Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the latest instalment in the Bad Boys franchise, has proven to be the action hit of the 2024 summer box office – sitting at a near perfect 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and generating over US$400 million in box office since its June release.
A key player in helping to bring the film’s explosive action to the big screen was Australian VFX house Studio Blackbird, whose team were brought onto the project by Sony following a successful collaboration on Equalizer 3.
Blackbird contributed VFX and CGI for a number of key scenes on Ride or Die, including surreal dreamlike visuals, numerous shootouts, as well as smoke, explosions and shrapnel to enhance action sequences.
“Initially we were only brought on for a single sequence that became known as the lava lamp scene, but we ended up working on a whole range of shots,” explains Studio Blackbird’s Executive Producer Nerissa Kavanagh. “We worked really hard to impress on this initial sequence in the hope it would lead to more work and it did exactly that.”
Blackbird’s early success on the lava lamp scene proved crucial in demonstrating that a smaller VFX house could punch above its weight. “We couldn’t get any vendor to do the initial ask of the lava lamp wax for the amount of money we had in the budget,” explained the film’s VFX Producer Lynzi Grant. “I don’t take lightly to not being able to create something that the filmmakers were expecting, so I was bound and determined to find an answer.”
“Blackbird came around in November and agreed to my plea and really knocked our socks off. I was very impressed with their professionalism, understanding of the director’s needs and making a flawless product.”
Blackbird went above and beyond to make the wax look flawless – creating liquid sims that blended seamlessly with the real footage.
“The initial idea was to blend CG simulated wax into this practical exploding water from the plates,” explained Blackbird VFX Supervisor, Nick Ponzoni. “But once we started, we realised the water refracts the wax, so we simulated that as well. This turned into a library of explosions that the compositing team could use to blend into the plates and it allowed the Directors to really art direct the shots adding more wax here, less there.”
“This whole scene at first glance seems light, but these types of VFX really take the movie to the next tier.”
Lynzi Grant, VFX Producer
Another major sequence delivered by Blackbird involved Martin Lawrence’s character, Marcus, experiencing a surreal dreamlike vision following a near death experience. Work on this scene involved a range of VFX deliveries from Blackbird, spanning seamless transitions to particle effects and fluid simulation.
“This was one of the key creative sequences to solve for the film so everyone from the top down was very invested in getting that scene right,” explained Kavanagh, “but we didn’t know just how key this sequence was for the wider story when it was given to us. It wasn’t until we saw the film that we realised this scene really sets the tone for the rest of the movie, so it was really exciting to have played a part in it.”
Other work tasked to Blackbird ranged all the way from pyro effects to simulating broken glass, with the team being given the job of enhancing a large oner stitch shot of a skirmish in an elevator, as well as making significant additions to the film’s frantic third act.
“Studio Blackbird took on a few of our problematic sequences and really saved the day with some beautiful work.”
Kris Sundberg, VFX Supervisor
“A lot of what we did on the film involved us changing methodology to achieve better results” explained Ponzoni. “We had some explosions where the original brief was to comp in a practical element but the results weren’t satisfying, so we ended up simulating them in CG and mixing them back in with the original plate. Our process is just to never really give up on the shots, you know? You need to keep hungry, to keep wanting to make everything better. We want to be agile, to be able to refocus on what’s important for our clients.”
“Our working relationship with Kris and Lynzi was absolutely fundamental to the success of our work and we can’t say enough about how much we enjoyed working with them. There were some key creative challenges to solve and from the start it felt like a genuine collaboration, this really enabled our team to bring their best ideas and work to the final shots.”
Blackbird’s team say they had a real love of the films’ legacy which helped make this project a special one. “The Bad Boys franchise was definitely iconic for Nick and I,” says Kavanagh. “That era of blockbuster films was what got me interested in working in the industry. It was a really big moment to see our work up there on the screen as part of such an iconic franchise. As always, we are so proud of our incredible team of artists who give their all on every project we do.”
Watch Studio Blackbird’s full VFX breakdown of the project below:
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