With a career spanning many years in visual effects, James McQuaide has built an impressive track record in the industry. As former Executive Vice President of Post & VFX at Lakeshore Entertainment, he supervised the visual effects for productions such as the Underworld series, Candyman, Bardo, Falsa Crónica de unas Cuantas Verdades, and The Equalizer 3.
What is your background?
Not sure how far back you want to take this but I started my career as Director of Creative Affairs for Joel Silver. Then wrote a couple scripts for Warner Bros, one of which was the original drafts that, many years later, became Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes. After that, was Executive VP, Post & VFX for Lakeshore Entertainment. Lakeshore had a very boots-on-the-ground mentality. This provided the opportunity to, among wearing many hats, VFX Supervise and VFX Produce nearly fifty movies that ran the gamut from The Age of Adaline and The Ugly Truth to The Boy, Crank and Underworld franchises. Left Lakeshore when I was offered the chance to work on the Candyman re-boot with Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta. And since then have VFX Supervised/Produced movies for Alejandro Inarritu, David Slade and Antoine Fuqua.
How was the collaboration with Director Frank E. Flowers?
Can’t say that I’ve ever had a better collaborator. He approached VFX as a writer, understanding that shots weren’t born perfect, that with every “draft”, there was an opportunity for improvement both technical and creative. And his constant positivity from Prep to Post was infectious. Genuinely looked forward to shot review sessions with him.
And, by-the-way, the same can be said about the AGBO team – always present, always supportive, always collaborative.
How did you choose and split the work amongst the VFX Studios?
VFX work was spread across ten vendors and individual artists, primarily in Australia. I enjoy the collaboration of a larger team and found, over the years, that it serves the film best to have so many “voices” participating. On this movie, awards were typically 75-125 shots which gave vendors and artists the time and space to take full authorship. I’ve worked with pretty much all the vendors and artists previously so I know their strengths and ambitions – as much as possible, VFX work was divided accordingly.
The Bluff features a fully realized pirate ship at the heart of the story. Can you walk us through the design and build of this vessel, and explain how you balanced practical elements with digital extensions to achieve both scale and authenticity?
The original intention was to turn the pirate genre a bit on its head by showing very little, if any, of the pirate ship. We actually shot an opening that started after the pirates had seized the schooner. This scene was designed and photographed to never see off the section of practical schooner deck that the Art Dept. had built. However, while we were still in Production, as the edit came together, the feeling was that more action was needed to immediately grab the audience. A prologue was designed to dovetail with the original opening, focussing on the pirate ship over-taking the schooner and the pirates repelling onto its deck like Black Hawk Down Marines. As this came together quite late in the Production schedule, there really wasn’t time to shoot practical elements.
Once in Post, a pirate ship had to be reverse engineered for historical accuracy and to support this new opening – i.e. the vessel had to be large/tall enough for the pirates to repel from its boom; since a Jolly Roger flag flapping from a mast ran counter to the idea of a stealth attack, a banner with a revisionist pirate logo was less conspicuously hung from the ship’s hull, etc. Also, because the design of the original opening had been so contained, only the back half of the ship the pirates board had been built; this meant that the front half of the ship became a CG construction. All the design work to accomplish this was done in collaboration with Rising Sun Pictures and El Ranchito.
Because the original opening was to have taken place on calmer seas, the practical ship hadn’t been built on any sort of gimbal. To sell the stormy ocean of the new prologue, deck elements like gas-lamps and the ship’s wheel were replaced with CG versions that could rock back-and-forth violently; additionally CG waves and clouds were added and old-school camera shake utilized so that the practical set would seem to move as the new prologue required. In editorial, care had to be taken to not linger on a shot long enough that the lack of rocking in the actors’ performances became a liability.
The storm at sea is a major sequence in the opening sequence. How did you approach the simulation of large-scale ocean dynamics, wind interaction, rain, and atmospheric effects to create a believable and threatening environment?
