“Highway to Hell”
Conference:
Type:
Title:
- Highway to Hell
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
Our mission for the film Constantine was to create a highly stylized depiction of Hell. Using downtown Los Angeles as the backdrop and its omnipresent freeways as the stage, we developed a 3D world replete with burning sky, crumbling buildings, flying debris and crawling demons. In director Francis Lawrence’s vision of Los Angeles turned to Hell, the city was to be cast into a perpetual state of decay; caught in the second just between the detonation of a nuclear bomb blast and the moment of complete destruction. Films of World War II atomic bomb blasts helped establish the look and flow of the airborne dust and particles while photos from post-9/11 New York gave us an all too real reference for how our cityscape might look. The designs of the resulting images were also very much influenced by the gritty apocalyptic paintings of Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski and the macabre photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin.
