A special message from the desk of thurston deadpool, III, esquire

THE LOOK OF “DEADPOOL 2”

A stellar team brings “Deadpool 2” to the screen, including a number of creative keys who have previously collaborated with David Leitch. Director of photography Jonathan Sela shot both “John Wick” and “Atomic Blonde.”

Production designer David Scheunemann also previously worked with Leitch on “Atomic Blonde,” as well as on several other films. On “Deadpool 2,” Scheunemann’s challenges included creating a massive prison for mutants as well as a fascistic orphanage for mutant children.

The Port Mann Substation in Surrey, near Vancouver, was transformed into the mutant prison. Scheunemann says, “The prison is the darkest part of the mutant world you could possibly imagine. It’s pretty spectacular, space-wise and architecturally. But we decided to go with a very simple concept. It’s all based on function and how you would have to lock these people away.” Each of the
cells is a transparent pod, suspended on the wall, and the pods can be moved.

The Orphanage, Broadstone House, Essex School for the Young, was constructed at Riverview, an historic residential mental hospital outside of Vancouver. Scheunemann says, “The retro campaign look was based on two things. As we are in a comic world, we don’t have to be 100 per cent true to how that institution would actually look in present day. We had much more freedom and I used it to try and find the right architectural concept and design from other times that would serve the story in a visual way. We injected a gritty version of mid-century modernism into this place from the 1910s and 20s, and then, merged it into something new. It’s very simple how and why this happened. Riverview is a beautiful location, but the actual buildings didn’t give us the playground we needed for the third act; they would have only given us one side of it.” The art department enhanced the site with a new geography, constructing a new building adjacent to the old one. “We created a literal playground for the kids, but more like a playground for the scene. I didn’t want to extend the building in the old period way. I wanted to have a more creepy, sparse look. So we merged two different times with each other.

“The other thing about the orphanage is the campaign that pulls it all together. It works on the edge with elements from North American comic propaganda from the forties and fifties. And then

we mixed in the insane ideas of the Headmaster, and also visuals that were a little bit fascist in their touch.”

Scheunemann adds, “I had great collaborators, and the set dec team, run by Sandy Walker, had some brilliant detail-people that came up with really fun stuff.”
“There are Easter eggs all over the place,” Scheunemann notes. Working with supervising art director Dan Hermansen, art director Roger Fires was charged with creating and planting the Easter eggs. “Deadpool 2” is jam-packed with hidden gems with special meaning for die-hard fans of the franchise and genre. The film’s many treasures include nods to “The Goonies,”

the Alpha Flight, Canadiana, all things Marvel and much more, and the filmmakers did their best to place Easter eggs in virtually every scene and on every set.

Dan Glass has served as visual effects supervisor on a sensational array of movies and brings his talents to “Deadpool 2.” Glass first encountered the director when Leitch was a stunt man on

the “Matrix” sequels, “Reloaded” and “Revolutions,” and they went on to work together on a slate of films, including “V For Vendetta” and “Jupiter Ascending.” Glass says, “David’s background is very practical, and it was apparent that he was taking an approach that was more akin to a “Bourne” or “James Bond” movie, where there is a real attempt to get a lot of things practically. But the nature of “Deadpool” means there are certain things you can’t – some guys are larger than normal and made of metal. I prefer doing stuff that is very integrated and fits well into live action and real photography. It was clear that he wanted to push in that direction as much as possible.”

Glass says, “David Leitch and David Scheunemann and Jonathan Sela have really created a look and a craft that is superbly photographic and practical. There’s a very rich set design and lighting
that is a phenomenal base and reference for us to work against when we need to either incorporate into those scenes or create scenes. Having things that are strongly photographic and reality-based is fantastic to play off.”

Andre Tricoteux wears a mo-cap suit to do Colossus’ body performance. The actor is tall, but not over seven feet like his character is, so on set he wore a helmet to replicate Colossus’ height.

Glass says they painted the helmet with metal, treated to look like the surface material. He says, “there’s nothing unusual about having that kind of reference available when we shoot CG characters, but one of the by products that was surprising and exciting was they way the light reflections bounced off of it on to environments.”

Another great challenge, he says, is, “How do you design and choreograph sequences of a fight between two oversized CG individuals? One of them [Juggernaut] is 9-foot-6, and one is 7-foot-6 [Colossus]. As characters get larger, they move differently and behave differently, and so a lot of the visual techniques of being able to do motion capture and even certain forms of having the stunt team help and choreograph, gets more difficult as these creatures get bigger. It’s an interesting challenge to try and make that in a way that feels believable.”

Glass adds, “To be totally honest, the thing that is the most challenging is living up to what the fans expect from a “Deadpool” movie. It’s trying to make sure you’re making a film which has a

focus and a goal of its own, but paying heed to what people want without swinging too much in either direction.”

“Deadpool 2” introduces a number of new characters to film, including Firefist. Glass says, “I didn’t want us to create a character that literally shoots flames from his hands. I thought it was very fantastical and a little hard to believe. So we thought maybe the way to make this more believable is he can push heat from his hands. That’s really what it is – a heat blast. His hands heat super hot and they can push this out. One of the things with super-heated air or super-

heated anything is it expands and creates pressure. And pressure can have a destructive effect on things around it. So if you push out that pressure suddenly, things star to break, glass shatters, the ground disrupts, wood burns, etc. But, at the same time, because it’s super- heated, things would combust, so that contact makes things catch fire.

And so we played with this idea that he pushes out this heat and you see destruction and things catching alight. You get the feeling of Firefist, but actually, it seems strangely – even in the fantastical world – a little bit more believable and a little different to maybe what we’ve seen before.”

Another interesting challenge, Glass says, is, “We tried to put together a very different and exciting chase that’s not with

a car but with a vast truck and trailers which tears through city streets. Meanwhile, there are characters trying to get on to it, then hijack it and so forth. There are a number

of exciting gags, and just trying to figure out the balance between visual and practical effects, planning for that, and the

closure of vast areas of Downtown Vancouver in the process. It was a complex process and an exciting challenge.”

The convoy sequence, says Glass, “is a car chase with a tanker really driving through a city! And trying to get a lot of story into that convoy as well as action is what made it particularly

interesting. It’s dynamic and exciting and keeps the tensions and humour up in the movie.” As did the first, “Deadpool 2” filmed a number of sequences in the heart of Downtown

Vancouver. Location manager Ann Goobie and the production worked closely with the City for three months of planning. “The City of Vancouver was really terrific about helping us,” she says, “They were very cooperative.” On one of the convoy sequence days, four of the busiest blocks in the city were closed and the production employed 32 officers from the Vancouver Police Department as well as 90 additional production assistants to help with the “lock up.” That day was one of the biggest,

if not biggest, film shoot days in Vancouver movie history. As Goobie says, “It was the mother of all lockdowns!”

“Deadpool 2” filmed in the province of British Columbia, Canada. In addition to the streets of Downtown Vancouver, Riverview Hospital, and the Port Mann Substation, a number of interior sets were also filmed at Mammoth Studios in Burnaby. The X-Mansion scenes were filmed at Royal Roads University near Victoria on Vancouver Island.