FROM CARLOS PUIGDOLLERS (VFX SUPERVISOR, EL RANCHITO):
We started gathering references that matched the needs of the sequence: rough seas at night, heavy rain, strong winds… The kind of conditions that would be every sailor’s nightmare. Then we did a first rough postviz pass, matching the shots from the previz, and adding some comp on top of it to start getting the look and feel for the sequence. Once everyone was happy about the style, we started the sim work in Houdini, breaking down the shots into five main simulations
First one was a large scale ocean simulation. We tried to establish a strong sense of scale in the waves, and passed some attributes from the sim to the shader, trying to get cool looking waves while keeping everything believable. It’s always hard to get that balance between epic and realism, and having those passes helped a lot to fine tune it in comp
Next sim was the ocean interaction with the ships, a higher resolution water simulation including waves crashing against them and large splashes. We blocked the timing of those splashes early on during the initial layout, so we had perfect timing as the camera flies by, adding the epic look the sequence needed.
Another big part of the sequence was the rain. This was a full particle simulation with lots of forces, such as turbulence and strong wind, trying to match it as closely as possible to the rain in the plates. We created around 5 rain sim for each shot, and play with them in comp to get the best results. The other rain sim we had was the water interaction on the ships and pirates. We developed two different approaches for that. For close-up elements of the shot, we did a full particle and meshed water simulation to get realistic behavior of the water running down the wood or the cloth, both for sails and pirate cloth. For mid and long distance elements, we used a more efficient shader based solution in Houdini. By using the geometry’s position and UVs, we created 2D simulations of water streams running down over the surfaces, and used that directly as a layer on the shader. That was pretty fast to set up and sim, and work pretty well at those distances, especially using it as a specular layer, so you can see details of water moving on the surfaces even when out of focus.
Finally, we handled the cloth simulation for both the pirates and the sails. It was pretty hard to get a strong sense of scales on the sails, they are pretty huge, so we ended up subdividing the sim mesh a lot, to get nice fine details that can sell the idea of a huge sail waving in a strong wind. That wasn’t a fast sim, but we really needed that kind of detail to get the feel and scale of the sequence.
Overall, it was a very demanding and complex FX sequence, but also incredibly rewarding. After all, who wouldn’t want to work on a night-time stormy weather pirate boarding sequence??
FROM LINDSAY ADAMS (VFX SUPERVISOR, FUTURE ASSOCIATE):
We built upon our experience doing oceans for other shows. For our shots at Future Associate, the oceans were in the background, behind the ship’s deck, at night and mostly out of focus. This meant we were able to avoid using a simulation for the entire ocean and took a more computationally moderate approach where we used noise to drive a generic ocean surface to fake the wave height. This was pretty directable and we did secondary whitewater flip sims to help get the sense there were some white caps out there in the distance. Having a CG ocean also meant we were able to supply lighting passes to our compositors to match the on set lightning, where we foreshadowed the on set lightning strikes with lightning seen in the clouds and on the ocean behind the ship. We used Houdini FX for the ocean and lighting rendered in Redshift and composited in Nuke. Our rain and mist that we added was all from our extensive asset library where our compositors we able to find elements that hit the creative direction of the scene, quickly trying different elements and timings all in Nuke.
Production shot the ship deck throughroughly in the rain. We were provided a Lidar scan of the ships deck which helped us in tracking and enabled us to orient our cameras to extend the ships deck. We were pointing towards the bow, the stern or even upwards for the masts and rigging, so it was important to have coverage in our build for the whole scene. The opening sequence is quite dark with a short depth of field and combined with the rain, it created limited visibility, so the lens grids that production provided combined with the scene Lidar became invaluable. We also animated Conner’s ship behind our hero’s ship’s deck. Conner’s ship was a high detail CG build provided to us by RSP. We ingested this asset and adjusted it to work in our pipeline. We added a basic rig to animate with and setup its materials for us to light in Houdini with Redshift. We also added blood, gore, muzzle flashes and animated the ship’s steering wheel to help give the sense that the ship was at sea and moving.
