Gran Turismo Editor Reveals Why the Movie Needed So Much CGI 

Colby Parker Jr., the editor for Sony Pictures’ Gran Turismo, revealed why the movie needed to rely on a notable amount of VFX work.

The upcoming PlayStation Productions movie follows Jann Mardenborough and his story of winning a video game competition that would go on to put him in the driver seat of a real race car—thus beginning a long and fruitful racing career.

When audiences think of a heavy special effects outing, movies like The Avengers or Blue Beetle probably come to mind. What tends to not make the list would be a movie like Gran Turismo. However, looks can be deceiving.

Gran Turismo Used Lots of CGI

Gran Turismo editor Colby Parker Jr. spoke exclusively to The Direct’s Russ Milheim, where he shed some light on all the CGI needed to pull off the film while also touching upon his experience working on the movie.

While many audiences might not realize it immediately, the racing adventure was actually “a big VFX film:”

“… This was a big VFX film… a lot of the cars weren’t going fast enough in certain scenes. So we had to find plates and strategically do all CGI cars in certain scenes. You know, not for whole races, but we had to strategically do that.”

Throughout the film, audiences probably noticed little labels appearing over the cars to help audiences keep track of all the players, similar to the leaderboard graphics from the game the film is based around.

Apparently, director Neill Blomkamp “was the first one” to suggest those tags:

“The racing scenes, all of a sudden, just nobody knew–Neill [Blomkamp] was the first one. He was like, ‘I want to put the tags over the cars,’ which he was definitive about that pretty early on.”

Another method the film used to keep everything clear was freeze frames—something Parker suggested himself since he “had seen [it done] in some other films:”

“But that was just something I had seen in some other films that I like, and I just started to do that for clarity again because we just don’t know where [the main character] is… So basically, it was just for clarity. I was like, ‘We have to just stop a second and let the audience know the stakes, you know, he has to win that race.’ Then I just started putting them in. Then I had too many, and then Neill’s like, ‘That’s great, but lose two of them.’ So it’s troubleshooting. But yeah, that was my idea.”

One thing fans have noticed about the movie is that, much like the sport it follows, there are brands everywhere. According to the editor, there was “no mandate” on including any more than would naturally be included:

“It never really affected us because there was no mandate. I mean, we never heard from anybody to put more shots like that. We were just always, you know, working for Neill [Blomkamp], the director, and the only notes we ever got for him was, you know, more story, more story, more emotion. He just wanted emotion. That was the only thing we ever heard from him.”

Parker then pointed out how a lot of the advertisements seen in the world of Gran Turismo were the product of the VFX team:

“I think a lot of [those brands were] VFX too because they weren’t at all the [races]. They were at Nürburgring and Red Bull, but we weren’t at Le Mans, and so a lot of that is VFX. And so when I saw that, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t–They filled in all these TAG Heuer signs and all that…”

Another place where the VFX bridged the gap between the game series and its adaptation was the use of something the filmmakers called “gamer vision:”

“There’s two beats in the script where the game comes to life around him, and then we just started to add that in more. We actually thought that was super cool. We called it gamer vision, and you know, had sort of the, his POV be the POV of when you play the ‘Gran Turismo’ game. And I found that those were actually the coolest parts and the parts that we got the most positive reactions from…”

He continued, explaining how at one point they tried implementing that POV too much:

“Neill a few times was like, ‘Let’s do game vision again, here. I really liked that.’ And then we did it too much. And then he’s ‘like, alright, lets pullback on game vision, because when it happens in the end, it lost a little bit of its punch because we had sort of exhausted it too much earlier in the film. So again, it’s just a balance.”

The editor shared that while working on the final edit of the movie, the director “always wanted to screen the film:”

“Neill, more than any director I’ve ever worked with, always wanted to screen the film. So we had to watch the film every Friday. We put it in front of a lot audiences, like every two or three weeks. And… we listened to the audiences, and we listened to Neill and were always massaging, tweaking, and lifting scenes and then putting them back in based on audience notes and our own internal notes. And Neill’s gut.”

Before jumping into the world of Gran Turismo, Parker admitted that he made sure to watch movies like Days of Thunder, Ford v Ferrari, and Le Mans:

“I immerse myself in all other racing films, too. And I sort of see how other films have done it. I watched them. ‘Days of Thunder’, and I watched ‘Ford v Ferrari’, and I watched ‘Le Mans.’ And I definitely sort of go to a boot camp of whatever genre film I’m doing and just see how they do it. And I’m like, ‘Oh, I see. I see how they do. I see they do this and how they make that land.’ And I kind of learned from the paragons of editing out there who have done it before me, and then try to put a little my touch on there; a little panache of my own style…”

Gran Turismo’s Perfect Use of VFX and CGI

A lot of people would agree that the best VFX and CGI work is that which is never noticed in the first place. That rings true here since most fans probably didn’t notice when the race cars were real or fake throughout Gran Turismo.

Visual effects work is also very commonly used to help fill in a project’s fictional world. Even movies that like to tout their practicality, such as Mad Mad: Fury Road, are made possible by these methods.

In Gran Turismo’s case, it was paramount to making those races feel alive and like actual events.

As for the unique overlays and other graphical elements the film used, they were all very well utilized, doing a fantastic job at bringing some of the game franchise over to its big-screen counterpart.

Gran Turismo is now playing in select theaters and will receive a proper wide release on August 25.