Cyclops on a Wire and Samantha Morton Reshaping Faces by Hand: How Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Made Its Monsters Real

For Andrew Jackson, the key to making Christopher Nolan's Odyssey monsters convincing was often simple: put something real in front of the camera, whether a giant cyclops hanging from a cable or Samantha Morton reshaping silicone faces with her hands. In a pre-recorded conversation with the editor of the magazine Befores & Afters […]

Oscar-winning VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson explains how puppetry, prosthetics, stunts and in-camera tricks brought Cyclops, Scylla, Circe and the Laestrygonian giants to life.

For Andrew Jackson, the key to convincing the monsters of Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey" was often simple: put something real in front of the camera, whether that meant a giant Cyclops hanging from a cable or Samantha Morton changing silicone faces with her hands.

The film's Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor explained how the production used puppetry, prosthetics, stunts, miniatures and digital effects to create creatures including the Cyclops, the Cyclops, and the transformative films and S. Laestrygonians in a pre-recorded interview with VFX Befores & Afters editor Ian Files, which was screened at the View conference in Turin, Italy. RELATED STORIES Raindance to launch UK's first major vertical festival and market (Exclusive) 'Sin Filtro' Producer JK Media produces first US-shot original micro-dramas for TelevisaUnivision's ViXMicrO (Exclusive).

Jackson explained that rather than treating practical effects and VFX as opposing approaches, the goal was to give Nolan and the actors something physical to work with whenever possible. Popular in Variety

This philosophy was most evident in Cyclops.

When you're filming in a cave, and we knew we were going to be in a cave, a real cave, filming with real actors around, Jackson said, 'Fire, there's got to be something.'

The original plan called for a more elaborate puppet, but the plan changed dramatically after Nolan and production designer Ruth de Jong found an actual cave in Greece. What was expected to be filmed late in production suddenly had to be ready in a matter of months.

"There was this kind of general reaction: 'Oh no, we can't do it in that time frame.' Jackson recalls that this was not possible. And I said, "No, no, no, we're not giving up."

His solution was to simplify the creature into a giant marionette.

"Forget all the complex joints, elbows, wrists, shoulders," he told the team. Instead, they made the original rigid hull sections and hung them with cables.

When they saw it move, Jackson knew they were onto something.

"You could just push it a little bit, and it all worked out very convincingly because of the scale," he said.

In retrospect, he believes the rushed schedule actually improved the outcome. "It pains me to say it, because it was very difficult to get the doll 'to a cave halfway up a mountain in Greece in two months,'" Jackson said. But its loose and light structure gave it a fluidity that a more complicated copy mechanism might have missed.

"It's the constraints that force creative solutions that are better than having no constraints at all," he said.

The finished Cyclops turned into a hybrid. Animatronic hands were used for the moments where they grabbed the soldiers, while CG filled in the missing joints and enlarged the full-size puppet.

Its face was created with another simple but not easy solution.

Jackson filmed actor Bill Irwin experimenting with the character while the team was still considering extensive prosthetics. He filmed one of Irwin's real eyes, rotated it and placed it on the actor's forehead.

I showed Chris [Nolan], and he said, "This is how we do it. Forget all the prosthetics. Do it because it's really good."

For Jackson, the advantage was that the eye remained part of Irwin's actual performance.

"The whole function of this eye is part of his face, and it's all in perfect harmony," he said.

Scylla required a different combination of techniques.

The production was filming on a real boat in the Mediterranean, so the team built a realistic creature head with an open mouth that they could slide onto rigs set up by stunt coordinator George Cottle before physically pulling them off the deck.

"We can actually do that stunt where they pull off the deck," Jackson said, "the boat really in the right place."

The rest of the monster was then digitally rendered, with the CG necks coming out of the practical head.

"So again, it's a combination of practical and CG, but it's very functional for the actors and the heads at the point where they come off the boat," Jackson said.

This emphasis on physical performance shaped Circe's transformation sequence.

Jackson, who worked closely on stage with prosthetics designer Conor O'Sullivan, said the initial animatronic approach felt too slow and restrictive.

"This is never going to work for this," he remembers thinking.

Instead, the team created very soft silicone faces over rigid skull structures that were already cut out and held together with magnets. This allowed Morton to physically manipulate the shapeshifter himself.

"He was actually moving the thing himself," Jackson said. "He was somehow involved in the transformation."

The result gave Morton the freedom to simply react to a pre-programmed mechanical effect.

"We filmed him doing this for the whole movie, like three minutes of him just going on and kind of pulling and pushing and manipulating and really getting into that performance," Jackson said.

Even the Laestrygonian giants relied heavily on old school illusion.

"Most of it really got it right," BudJackson said, using camera placement, larger performers, smaller props, and carefully chosen angles.

Throughout the film, Jackson said that the real goal is not to prove that something has actually been done.

It was to ensure that everything that appeared on screen was grounded in the same physical world as the actors.

As he put it while discussing Cyclops, having "something real at the right size in the right place" goes a long way in determining what an effect should look like, even when the digital work ultimately completes the illusion.

From Willis O'Brien's 'King Kong' to Nolan's 'Odyssey', it has always been a combination of tricks that casts a spell on the audience.