From a technical standpoint, what were the biggest challenges in integrating digital water simulations with live-action plates shot on stage or on partial sets?
In the Battle for Bloody Bay sequence, the initial direction was to be on shore with the villagers the entire time, to see it solely thru their eyes. Then as the sequence architecture developed, the decision was made to have at least a handful shots on the pirate rowboats. Since it was not possible to shoot this practically, we photographed sky/ocean and shore plates (which included the village set) on location; the boats w/ pirates were shot on stage against a blue screen. The constraints of the small tank made it nearly impossible for the actors to row in unison – this was addressed by VFX. The biggest challenge was getting the boats to feel like they had been photographed outside, to get them to work with the light in the practical, exterior BG plates.
FROM GUIDO WOLTER (VFX SUPERVISOR, RISING SUN PICTURES):
One of the biggest challenges was achieving a seamless integration between the live action boats and our fully digital ocean environments.
We had several shots featuring small pirate boats rowing in large studio water tanks, and our initial goal was to preserve as much of the practical water as possible. However, we quickly realized that to achieve a convincing result, we needed to fully re-simulate the interaction between the live action boats, including the hulls and oars, and our CG water.
The primary limitation was the scale of the tank. The bow waves and wakes captured in camera did not convey the appropriate sense of speed, weight, and propulsion we needed for the final shots. On top of that, the lighting conditions required for the final environment differed from what was captured on stage, which required our intervention and a more agile approach.
As a result, we chose to replace most of the open water with full-CG ocean simulations. This approach gave both the filmmakers and our team far greater creative control over the look and behavior of the water, while also allowing us to more accurately match the interaction between the live action boats and the surrounding ocean, ultimately leading to a more cohesive and believable final result.
The island of Cayman Brac plays a crucial narrative role. How much of the environment was captured practically, and how much was digitally recreated or extended to shape the geography and dramatic cliffs seen on screen?
Frankie is from the Cayman Islands. The Bluff is a love letter to the islands’ history. Therefore, it was very important that, as much as possible, the real island appear in the movie. While principal photography there wasn’t possible, Frankie, myself and a small local crew were able to shoot several days on Cayman Brac (before being chased by a hurricane). We shot primarily on and around the real bluff. All the establishing shots in the movie are of Brac (with minor and only occasional VFX augmentation). And as much as possible, we used plates from this shoot as BGs for the bluff fight finale. For shots where there wasn’t a practical BG plate – the bluff fight was still being edited when we were on Cayman – we leaned into photogrammetry and LIDAR scans of the practical location that were done by Myriad’s Duncan Jones (who, ironically, had been chased off Brac by another hurricane 10 days earlier).
FROM WILL GAMMON (VFX SUPERVISOR, FIN DESIGN):
At Fin Design + Effects, we were fortunate to start with a really strong foundation — production provided a detailed LiDAR and photogrammetry scan of Cayman Brac. That gave us an accurate understanding of the island’s topography, rock formations and vegetation, which became the backbone of everything we built.
The physical set, shot on the Gold Coast, had the general shape of the cliff point where the sequence takes place, but it wasn’t geographically tied to the real location. It lacked the specific anchor points that make Cayman Brac feel authentic.
So our approach at Fin was to merge those two worlds. We brought the island scan and the set scan into the same world scale and built a single, unified environment. From there, we created transitional rock work and terrain to seamlessly integrate the set into the real geography.
We then developed a suite of vegetation — palms and native plant types specific to the island — and used that to dress the environment so it felt cohesive and grounded. That merged environment became the master set piece for both the opening and final signal fire sequences.
FROM DUNCAN JONES (MYRIAD):
Working closely with VFX Supervisor / Producer James McQuaide, Myriad Studios was asked to capture the real Bluff on Cayman Brac and provide an accurate digital model for the island environment. Myriad, who had been involved in principle shoot in Australia, continued on the project to maintain continuity of scan quality across the show. Our team using high spec drone, camera and lidar technology, carried out scanning across 1 million sq feet of the key coastal area and cliff formations, recording the island’s distinctive limestone geology, terrain and vegetation in high detail.
