How the VFX Team on ‘The Substance’ Turned Demi Moore Into a Blob

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(Warning: This story contains spoilers for Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance).

In the final scenes of The Substance, things get messy.

Coralie Fargeat’s satirical body horror film tells the story of Elizabeth Sparkle, a once-prominent actress, who resorts to using a strange substance named “The Substance” in her quest to regain her youth and maintain her position in the sexist and ageist Hollywood. However, things take an alarming turn for the worst.

Moments following the injection, I find myself sprawled on my bathroom floor, mirroring Sparkle – Demi Moore‘s character who’d just won her first Golden Globe for this role. In an eerie twist, my back cracks down the middle, and Sue, a slick, younger version of myself (portrayed by Margaret Qualley), slithers out. At first, we adhere to the plan, trading places every seven days. The body on the floor is sustained with a feeding tube, while the other gets to live freely.

However, the allure of youth calls to Sue, causing her to spend more time outside, leaving Elizabeth feeling neglected and deteriorating. Desperate, Elizabeth disregards the cautionary advice on a product manual and administers herself with remaining serum, leading to a metamorphosis into “Elisasue” or Monstro – a monstrous figure resembling both Quasimodo and The Scream by Edvard Munch. This grotesque creature sports a deformed visage that combines elements of Sue’s face with Elizabeth’s scream echoing from its rear.

In the movie “The Substance“, Fargeat opted to minimize digital special effects, instead favoring traditional methods like makeup, prosthetics, and puppetry from the old-school era. However, when Monstro appeared towards the end of the film for its slime-filled climax, some support with visual effects (VFX) was necessary during the on-set production.

Pierre Procoudine-Gorsky, a VFX coordinator from France, shares that they invested considerable time in deciding how Monstro should appear in the film, as Coralie was deeply fond of a specific prosthetic look reminiscent of ’80s movies like those directed by David Cronenberg and John Carpenter, such as “The Thing” (1982) and “The Fly” (1986). Pierre’s team at the Parisian studio Noid collaborated with Bryan Jones, the film’s VFX supervisor, to create digital designs for Monstro. They developed two versions: the hunchbacked, grotesque Eliasue and the climactic scene where Elisabeth’s face, now transformed into a wriggling, oozing mass, crawls onto Sparkle’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before being removed.

According to Procoudine-Gorsky, he referred to the initial character as “the monster” and the final one as “the blob.” Throughout their work, they built upon Coralie’s on-set creations in collaboration with the prosthetic team and visual effects makeup, aiming to replicate that prosthetic appearance instead of creating something overly digital or flawless.

Procoudine-Gorsky, who received a European Film Award for outstanding Visual Effects in December for the team of “The Substance,” has previously worked on creature-focused projects. His team was instrumental in creating the werewolf for Sean Ellis’ 2021 period horror movie, “The Cursed.” Additionally, he has put in considerable time working on visual effects for popular French films such as “Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom,” released in 2023.

However, he mentions that nothing has come close to “The Substance” yet. He expresses that the most difficult task he’s encountered was replicating the likeness of a well-known actress and making it appear as a realistic physical effect, seamlessly integrating with the puppet.

Initially, the digital depiction of Elizabeth’s visage, hidden within Monstro’s spine, bore a strong resemblance to Moore, yet it seemed flawed or malfunctioning in some way.

The dummy head, specifically the one designed as Moore, didn’t fit well with the puppet. Before filming, the prosthetics team would spritz a glycerine solution over the face to make it appear wet and give it a rubbery texture.” (This version aims to simplify the language while maintaining the original meaning.)

It required several weeks to accurately replicate that specific layered wetness appearance on the computer, “to emulate precisely the characteristics of that glycerin.

Procoudine-Gorsky and his team engaged in multiple rounds of discussion with Fargeat and Jones over the course of approximately six to seven months before they finalized a satisfactory digital version.

The Elisabeth face blob posed a different challenge.

Initially, we followed the same process, scanning everything happening on set and obtaining a comprehensive 3-D scan of the puppet with its makeup, among other things,” he explains, “However, for the blob, we required more flexibility in its movements. The puppet was impressive, but it lacked the fluid, flowing motion that Coralie required.

Ultimately, the design of the blob was primarily carried out on a computer. It initially underwent traditional key-frame animation, followed by the addition of final refinements.

He explains that, similar to working with a monster, we faced identical issues such as replicating the on-set appearance, the appropriate level of blur, and the realistic feel of latex, all while ensuring Demi’s face was recognizable. Additionally, Demi delivers a significant amount of facial expression to portray her character’s struggle towards stardom. In the concluding scene, Demi’s character is seen smiling. We concluded that it wasn’t feasible to achieve this just through animation; instead, we needed to capture Demi performing these expressions for scanning.

The clock was ticking, as it was nearing the end of 2023. If “The Substance” was to be prepared as scheduled for the Cannes film festival the following May, the team at Noid needed to work swiftly. When the Screen Actors Guild inked a fresh contract with the studios, concluding their almost four-month strike, Noid seized an opportunity to record Moore, remotedly, from Clear Angle Studios – a 3D scanning specialist based in L.A.

In a rather complex procedure, we conducted a scanning process on Demi, where multiple cameras captured her from different angles as she performed. For the first time, Coralie guided Demi remotely via Zoom during this session.

With the uncooked information obtained from the scan as a foundation, Farget began refining the final scene of the film. She then transmitted her revised work to Noid. “The challenge lay in precisely aligning the CGI during the editing process,” explains Procoudine-Gorsky, “as we worked with this raw data. However, it was beneficial since we knew exactly what tools she intended to employ, ensuring our edits would seamlessly blend with hers.

By now it was the spring of 2024, and Cannes was closing in fast.

Three to four days before the festival in May, we were still perfecting the final shot,” he recalls. “It was quite chaotic. We submitted the final version just two days prior to the world premiere in Cannes.

Fargeat’s “effects-first” approach on the film “The Substance” has sparked renewed discussions among special effects enthusiasts about the physical versus digital divide. However, for Procoudine-Gorsky, the movie serves as a demonstration of how on-set and computer designs can harmoniously collaborate. “Our intention was never to replace something real, but rather to complement it or aid when there were practical constraints,” he explains. “From my perspective, there was no conflict between practical effects and VFX, between the physical and digital. It was all about teamwork.

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2025-01-14 14:25