"HE'S JUST AN INCREDIBLE ARTIST"

REVEALING THE VFX BEHIND RIDLEY SCOTT'S NAPOLEON

Charley Henley, MPC's VFX supervisor for Napoleon, takes on the 'no CG' debate and why working with Ridley Scott is so inspirational

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is an epic, beautiful film filled with historical detail. It’s also a movie that caught the eye of ‘VFX haters’, those who feel too much CG is ruining movies (it’s not), and that debate around the denial of using CG in visual effects continues to circulate in the on-screen world.

There’s artistry involved in every frame of Napoleon and some of the most intense use of CG will go unnoticed by many. To find out what’s real and what is, in fact, masterful use of VFX, we spoke with MPC’s Charley Henley, the visual effects supervisor for the film, who has a long-running relationship with director Scott that dates back to work on Alien prequel Prometheus.

We open our interview at the very beginning, discussing Scott’s industry-renowned storyboards. Before anything is filmed, the director draws his own immaculate panels. “He was trained at art school, and he draws his storyboards beautifully,” reflects Henley. “He draws these storyboards, and you just look at them and go, ‘I really want to help make that. It looks amazing.’”

Henley tells me how these small illustrated panels feature “amazing composition”. He adds: “There’s something original in it. It’s full of little details and so it’s very exciting and inspiring from a VFX point of view, he’s got such an amazing eye and artist’s view of everything visual, and basically he’s just an incredible artist.”