"The Great Gatsby" Special Effects

The Great Gatsby VFX from Chris Godfrey on Vimeo.

Over the long weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing The Great Gatsby for the first time. I was amazed at the lavish buildings, outfits, and parties that seemed to teem through the entire movie. However, it didn't occur to me at first that a lot of what I was seeing was likely a special effect.

After stumbling across this video, I learned that Chris Godfrey was the visual effects supervisor for the film. He worked with 7 different vendors to complete all the special effects in the movie.

While I was disappointed that Gatby's beautiful house didn't exist somewhere in real life, I did learn that many of the pieces were in fact real, just from different places. For example,

• The gates to Gatsby's mansion where shot in a park near the studios.
• The front facade of Gatsby's mansion was a school with 3d extensions.
• The garden was 3d.
• The hallway, ballroom, organ, stairs, breakfast balcony and dance area was stage 1.
• The wharf was stage 3, 4 and then 2 at various times.
• And Nick's Bungalow next door was stage 3, Centennial Park and Mount Wilson.

Overall, The Great Gatsby includes over 1,500 visually enhanced shots throughout.