Primate, from Paramount Pictures and now streaming on Paramount+, follows a group of friends’ fight for survival after their pet chimpanzee, Ben, goes on a violent, bloody rampage, turning a tropical homecoming into a primal tale of horror and survival. In his film, director Johannes Roberts did not hold back on the gore.  Even though a practical animatronic creature was used during shooting, there were times when the head, body and face had to be taken over digitally to get the desired performance.  Overseeing the visual effects work was Jason Van Haverbeke, who recruited Outpost VFX to do 104 shots over a period of three months.  “Primate was a uniquely challenging show because we had to take work from another company and rebuild almost from scratch a realistic CG animal in a very short amount of time,” states Rémi Martin, Visual Effects Supervisor, Outpost VFX. “Originally, MPC had been working on the film but sadly closed before they could get too far.  Working on horror movies is always fun, but on this one, we needed to be very careful and organized to avoid losing time. We were really fighting against the clock and needed the work to look perfect.  It was refreshing to see such a good practical character performance and an interesting visual effects challenge to take that live-action performance and integrate expressive CG features for Ben to bring his face to life.” 

Enjoy the VFX breakdown reel, then learn how the work was produced:

Extensive time was spent looking at real world references for facial expressions and body movements for Ben.  “Thankfully, there is a lot of good chimp reference out there!” remarks Martin. “The goal was to build a complex and realistic rig while carefully matching the costume they had on set, which itself was really detailed and effective. Building clean mouth and facial shapes took a lot of extra effort, so I have our excellent creature team to thank for doing such a good job with setting that character up. For the house environment, we did some research regarding the type of vegetation and landscape you can find in the area where the film is set. For Drew’s ripped jaw, we spent some time watching some pretty gruesome reference of jaw and face anatomy. We built nerves, vessels, skin and a fat system to get a realistic and horrible result.” 

Unfortunately, the assets previously created by MPC could not be reused. Martin notes, “Our pipeline and tools are different, and they also didn't have time to send everything to us before closing. Most of the assets were redone from scratch, which added hugely to the time pressure on this film.”

For a significant portion of the movie, Ben was largely practical. “It was a fully directable performance during the shoot and Miguel Torres Umba, who played Ben, did a superb job,” states Martin.  “The joy of having a good practical version of Ben on-set was that it helped massively with lighting when we had to take over in CG. The main area of CG intervention was where Ben needed to emote with his face or the eyes felt too human.”

The main VFX challenge was integrating the CG version of Ben’s face over the costume. According to Martin, “We decided to create the rig and groom in layers to help integration in comp.  I’m originally from a comp background so I had a good handle on what would make our lives easier later on. We tracked the eyes to place the head and then we decided shot by shot which layers needed to be rendered.”  The main tests centered around facial expressions.  “Chimpanzees have a wide range of motion with their lips and mouth, so we spent a lot of time creating all the possible shapes and complex controls to achieve all the expressions we needed,” Martin shares. “The body movement took a few tests and research as well, but the main work was done in shot context. This was especially true in the shot where Ben falls from the balcony as he was fully CG but was performing a unique falling action rather than walking around.” 

Once the facial rig was completed and functioning, the animation was not extremely hard.  “The difficulty was to not overdo it too much, because we needed to match to the practical shots and bed our CG takeovers in smoothly,” Martin explains.  “Many beats featured fully practical shots and CG takeover shots in sequence, so the key was to make sure our shots didn’t stand out too much.  Ben had to emote quite a lot, but the rig was built so well that we were able to do this easily enough by hand. Chimps are very expressive with their lips, so we had those rigged up, and then by the time Ben has come down with rabies he’s baring his teeth a lot.” 

In order to seamlessly integrate digital and practical elements, areas where blends were needed had to be defined. “Ben is covered in fur, and fur is one of the worst materials to have to blend between real life and CG,” Martin admits. “We decided to split Ben's render in different layers, and different fur depth. Then we decided on each shot which layers needed to be rendered to help the integration.  We also had to keep the actor's eyes in some shots, so our facial track needed to be very clean.  Thankfully, we decided early on to track the eyes as a base, which helped us.” 

Blood and gore, as previously hinted at, is on full display. “The clients explained the goal was to have very graphic shots while keeping a sense of realism,” notes Martin. “The largest simulation was for the Drew jaw ripping shot. We built a complex system to be sure we could see the skin getting torn, then the fat, then the tendons, then the blood vessels. You’ll see in our breakdown where we had to blend a full CG mouth area with both the performer and also a prosthetic they had on set. Cloth sims helped us to achieve the tearing of the skin, and then there’s all sorts of extra CG going on in there including a lolling tongue which is particularly gruesome.”  Several shots happen in almost complete darkness.  “Every shot has its own story to tell,” Martin says. “When you light a CG asset, you need to match the photography first, then you add lights that will help in telling the story and creating tension. For example, we had a lot of shots with Ben silhouetted, looking menacing, so we placed lights to get a bright specular on the blood covering his mouth, creating that unsetting feeling of a dark but deadly menace.” 

Given the tight schedule, the jaw rip and Ben falling to his death from the balcony were complex shots to complete.  “The Ben falling shot is a fully-CG character shot with effects and props in there as well,” states Martin. “The jaw rip was tough to achieve as there’s so much going on in there.”  Ben’s production also terrified Outpost VFX.  “Creating a full CG chimp, and outputting more than 100 shots with it in 3 months was scary,” Martin reveals. “I would say time was the biggest challenge on this film.” He went on to point out that working in the horror genre was quite fun, stating, “The joy of working on horror movies is to get the audience reactions to your most gruesome work. The jaw rip is probably the biggest one, because we looked at it for weeks, analyzing all the small details. It’s really gruesome but I’m super pleased with what we achieved there. Overall, I would just say that this show was made possible thanks to the brilliant team we had on it and the trust our clients put in us. Without those things it would have been impossible to deliver on time.”