Once again, Indiana Jones finds himself in great peril as a Nazi prisoner on a Heinkel bomber, travelling through a mysterious portal of swirling clouds in a night sky.
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Feature Film Sequence
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Battle of Syracuse Sequence
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)
Once again, Indiana Jones finds himself in great peril as a Nazi prisoner on a Heinkel bomber, travelling through a mysterious portal of swirling clouds in a night sky slashed with rain and lightning, tumbling out of the heavens into a strange land. He sees distant triremes coasting through cool blue waters, and as the mountainous coastline comes into view revealing an armada laying siege to a town with flaming catapults and soldiers from another age storming the beach, he suddenly realises where he is – this is the legendary battle of Syracuse, circa 214 BC!
Led by Production VFX Supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, the 194-strong ILM team took on the gargantuan task of creating a fully-realised ancient world and the battle taking place within it, completing 342 shots across 4 sequences. Using location plates shot in Tonnara del Secco, Italy as a base the team created everything from new terrain and the ancient town of Syracuse, volumetric cloudscapes, ocean surfaces, triremes, and landing boats, crowds of Greek and Roman soldiers, flaming catapults and other unique weapons of war such as the Archimedes Claw and Mirror, wakes, spray, smoke, explosions and a spectacular crash when the Heinkel goes down.
Crew
Will Reichelt (VFX Supervisor), Nick Pitt-Owen (CG Supervisor), Michael James Allen (2D Supervisor), Peter Tan (Digital Artist Supervisors), Norberto Ritter (Asset and Environment Supervisors), Christopher Ung (Lead Digital Artists)
Software
Mari, Zeno (ILM Proprietary), Maya, Zbrush, Houdini, Katana, Nuke, Renderman
