PFX Trades Photorealism For Punchlines On The Naked Gun Sequel

PFX, the post-production studio known for delivering visual effects on high-profile projects like Napoleon and Stranger Things, faced an entirely unique challenge when working on the new instalment of The Naked Gun. While most VFX projects prioritise achieving absolute photorealism, this police procedural parody required the team to employ CG in a way that emphasised both technical accuracy and over-the-top comedic exaggeration.

The reason for this particular tonal requirement was that the film, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, is a sequel to the beloved original The Naked Gun series from 1988. "I remember watching it on VHS as a kid, and I knew that it would be a tough act to follow," noted Anya Vinnik, VFX Executive Producer at PFX. The team’s goal was to honour the original’s legendary mix of visual gags, deadpan humour, and slapstick by using modern technological advancements to achieve gags that would have been impossible when the original was first made.

Luckily, the PFX team began work early in the process. Having seen PFX's work on season two of Winning Time, Paramount brought PFX on board during the script stage to offer guidance on VFX shots. Quickly building a great relationship, PFX's work expanded to encompass 96 shots. By the time the film was complete, PFX had worked closely with the director, Akiva Schaffer, to deliver everything from CG creatures to digital doubles and more, all around the ad hoc changes and constant edits that are part and parcel of comedy filmmaking.

Laughs, Camera, Action!
For the PFX team, the first step to working on The Naked Gun was to establish a total shift in mindset and approach. "The Naked Gun centres on Neeson's Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., who must follow in his father's footsteps and prevent the closure of Police Squad," adds Javier Menendez, VFX Supervisor at PFX. "Throughout the story, Neeson's character gets himself into these unbelievable situations and consistently breaks the fourth wall. Our goal was to support this humor and storytelling. To do that, we all needed to focus less on realism and solely on what made each sequence fun and engaging for the audience."

He explains that not every VFX shot needed to be pixel-perfect; in fact, a slightly exaggerated or imperfect element often enhanced the humor. For example, an action sequence sees Lieutenant Drebin summon an owl, on which he flies into action. For two shots, PFX was tasked with creating the digital owl, using Yeti to groom its feathers, and Houdini for efficient look development. For the other shots, the team composited in the original owl puppet used during production. "Even if it looked fake, we felt that for some shots, it was funnier than the CGI owl, as the CGI owl looked more realistic," says Menendez. "By playing up the more fake-looking owl's contrast with its surroundings, the artists created a laugh-out-loud spectacle."

Timing is Everything
To enhance the slapstick humour of the film even further, the PFX team also built a flexible workflow that allowed Schaffer to land the pacing of each joke. This was crucial considering the film's plentiful background in-jokes and sight gags in every scene, telling five jokes where one would normally be. By creating a flexible VFX workflow, Schaffer could flexibly tweak timing and delivery in post-production, ensuring every visual gag landed perfectly. To do this, the PFX team used its in-house Crossbow app, which enabled artists to compare, update and readjust shots at a moment's notice.

For the film's climactic action scene, however, the team needed to take timing even more seriously. "This scene sees Neeson using guns and hand-to-hand combat to fight villainous goons, often to hilarious effect," explains Menendez. "The action demanded digital doubles to perform certain feats, and PFX worked closely with Schaffer and editor Brian Scott Olds to coordinate these VFX shots around fast-paced action, complex timing and precise comedic beats. One second can be the difference between a gag landing and falling completely flat, so the digital doubles needed to help and not hinder the comedy."

Knowing that keyframe animation couldn't achieve the desired movements in time, PFX ran two motion capture shoots at a studio. PFX then collaborated with the stunt team to capture full-body data of high-energy actions, such as dives, rolls, and close-quarters combat, resulting in a library of high-fidelity, physics-based actions that could be retargeted onto digital characters. Compositing also presented a unique challenge, due to a significant use of camera retiming to achieve slow-motion and speed-up effects during the action. PFX used custom Nuke scripts to manage camera retiming and Topaz to extend frame ranges so that more details could be added to the retime. This ensured the film's 3D animation and rendering were perfectly synced up with the camera moment to moment.

Cinematic Legacy
Now that work on The Naked Gun is complete, the PFX team is proud to have created VFX that stayed true to the spirit of the original, while still creating something new and modern that audiences would love. "Working on Naked Gun was an incredible experience for the entire PFX team," says Menendez. "We had a great relationship with Paramount and with VFX supervisor Ash Bettini and her team, which helped us to create a very inspirational and friendly environment that allowed for editing changes and demanding last-minute tasks. Over the course of a year, we had the pleasure of contributing to the long-awaited sequel to a truly iconic comedy, a genre that's both challenging and deeply rewarding for VFX."

"In the end, I believe our work captured the spirit of the original movie, balancing absurdity with precision, to deliver something both nostalgic and fresh," agrees Vinnik. "It's not every day you get to work on such a funny, unique project like The Naked Gun, and every hour we spent helping to achieve every laugh and smile in the cinema was worth it."

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