Invisible Effects Vital to 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'
February 26, 2014

Invisible Effects Vital to 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'

Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, recently opened the Berlin Film Festival and will shortly open in US theaters, thanks to some digital work from LOOK Effects. 

This film marks the fifth collaboration between LOOK and Anderson, the iconic director of Moonrise Kingdom. LOOK has worked with Mr. Anderson on The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Life Aquatic and The Darjeerling Limited, as well. 

Grand Budapest Hotel features Ralph Fiennes as the concierge of an opulent European hotel involved in the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel is an American Empirical Pictures and Indian Paintbrush production and a co-production of Germany's Studio Babelsberg, which acted as the executive production company. Principal photography took place in Germany. Visual effects were produced by LOOK’s Stuttgart location. LOOK was instrumental in helping secure substantial funding for the film with a regional film-funding grant from Baden-Württemberg’s MFG.  

LOOK produced in excess of 340 shots for the film, including environments, miniature integration, matte paintings, extensive compositing, particle effects, stop-motion animation and 3D projections.

As always, when working with Anderson, the effects work needed to be invisible, yet had to match the director’s iconic “jewel box style” style. Once again, Anderson made extensive use of miniatures, which needed to be seamlessly integrated into realistic backgrounds and matched to sometime frenetic action.