This practical capture on Cayman Brac allowed The Bluff VFX artists to build from real-world geometry and textures, providing creative flexibility for the story, and help the location featured maintain it’s authenticity.
When building Cayman Brac digitally, how did you ensure geological and vegetation accuracy while still enhancing the terrain for cinematic impact?
One of the revelations of the Cayman shoot was witnessing how remarkable the practical skies are there – we had to keep reminding ourselves that the Gone With The Wind quality of what we were seeing really thru the entire day but, most prominently, at sunrise and sunset was real. The tightrope we then had to walk in VFX was to maintain this authenticity (which was inherently cinematic) but present it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t have the same Gone with the wind reaction that we’d experienced on the brac.
FROM WILL GAMMON (VFX SUPERVISOR, FIN DESIGN):
At Fin, accuracy was always our starting point. The scan gave us a clear understanding of how the island behaves — the rock structures, erosion patterns, and how vegetation naturally grows across the terrain.
From there, it was about subtle enhancement rather than invention. We preserved the underlying geology but shaped certain areas to improve composition and readability — pushing silhouettes slightly or adjusting vegetation density to guide the audience’s eye.
We worked closely with the production team to find that balance — making sure the environment stayed true to the real location while still supporting the storytelling and framing of the sequence.
A big part of that came through lighting and atmosphere. We leaned into a strong backlit look, with the sun pushing through smoke and haze. That gave us a naturally cinematic feel — enhancing the drama while still maintaining a believable, grounded environment.
The film includes alligators interacting with the cast. Were these creatures entirely CG, and what reference or behavioral studies informed their modeling, rigging, and animation?
In the first anims, when Karl Urban shoots around the croc, we had it back away slowly, always facing the pirate as it slid into the river. However, during this process, we came across footage of a real croc turning suddenly away from a camera and swimming into what appeared to be the ocean. The violence of this turn became the reference used for putting an exclamation point on the scene.
FROM OSCAR PEREA (VFX SUPERVISOR, EL RANCHITO):
Yes, the alligator is CG, we didn’t want any actors to get hurt on set! We had a limited amount of time for this sequence, so we had to optimize the steps in every phase of production. We started by gathering all the “black caiman” references we could find, both in terms of look and animation, to understand how they move, how they attack, and how different types of water react to their movements. After that, all the departments reviewed those references, and we began the “casting” process, based on multiple 2D concepts, to determine the look of our alligator.
With this information, we worked in parallel on look dev and modeling adjustments as well as the animation, while FX developed a specific water and splash setup for this sequence. This allowed us to make progress on animation and FX even before the crocodile’s look was finalized.
In terms of creature work, how did you approach realism in skin shading, muscle simulation, and water interaction for the alligators, especially in close-contact shots?
FROM OSCAR PEREA (VFX SUPERVISOR, EL RANCHITO):
The close-ups of the alligator presented a challenge for us, not only technically but also in terms of the acting. We had to maintain the realism of its movements while incorporating the specific actions it had to perform.
As for realism, we had to add a lot of fine detail in all areas (skin, eyes, mouth, teeth…) as well as extensive shading work, especially on the layers that simulate the “wet” look. For each animation version, we used CFX to achieve the movement and reaction of the flesh/muscles, and then simulated the interaction with water, all within Houdini. For the water, we tried to keep all the original splashes from the shoot and as much of the live-action footage as we could, mixed with the CG, to maintain maximum consistency with the real environment. The compositing work was also crucial for bringing everything together, and achieving that characteristic “wet” look on the skin, as if it had just emerged from the water.
Finally, I just want to say that we are very happy and proud of the final result of the sequence and the work of the entire team involved.
The burning house sequence is particularly intense. Can you break down the methodology behind the fire and destruction work, including the balance between practical fire, digital fire, and structural simulations?
