Teaming up with Paramount, Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Jost, MPC created visual effects for the superhero blockbuster Secret Headquarters.
Led by VFX Supervisor Jerome Escobar and VFX Producer Sebastian Racine, the MPC global team delivered around 390 shots for the film.
The plot follows Charlie Kincaid, who, after discovering a secret headquarters under his home that seems to belong to a superhero, starts to believe that his estranged father (played by Owen Wilson) might lead a secret double life.
MPC’s main areas of work revolved around CG extensions to the headquarters itself, along with a host of gadgets and extra-terrestrial powers, including magnetic wands, exo-bracelets, and exoskeletons. MPC was also responsible for key sequences involving the film’s UFO and several full CG shots of the film’s flying superhero and armored suit.
With a strong pedigree in the superhero visual effects space, MPC was entrusted with a lot of creative freedom to explore all avenues and keep the narrative unique.
“The vision we received from the directors was to keep the visual effects unique and fun simultaneously,” adds VFX Supervisor Jerome Escobar. “The challenge was to create superhero visual effects but to keep them entirely different from the well-known superhero shows out there. Luckily we had an excellent rapport with the filmmakers that allowed us to go back and forth on the sequences until the directors were completely satisfied with the final output.”
One of the most exciting sequences for the team revolved around the creation of the film’s UFO spaceship. The team needed to experiment and evolve with the motions and patterns of each part to create a unique, extra-terrestrial look, composed of thousands of small hexagonally shaped pieces that can each move independently from the other.
Similarly, a lot of development and evolution went into building the superhero’s armored suit itself, which needed to be powered-by extra-terrestrial technology and have its own unique style. The team collaborated with the filmmakers to experiment with multiple iterations, including finding a unique way for the suit to morph onto the characters’ bodies.
Secret Headquarters is now on Paramount+
Jon Creamer
Share this story
