'Black Panther': Car chase scene VFX breakdown

A new video shows the VFX breakdown of the exciting car chase sequence in “Black Panther” movie. The scene involves T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) in his superhero suit, going after a villain.

The Black Panther and his loyal follower Okoye (Danai Gurira) had to catch Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), who was escaping in a car in the chase scene. A video posted on Collider, shows how this scene was created using computer graphics.

There are a lot of moving components for the graphic designers to consider in this scene. The cars are on the move with the bad guys wielding machine guns, Black Panther has a special suit that starts turning purple while absorbing hits, and the hero has to jump and latch on to different cars to find Klaue.

Some of these scenes give a 360 degree view of an exploding car, as Black Panther jumps on to another car or runs over the side of buildings to catch up to the villains.

The report notes that this scene relies heavily on VFX, but the advances in technology have now reached a point where it becomes difficult to tell which part of the scene is real and which one has been created using the graphics. The environment, the cars and the characters have been created using VFX in this scene.

Luma VFX Supervisor Brendan Seals revealed that this scene required a Lexus to sustain heavy damage, from bullet hits to Black Panther’s claw marks. So, what they did was create several versions of the car with different states of damage, to make sure there’s continuity in the scene.

Another exciting scene was when the Lexus LC-500 blows up into a hundred pieces instantly after Klaue fires a disruptor at the hero.

“The careful combination of panoramic projections and CG assets ensured the environment was rendered in the most realistic and highest quality possible,” Seals said.