On Monday, Australia’s Rising Sun Pictures won the 2020 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Award for Best Visual Effects for their VFX work on the Chinese World War II epic, The Eight Hundred.
Based in Adelaide, the VFX house helped recreate the 1937 Battle of Shanghai in director Guan Hu‘s film, a climactic scene where a small Chinese army took on a much larger invading army. The Eight Hundred is among the most successful Chinese movies ever made, and also the highest grossing film globally for 2020, having earned $US446 million (RMB 3.02 billion) in total box office.
RSP’s Tim Crosbie was the overall VFX Supervisor for the film and spent two and a half years overseeing the project in China. Back in the Adelaide studio, RSP’s team was led by VFX Supervisor Tom Wood, Executive Producer Gill Howe, CG Supervisor Julian Hutchens, Compositing Supervisor Guido Wolter and VFX Producer Arwen Munro.
RSP was one of the principal visual effects providers for the film, contributing scores of richly detailed, seamless visual effects to support the film’s riveting combat scenes, all set around a warehouse complex near Shanghai’s city centre. Highlights of the studio’s work included a lengthy sequence representing the battle’s decisive third day, when Japanese forces unleashed an aerial attack on Chinese soldiers stationed on the roof of the massive warehouse.
RSP Managing Director Tony Clark said about the award-winning project, “This was a remarkable project for RSP and the result of inspired work from our very talented team of artists, producers, technical specialists and support staff. It is a great privilege to have their creativity and efforts recognised by their peers in the Australian film community. We are grateful to the filmmakers for entrusting RSP with their extraordinary vision, and the Academy and its members for this unique honour.”
Some may remember that Below the Line‘s Daniel Eagan spoke to Rising Sun’s Tim Crosbie a few months back, talking about his work on the Chinese blockbuster.
RSP was previously nominated for an AACTA Award for its work on 20th Century Studios‘ racing movie Ford v Ferrari, directed by James Mangold, producing 233 visual effects shots, mainly for recreating the 8-minute “24 Hours of Daytona” racing sequence that took place in 1966.
You can learn more about Rising Sun Pictures at rsp.com.au.
