Fall 2: Deadpoint, a chilling survival thriller that premiered in September and has just been released digitally, follows a story of two characters on a perilous ascent to an unforgiving location, where they cross a plank walk 4,000 feet above sea level.

The terrifying location, Mount Kwan in Thailand, is a fictional place inspired by a real Plank Walk at Mount Huashan in China, which is considered one of the most dangerous hiking places in the world.

The team at Koala FX, a VFX studio for feature films, episodic television, and commercials, brought the imaginary location to the screen with over 400 VFX shots, fully realizing the actualization of Mount Kwan and compositing every shot in which the mountain appears. With the guidance of VFX Supervisor Menelaos Pampoukidis, the studio carried out a substantial amount of work to achieve a believable and consistent look of the mountain, as well as a terrifying effect.

To bring the location to the screens, Koala FX combined digital matte painting with 2.5D set extensions and rebuilt the environment across a range of weather conditions: sun, rain, and shifting light. One of the most challenging moments was the Devil's Elbow, a first, introductory shot of the place that set the tone for the entire movie. 

Compared to the prequel, the 2022 film Fall, the Qwan Mount location brought new challenges: the first movie featured one point with a 360-degree horizon, while the new place featured rock formations. "It's much less straightforward. It's a completely different beast for us because it has left and right, it has up and down, in comparison to that one point," Koala FX managing director and co-founder Dasha Sherman shared with befores & afters.

Menelaos Pampoukidis explained that the team treated the mountain as a living character of the film, a member of the cast, with its own mood and emotions: "It has its own character. It has to be scary at points. It has to be friendly at points. It has to actually interact with them, so it creates some obstacles which they have to overcome. So, it was a little bit like a magical creature for us."

The rocky formations were visualized using the LiDAR scans and textures, and the Koala FX team created many detailed close CG shots to ensure a lifelike look. Pampoukidis revealed that the artists handled close-up CG rocks by scaling down the assets and placing them closer to the camera. Such a workflow allowed for maintaining good texture quality without visible tiling, while smoothing and wearing down the edges helped preserve a high level of detail in close-up shots.

Fall 2: Deadpoint, directed by Peter and Michael Spierig and produced by Tea Shop Productions and Capstone Pictures, is a sequel to the 2022 Fall, following Jax Hunter as she joins her late sister's friend, Luce, on a memorial hike up Mount Kwan in Thailand.

Also, check out how VFX helped shape the imaginary worlds of Mickey 17, Stranger Things, The Witcher, Percy Jackson And The Olympians, and One Piece:

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