Written by Kianna Best on May 3, 2024. Posted in Production News

Challengers VFX team brings surrealism to tennis

The much anticipated Challengers from director Luca Guadagnino made its premiere on 26 May 2024. Shrouded by the high octane world of tennis, the film follows Tashi, Patrick and Art as they navigate their respective relationships with the sport as well as with each other. I spoke with the film’s VFX producer Daniel Chavez on the surreal sequences that brought both the match experiences and the narrative progression to new levels.

 

 

As the psychedelic pulse of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score interjects at the most gripping moments, Challengers takes the viewer on a wild ride of competition, sneak shots and athletic dominance, and that's just describing the central relationship between the main characters. From the onset, the audience are thrust into a space of uncertainty as the intensity of the tennis match is overshadowed by an obvious tension between the pensive Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) watching on from the stands, and the players Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist). Kept in the realm of suspense the whole way through, unlike many other sports movies which keep the audience as the spectator, Challengers pulls the viewer intimately into the world of tennis and the interactions between the toxic trio of characters.

 

VFX producer Chavez stepped into new territories working on this project, pushing both creative and technological boundaries " so that the visual effects are invisible to not break the intimacy" all to bring director Guadagnino’s vision to life. With an impressive 900 VFX shots featured in the movie, most unbeknownst to the audience (notably the undetectable face swapping of the players and their stunt counterparts), Chavez highlights the challenge of approaching the ask for the seamless blending of surrealism into the heightened tennis shots. Chavez, along with VFX supervisor Brian Drewes worked for two days on scanning, combatting the challenge of fitting in 150 on a single day and honing in on the littlest details for the project.

 

 

"Luca went through painstaking measures with us and props and with every department to make sure that everything was as accurate as we can make it,  down to the tennis rackets that were specifically rackets from 2019."

 

Chavez is no stranger to embracing the surreal with his approach to VFX, recounting his experience working on the 2011 Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain starrer Take Shelter. But whilst VFX understandably fit into capturing the  staggering tornadoes, the world of tennis is less expected, especially in the high concept way as directed by Guadagnino.

 

“It was very exciting for us because you never know if you're going to do something visually, in your face. For visual effects, it's usually a character that’s in your face like that but for a tennis match you never really get to do that, so it became a very exciting challenge for us.  Brian was able to really map it out and figuring out how are we going to shoot this, what do we need and what do we need to ask? Then I had to grease the wheels with production and make sure that we could get that day and the camera people involved the right time of day.”

 

In Challengers, the viewers are fully immersed into the competition that serves as a motif throughout the film, aptly named the challenger. The intimacy of the small scale tennis match directly reflects the intimacy between the players and Tashi as their involvement in the competition transcends game, set and match. As the narrative progresses with flashbacks to the players’ career stages, Tashi's relationship with the two men, as well as background to the moments leading up to the tense match between Zweig and Donaldson, the VFX choices amp up in outrageousness, shifting perspective more frequently and become more and more visually obvious.

 

 

“There's a shot where we start wide behind the whole match and we zoom in past Darnell [Appling] over the tennis net and into Tashi's face. That was a also a very difficult shot for us to achieve but luckily enough we were able to pull it off with some expert work from the camera department using a zoom. At first they wanted to change lenses and then we would have to blend that. It was a challenging shot, but we were able to do it seamlessly.”

 

From the stands to the ball itself, underneath the court and from the chest of the players, the audience perspective is jolted throughout the scenes as the narrative progresses. Encouraged by Guadagnino’s embrace of VFX as a tool to push the narrative, as opposed to the common use of it as a crutch, Chavez and the VFX team leant into the request for “more trash” and visible effects.

 

 

Challengers was written by Justin Kuritzkes, with Guadagnino, Rachel O’Connor, Amy Pascal and Zendaya serving as producers on the project.

 

Images courtesy of  Niko Tavernise