This Dungeons & Dragons Actor Had Too Much Fun Bullying the VFX Artists
Justice Smith, the party’s Sorcerer, admitted that he deliberately overcomplicated the job of the movie’s CGI guys and has no regrets about it. What he did left the artists fuming!
Dungeons & Dragons is a cult classic tabletop game that has evolved and infiltrated every possible art form known to humankind. This year, there was even a high-budget Hollywood blockbuster released based on DnD, and judging from the fans and critics’ reactions, it’s safe to say that it turned out to be a massive success.
For the fans of DnD the Game, DnD the Movie provided the perfectly captured thrill and essence of their favorite game; for the general audience, this film was an exciting and unique adventure that stood out from any other generic fantasy movie of the past few decades.
But apart from all that, it was also incredibly well-crafted.
The CGI wizards of the movie did a phenomenal job of blending in the computer graphics and the reality — something that many other fantasy and fantastic movies of the past few years were lacking.
However, as if putting their skills to the test, the on-screen wizard — or, rather, the Sorcerer — tried to make their lives really hard.
In the extra section of the movie’s Blu-ray edition, Justice Smith revealed that he purposefully decided to make his hand gestures really complicated to see how the VFX artists would create the graphics against his quick and confusing movements.
“I also just always tried to trip up people in post[production] to see how they’re going to CGI the magic from my fingers,” the actor admitted, laughing.
The next shot after his revelation was immaculate: it was just a very pissed-off face of Ben Snow, the Visual Effects Supervisor of the movie. Nothing else. Just the VFX artists angrily staring into the camera after having learned that the painful hours he and his team had spent creating the effects were but a whim of the lead actor.
Admittedly, Justice Smith had way too much fun bullying the CGI artists, but honestly, we don’t think he would’ve done it without the director’s blessing, so there’s that.
After all, the movie turned out great, and everyone’s praising the VFX guys… Even if they were very much not happy to go those extra ten miles because of Smith’s prank.