Alex Garland’s unflinching drama Warfare follows a platoon of American Navy SEALS over a 36-hour period during the Iraq war in 2006. Ambushed on a reconnaissance mission, the film follows their experiences trapped in an Iraqi house and awaiting rescue alongside their critically injured comrades as insurgents press in around them.

Written and directed by Iraq veteran Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland (Civil War, 28 Days Later), Warfare is produced by DNA Films and distributed by A24. In 1 hour and 35 minutes of unflinching and intense action, Warfare lays bare the nature of war with brutal realism; Cinesite’s creation of 200 invisible visual effects shots made that possible.

Cinesite’s Simon Stanley-Clamp oversaw the visual effects for the film, and was on set throughout filming at Bovingdon Airfield in Hertfordshire, UK, where a set of around 15-20 full and partially built houses was meticulously constructed.

Interview with VFX Supervisor Simon Stanley-Clamp 

Can you describe early discussions about the approach to the visual effects?
I came on board the production pretty early. In meetings, Alex (Garland) explained the show to us and the factual approach he wanted – to always use physically plausible camera work, as if the film was a documentary. Cameras would be handheld or moving in and around the soldiers, at their level, with no showy visual effects shots.

How realistically was the action captured?
Everything needed to be grounded in reality with the audience experiencing the action as an observer, with the soldiers. The goal was always to capture the action as faithfully and realistically as possible. To that end, the role of sound was very important; the whole set had speakers embedded into it, so when you hear a gun shooting in the film, that would have been heard on set too. When a jet flies overhead, that sound would have been amplified and when a dog barks on the street, you could hear that on set too. This gave a fantastic sense of realism during the shot, for both actors and crew.

There are explosions and pyrotechnics throughout Warfare. Where did the VFX come in with that?
The special effects guys did a brilliant job and the explosions, bullet hits, squibs etc. were handled practically as far as possible. It really was a collective effort, with VFX taking over what it wasn’t practical for the SFX to achieve, to augment or to clean up evidence of their work.

Masonry squibs were added to walls by the SFX team, so that bullets would appear to hit the surfaces – we would “heal and reveal,” disguising them on the walls until the moments of impact. The tanks never fired, so the muzzle flashes and puffs of smoke and dust ejected from the gun barrels were added digitally. Where their projectiles hit walls, they are either entirely CG impacts or augmented SFX. I spent a day filming blue screen explosions, muzzle flashes, masonry hits, sparks, a whole gambit of SFX which we could mine for use later, which matched the guns and artillery used during the shoot.

What about some of the bigger explosions?
In one sequence, Al Qaida has attached an incendiary device to the base of a lamppost on the street, which detonates as the soldiers exit a house, resulting in a huge explosion with devastating results. This explosion was captured using 7 cameras from multiple perspectives and the shot is seen in the final cut from four consecutive angles.

How important were the atmospherics in Warfare and how were they achieved?
After the huge ied explosion, a thick cloud of smoke and dust descends. It represents the isolation, confusion and utter mess of the situation, as the soldiers come to and are trying to work out where they are and what has happened. We used a combination of SFX elements on set and our own smoke simulations to add the darker dust and also the white phosphorous smoke. It was heavily graded in post to a dark, yellow-green atmosphere reminiscent of mustard gas.

What environment VFX were created by Cinesite?
The huge set at Bovingdon Airfield was constructed on what had been a carpark. There’s the full street with a market-place that the soldiers are watching from the house through their scopes, and the level of detail achieved was incredible, right down to the wall textures, items in the marketplace etc.

Two large bluescreens filled the gaps behind the constructed buildings backed up with smaller blue screens on Manitou telehandlers which could be driven in and repositioned as needed. The street was extended digitally into the distance and a city added behind, using reference from the physical set and a combination of photogrammetry and texture reference. It was important to achieve accuracy, with a seamless take-over between the physical and digital environment. For most of the film, the street would seem barely populated, reflecting its location within a war zone. Apart from twitching curtains and washing drying on lines, there are few signs of life.

Several times we see a bird’s eye reconnaissance view of the street from a circling observation plane, with soldiers, insurgents and tanks appearing as glowing, mobile dots on the ground. For these shots, where the geography of the streets needed to be faithfully recreated and easily comprehensible, we used our 3D model to rebuild the wider area. I laid out a large blue screen at Bovingdon mimicking our street and we used a drone to capture a range of action from above, of soldiers and civilians throughout the course of a day. The live action component was extracted from the blue screen and heavily manipulated in post to create the heat signatures of the soldiers manoeuvring through the streets, shadowed by the insurgents. In order for it to be faithful to the rudimentary surveillance drones of 2006, the footage needed to be degraded, again for authenticity.

Can you describe how the “Show of Force” shots were achieved?
“Show of force” is a military term for when a jet (in this case, an F16) flies a low pass overhead to intimidate the locals. It’s a big, powerful jet and on the day the shots were filmed, live sound was played on the set so loudly that it rumbled through the buildings with a massive impact. We referenced real jet footage and knew that aircraft flying low to the ground would kick up dust which would not emerge until after the jet has lifted from its downward arc, as its thrusters drive down into the ground. The show of force happens three times in Warfare, once from the side perspective and twice head on from the middle of the street.

Were there any other invisible visual effects created?
There was some enhancement of the excellent prosthetics and blood trails, as well as some other clean-ups needed to maintain continuity and a handful of sky replacements or enhancements.

What were your thoughts, when you watched the final film for the first time?
I had seen the film a lot during post production, either in part or in full. Being based in the cutting rooms we had full access to the developing show, supplying temps as the cut progressed and again, through delivery of final VFX to DI, we were able to see our shots at final grade and continue to adapt anything that was not working for final pixels.

With everything delivered and in the last days of Post, we attended the final sound mix at Pinewood. I’ve told lots of people this and it still makes me smile, but while I waited to go into the theatre, one of the techs said, “It’s really loud…no really loud, you can hear it in the carpark…”

Warfare is a rush, an assault on the senses. Far more qualified journalists have eulogised in reviews in countless publications, so I will not attempt to add another, but as a body of work I’m super proud to have been a small part of this production; it’s poignant, relevant and a show I have dragged a lot of friends and family to see. I am always delighted it elicits so much conversation, and as Alex said at the cast and crew, people will talk about this film for years to come.