Burning the house was an idea that came out of shooting an earlier scene where Karl Urban’s character is essentially defeated by Priyanka’s – it seemed a natural retaliation for him to burn her house down. The movie was, more-or-less, scheduled chronologically to give Frankie the opportunity to continue to develop the story during Production.
We had Art Dept. pull thatched roof sections of their set. As part of an element shoot, we burned them. Very educational to see the pattern and speed with which they burned. If nothing else, it informed the CG burn Future Associates created.
FROM LINDSAY ADAMS (VFX SUPERVISOR, FUTURE ASSOCIATE):
Bodden House was a period Caribbean structure with a thatched roof. Production VFX Supervisor James McQuaide provided a LIDAR scan of the structure — giving us a precise understanding of the geometry, where the cross beams sat, how the roof was constructed. We built smoke simulations in EmberGen, then passed them to Houdini for lighting and rendering in Redshift. Live action fire, smoke and embers from our own library were composited in to ground everything in reality. We also ran a collapse simulation of the thatching in the roof to help give some visual interest in the hero shot. Our library is substantial — around 30TB of highly tagged fire, smoke, water and atmospheric elements, built up across years of production. The tagging system means our artists can pull the exact element they need quickly.
We also handled Connor’s fire torch — the sequence where the torch contacts the thatched roof. That was a Houdini FX simulation rendered in Redshift and composited in Nuke, combined with live action torch and smoke elements to sell the moment the fire takes hold on the top of the roof. There was not much practical fire in this scene, just a couple of characters holding real burning torches, which provided fantastic reference for us to match to.
Many of the stunts were augmented with visual effects. What types of stunt enhancements were most common in The Bluff, and how did you ensure they remained invisible to the audience?
Had the usual assortment of stunt knee and elbow pads, harness, wire and mat removals, bullet hits, muzzle flashes and blood splatters, blade extensions, CG breaking glass and thrown props hitting actors, window comps, separate plates stitched together to create a single continuous shot, digi-doubles and face replacements and this was all within the first shot in which Priyanka meets the pirates – cards on the table, this shot was nearly three minutes long. We were not permitted to use squibs so to create practical interactive light, LED lights were installed inside gun barrels that flashed when an actor pulled the trigger. It was great working with 2nd Unit Director, Rob Alonzo and the Stunt Coordinator, Kyle Gardiner; both understood the VFX tools that could be tapped to make possible the action they choreographed. And for all the face replacements, we were fortunate to work with Guido Wolter and his team at RSP who had just come off of doing the same for Sinners.
Because of the various skills Priyanka’s character required, two stunts performers were needed. while one was a nearly perfect match physically, the other was less tall. one of the interesting challenges with the face replacements was how to maintain accurate proportions. What we ended-up doing was matching the face to the shorter body and then reducing the size of the elements and even other actors in the frame so that the the face-replaced stunt performer was proportionally consistent with the non-stunt performer shots around it.
FROM GUIDO WOLTER (VFX SUPERVISOR, RISING SUN PICTURES):
As VFX artists, our goal is always to keep the work invisible. Priyanka is an incredible performer who fully commits to physically demanding scenes, but in a few cases the action was too dangerous and required a stunt double. In those moments, we step in to seamlessly bridge the gap.
We prepare for this work by carefully studying Priyanka’s facial features, expressions, and mannerisms. We build both a visual and descriptive understanding of what makes her performance unique, and use that as a foundation to guide every head replacement. It is a very detail driven process, where subtle nuances in timing, expression, and movement make all the difference.
A close collaboration with the client side VFX supervisor James McQuaide and VFX editor Steven Cuellar was essential to this process. They helped us access the best possible reference material, including takes on either side of the replacement shot, which gave us a much stronger understanding of performance continuity and intent. This context is crucial in ensuring that our work blends seamlessly into the surrounding footage.
By developing a deep familiarity with her performance and working closely with the client team, we can integrate these enhancements in a way that feels completely natural, so the audience remains fully immersed, whether she is crashing through windows or taking down opponents in a fight.
