Macbeth

• Shots: Entire Film
• Concept design
• Look development
• On set supervision
• CG environment creation
• Matte Painting
• Compositing
• Cleanup

Macbeth was the second entirely green-screen feature film created in-house at Viridian. Rather than using VFX to create extended realities, the team worked with long-time collaborator Kit Monkman, to focus on creating a world where artificiality is embraced to tell the story in a brand new way.

“Brilliant and exhilarating… the most innovative rethinking of what it means to put Shakespeare on film for decades.”

Professor Peter Holland
Chair, International Shakespeare Association
Editor, Shakespeare Survey

Macbeth is one of the most familiar of stories – a play about the interior mental condition of one man. This internalized narrative, coupled with the inherently theatrical nature of the Shakespearean tale, meant that the visual possibilities unlocked by using green screen technology were endless and exciting, so the team began by researching key visual references and styles.

By embracing a painterly and theatrical language to explore the internal territory that Shakespeare’s language renders so powerfully, the film evocatively explores the relationship between the internal mind and the external perception in a world of suggestive and fluently changing imagery.

Viridian led the way with exhaustive R&D into the techniques required to realise the ambitious vision, and accomplished its completion on a comparatively small budget. This involved extensive previs and shot planning, as well as meticulous supervision over the green sets to ensure maximum efficiency in the post-production process, culminating in a period of 15 months occupying a dark room with a team of just 8 dedicated VFX artists.