Ridley Scott Movie’s VFX Created Battle of Waterloo — Watch

When “Napoleon” visual effects supervisor Charley Henley began planning the massive Battle of Waterloo sequence with director Ridley Scott, the initial discussions centered on the question of how to stage it like the spectacles of Hollywood past. “We wanted to get as close as possible to an old David Lean movie where there are thousands of extras and you’re doing it all live,” Henley told IndieWire. “One of the ideas was to shoot in Ireland using the Irish army, but we pretty quickly realized we couldn’t afford to do that.”

A variety of economic factors — as well as the need to strip the production down due to COVID-19 — meant that “Napoleon” would have to rely heavily on digital effects to realize Scott’s epic vision, but the core principle of doing as much as possible practically remained. “One of the key things for me was getting something real into every shot,” Henley said. In order to stage the various explosions, for example, practical effects supervisor Neil Corbould built air mortars to bury underground and blast debris and stuntmen into the sky using compressed air. Then Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, the supervisor for visual effects house MPC, worked with his team to digitally add the necessary fire and explosions.

Knowing he would not have the requisite David Lean cast of thousands, Henley ran tests to determine how many real soldiers he needed to make Waterloo convincing, ultimately deciding that a few hundred…