John Wick: Chapter 4 Reveals Stunning VFX Work You Didn’t Even Notice

At the onset of the franchise, John Wick films received as small of a budget such action films could muster. After the Keanu Reeves vehicles found immense popularity, however, the films received larger production budgets and, in turn, more firepower in post-production. As you might expect, John Wick: Chapter 4 got a reported production budget of around $100 million, allowing director Chad Stahelski and the rest of the filmmakers on the project more freedoms when it came to the world of visual effects.

In fact, much of the film’s Paris-based sets were created from the ground up by the Montreal-based Rodeo FX with one such CGI sequence being the gun-fu scene based around the Arc de Triomphe. According to Rodeo’s Javier Roca, the one scene had an absurd amount of shots.

“The rendering was very complex. It was 113 shots. It was almost like doing a short animated film at 4K, with so many different elements. We had to render two different lighting scenarios for the artists to combine. So, we had Paris, which was always rendered fully,” Roca said in a new interview with Before and Afters. “And then the Berlin ‘lights’, to make sure that those lights that they used on the Berlin location were also being reflected on the CG cars. Plus, the other way around, on the stunt cars, we were getting the lights of our CG Paris on top of them as well.”

Because of the various swapping between locales, Roca said computer-generated imagery served the filmmakers the best to ensure continuity remained tight between shots.

“The idea was that everything needed to be living under the same type of lighting conditions. Headlights but especially taillights and brake lights are a huge part of a car’s design, so we needed to replicate, or at least re-invent, these lights to be modern, LED vs halogen, taking into account the colour temperature depending on new versus old cars, have the right exposure while still giving lig/comp flexibility to adjust them…and not to mention indicators,” Roca added.

You can see a recap video of Rodeo FX’s work on John Wick: Chapter 4 above.

Ballerina hits theaters on June 7th, 2024 while John Wick: Chapter 4 is now available for purchase wherever movies are sold ahead of its streaming debut later this year. The first three films in the franchise are streaming on Tubi.