Godzilla Minus One has landed an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, and fans are rooting for the movie to win it, especially considering how impressive the VFX work was created with such a low budget.
Director Takashi Yamazaki recently talked about the VFX work in an interview with the LA Times, and he begins by detailing the approach to this new design for Godzilla, saying:
“We wanted to make Godzilla very, very cool for this film. The head is on the smaller side, the legs are very thick. When the feet are stomping on the ground, you can almost see the toes being raised, like a wild animal’s. And we wanted impact for the audience, so there’s an intense level of getting up close, personal and detailed, that you can’t really do with a man in a suit.”
Yamazaki went on to confirm that the film’s budget was $10 to $15 million USD, which is pretty incredible considering how great the movie looks. The filmmaker added:
“In terms of polygon counts, we’re talking millions that went into creating Godzilla this time. In terms of the skin texture, there was a dinosaur origin, but when it’s wounded, a regeneration happens and there’s a different texture, like you would see on any wound. We wanted a mix, brought in new layers that would make the look very unique.”
The director continued, discussing how Godzilla’s first-ever appearance influenced its look in the latest film:
“We wanted to go back to the original reason for Godzilla’s existence. The creature is a metaphor for nuclear weapons, so we mimicked the way a weapon would work inside of his body. Each element would come together and create an implosion, and that’s when the blue rays would come out.”
Yamazaki then talked about how the crew used older techniques to help in creating the destruction scenes to save on costs:
“We had a matte artist who did 2-D that had a little bit of movement. Once we found that that switch was actually working, we were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we spent so much time with CG that couldn’t get it, but now we have this really cool trick to get the mushroom clouds in there!”
The film is set in the days after the end of World War II, Japan is reeling from the devastation left behind after the war. The emotional toll has brought the country to its lowest point. The story follows the failed kamikaze pilot Kiochi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko (Minami Hamabe), a woman pushed into homelessness, taking care of an abandoned child. During this low point Godzilla marches ashore, pulling Japan even deeper into chaos and devastation.
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