the impacts.”

In one key shot, Future Associate’s team needed to meticulously paint out the axe from the original footage, digitally restoring both the floor and parts of Patel’s hands and arms that were obscured by the axe. Once this was done, animators were able to remap the shot in 3D using software Nuke X, tracking the camera’s movements and allowing a bounce-free axe to be painted back in, matching the moving floor and the shake of the Steadicam.

Later on in the same shot, as the axe comes down next to Patel’s head, Future Associate’s animators also added dirt, dust and debris to the frame to better create the effect of a large heavy axe smashing into the tiles.

There’s an axe throwing place right next door to our office where we have our Christmas parties, so we popped over there and they were kind enough to give us some old bits of split wood for us to photograph. We used these textures for the split wood on the table. 

Lindsay Adams – Future Associate VFX Supervisor

In another part of the scene, an axe is seen tearing across the wall, taking wallpaper and plaster with it. With a prop axe in use, most of this damage was actually accomplished in post, where Future Associate’s artists used 3D software Houdini to simulate tearing plaster and wallpaper.

For maximum realism Future Associate’s team started their work on this scene by creating a digital re‑creation of the character and environment in the original footage, helping animators to seamlessly match virtual effects with the plate footage.

Their team then traced the movement of the axe frame-by-frame to make sure it interacted correctly with the digital wallpaper, creating a one-to-one path for the simulated axe to follow on the wall.

Using Houdini’s Vellum solver, FA’s team then simulated wallpaper being torn from its surface by the axe – along with dust and chips of plaster being ripped out of the wall to really sell the realism.

“We were provided some cool footage from on-set, of a very real axe impacting and being dragged through some wallpaper-covered drywall,” explains Adams. “This proved super useful, both for reference and in the final shot. We took parts of the real wall damage, warped it a bit, and combined that with our 3D wallpaper tearing setup resulting in the final look”

Watch the full VFX breakdown from Future Associate below: