W.

The Prime Focus Film VFX division in North America was previously known as Frantic Films VFX.

Frantic Films VFX, a division of Prime Focus Group, has been selected to provide a slate of VFX shots for 'W.', the George W. Bush biopic from director Oliver Stone. The film was produced by Emperor Motion Pictures and distributed by Lionsgate..

Frantic Films VFX contributed a number of head replacement shots, adding actor Josh Brolin—who plays Bush—into news footage depicting the Commander-in-Chief’s infamous 2003 'Mission Accomplished' photo-op aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. Because the footage is so iconic, the filmmakers opted not to recreate the scene but to use actual archival footage provided by CNN that shows President Bush announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

Frantic took NTSC beta material of the President and digitally composited Brolin’s head, shot on film, into the scenes. Because the news footage was standard-definition, the Frantic team, led by VFX Supervisor Aaron Weldon and VFX Producer Bridgitte Krupke, degraded the Brolin material and added an artifacting effect to mimic TV interlacing, so the live-action plate and the news footage plate matched seamlessly.

Said Aaron Weldon, VFX Supervisor, Frantic Films VFX, "As a visual effects technique, head/face replacement has been around for a long time, but it's historically always been very challenging to perfect. It was important for Oliver Stone and Visual Effects Supervisor John Scheele to firmly establish the association that Brolin is Bush for the sake of the story, so the effect had to be as unnoticeable as possible. With face-replacements, it's all about iterations on top of iterations. In order for the effect to be successful, both the actor's perspective and performance needed to match Bush's. So we morphed different takes of Josh Brolin together to achieve one fluid performance."

In addition, Frantic was also tapped to recreate the coastal view from the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Frantic generated a CG Atlantic ocean and a moody pre-dawn sky in a scene in which a sleepless George H. W. Bush looks out his window as he’s struggling with inner turmoil.

Frantic's software toolkit included Autodesk 3ds Max for 3D modeling and animation, Chaos Software's V-Ray for rendering, Adobe Photoshop for matte painting, eyeon Digital Fusion for compositing and tracking, and Frantic’s proprietary Flood: Surf fluid simulator for the ocean scenes. Frantic Films VFX also took advantage of sister company Post Logic (also a division of Prime Focus Group), holding review screenings of the VFX sequences in Post Logic's state-of-the-art HD theater.