The final fight on the edge of a cliff is both dramatic and dangerous. How was that environment constructed, and what role did digital doubles and environment extensions play in achieving the scale and peril of the sequence?
Leaning into the practical, the plan from the get-go was to shoot this sequence on a cliff overlooking the Southern Ocean. However, about a month out, with weather becoming an increasing concern, the decision was made to switch to constructing a fairly contained “dance floor” set it in the middle of a Westfield Mall parking lot and surround it with a wall of blue screen. This meant that, for the large bonfire (that plays a critical role in this sequence), all we were permitted to do was place interactive lights inside the bonfire “prop” Art Dept. provided. And everything beyond the “dance floor” had to become DMPs, practical plates shot on Cayman Brac with VFX enhancements like wind blown CG palm trees or a combination of the two. All smoke and embers swirling thru the scene – which were carefully choreographed to almost be a third character in the battle – had to become CG as well.
FROM WILL GAMMON (VFX SUPERVISOR, FIN DESIGN):
The sequence itself was shot on a controlled blue screen set, so everything beyond the immediate interaction space was built at Fin.
We extended the environment vertically and outward to create the full sense of scale — the cliff drop, ocean and horizon were all digitally constructed from our merged asset. In some cases, we also refined camera moves to heighten the sense of danger. For example, when Ercell slides toward the edge and the rock breaks away, we extended the environment and tilted the camera down to reveal the drop, which really sells the peril.
The signal fire was a major component of the sequence. We built a fully digital fire simulation that evolves over time — it starts relatively contained when Connor lights it, and intensifies as the fight progresses. As the fire grows, so does the energy of the scene, with increased embers, smoke and interaction.
Digital doubles were used for moments where interaction became too complex or unsafe to achieve practically. When Ercell falls into the fire, or when burning debris is thrown and makes contact with her, we used digi-doubles to drive those interactions — allowing us to integrate fire, embers and smoke in a controlled and believable way.
We also relied heavily on real-world reference. The sky and lighting were built from HDRI captured both on Cayman Brac and locally in northern New South Wales — including sunrise plates shot around Byron Bay — while the ocean was derived from plates captured across the region. These elements were stitched together to form a cohesive lighting and environmental base.
Ultimately, it was the combination of the merged environment, evolving fire simulation and digi-double interaction that allowed us at Fin to push the scale and danger of the sequence, while keeping everything grounded in reality.
Looking back at The Bluff, which sequence best represents the collaborative relationship between production and VFX, and what lessons from this film will you carry into future projects?
The Bluff was nothing if not collaborative on all fronts. Perfect example, Priyanka’s support of all things VFX was off-the-charts. On many occasions, she would rush from Main Unit to 2nd to provide face replacement reference in the same set-up in which her stunt-double had just performed. More than once she insisted on holding the color chart for VFX reference passes. She would go out-of-her-way to ensure that we got all the photogrammetry scans required, double-checking that her costume, hair and even blood splatter were exactly as they had been in the scenes the scan would be reference for. Karl Urban and the rest of the cast was exactly the same. It was a real privilege to have this level of support.
How long have you worked on this show?
From 1st day of Prep in Gold Coast until final delivery was 16 months.
What’s the VFX shots count?
987 VFX shots were created for the movie.
What is your next project?
Prepping a movie called Golden Gate. One of the best scripts I’ve read. What Chinatown was to Los Angeles, this is to late 30’s San Francisco. Historical accuracy is everything. This means all VFX work needs to be invisible. At least at the moment, the biggest challenge will be quite a few scenes that take place on the Golden Gate Bridge during its construction. Should be fun one.
What are the four movies that gave you the passion for cinema?
In no particular order:
A big thanks for your time.
// FUTURE ASSOCIATE – VFX BREAKDOWN
// TRAILER
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
El Ranchito: Dedicated page about The Bluff on El Ranchito website.
Future Associate: Dedicated page about The Bluff on Future Associate website.
Rising Sun Pictures: Dedicated page about The Bluff on Rising Sun Pictures website.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2026
