SCENESTEALER

It’s a formidable image: The legendary Middle Kingdom, perched atop the looming hand-shaped Five Element mountain range of director Rob Minkoff’s martial arts epic, “The Forbidden Kingdom.” Based on production designer Bill Brzeski’s concepts and matte artist Michelle Moen’s continuity art, boutique FX house Svengali created four shots of the sinister palace with its myriad patios, pillars, windows and walkways, plunging about 25 stories down the cliff face. (FX houses Illusion Arts, DTI and Macrograph also worked on the fortress.) Transforming the clean digital model into a centuries-old edifice was a challenge. “We began mucking up the sharp edges with stains and weathering to create the irregularities that occur over time,” says Svengali visual effects supervisor Rocco Gioffre. His team then added a touch of reality to the mountain’s sense of dread: “We’d shoot rocks we gathered off Mulholland Drive,” Gioffre says. “Because the textures and cracks were correct, they didn’t just bear a resemblance to a cliff, they became one.”