While the idea that a psychotic little doll bent on carnage can find a life partner while you can’t even get a date might be disturbing enough, for Universal/Widwinter Productions feature Bride of Chucky, the homicidal homunculus and the missus were made that much more mean and mobile with help from Canadian effects talent. The project also marks a rare time Universal has posted a feature project in Canada.

In Bride of Chucky, the current, fourth installment of the Child’s Play toy-turned-demon films, the pathologically disgruntled doll is confronted with his former human love interest, whom he, naturally, kills. She is then transformed into a doll and joins her mate in the murder and mayhem that made a name for Chucky in the first place.

But where the film’s creators originally intended Mr. and Mrs. Chucky to come to life using strictly live-action shooting and puppets, it turned out that the nastier moves and the added extras could only be fully realized with effects tweaking from Toronto’s TOYBOX and Toronto/Vancouver-based Gajdecki Visual Effects, both of which handled the bulk of the effects.

Toronto’s Nerve Effects also worked on effects for the film as did two l.a.-based shops, Perpetual Motion Pictures and Metrolight.

Bride of Chucky – directed by Hong Kong’s Ronny Yu, produced by David Kirschner and starring Jennifer Tilly – shot in and around Toronto this summer.

Visual effects supervisor Mike Muscal says at the outset no visual effects were intended for the film; Muscal was brought in to work directly with Kevin Yagher, the puppeteer responsible for building and manipulating Chucky.

As the script moved to the storyboard stage, it became apparent that a number of visual effects would be necessary to deliver all the action intended by the director.

‘We went from zero visual effects shots to about 60,’ says Muscal.

Effects artists delivered a wide array of shots including those which enhanced the actions of the puppets like added cg elements and rig removal as well as elements which added to secondary scenes of chaos like electricity and sparks.

For example, scenes which depict the puppets throwing objects like knives, bottles and plates, as the characters are wont to do in the film, are difficult to execute with any predictability using just the movements of the puppets so those scenes were enhanced with cg elements.

The TOYBOX team worked on a shot which features the bitchy bride throwing a bottle of champagne into a ceiling mirror, causing shards of glass to rain down on a couple lying beneath.

Under TOYBOX effects supervisor Dennis Berardi, TOYBOX animators Brian Anderson and Mark Stepenak created a cg bottle and used film footage to create an image of the couple’s reflection in the mirror. The team then created cg cracks and shards, repeating the reflection of the couple in the bits of broken glass.

Rig removal accounted for about 12 of the 60 shots, says Muscal, including a handful of very extensive jobs where whole dollies had to be painted out, since shots which show the puppet actually walking across a floor were accomplished with Chucky hooked up to a dolly.

There were also several shots where background plates were shot and rod puppeting done with Chucky on a green screen stage.

Other effects added to the general tone of the film, including a woman getting electrocuted and a man being run over by a truck. Muscal says the latter scene drew the biggest audience response during a preview screening.

Gajdecki handled the truck sequence and created the electricity animation for the electrocution scene and an assortment of other perilous situations.

TOYBOX also handled a road-related sequence featuring an actor jumping from a Winnebago before it explodes. The rv was filmed exploding while the actor was filmed in front of a 40-by-40-foot green screen and the shots composited.

The challenge of the scene lay in creating believable lighting for the composited scenes, which TOYBOX handled using Inferno to create the appropriate color, brightness and timing of the explosion as reflected on the actor.

Equipment supplier William F. White also contributed to the realism of the film with an extensive video-assist setup used to help control the puppets during production.

Muscal says a challenging post schedule led the production to Canadian shops for post and effects. About 10 to 12 weeks was allotted for post, which Muscal says is one of the tightest schedules he’s encountered on a feature, and the time loss that would have been sustained packing up the whole project and moving it to l.a. for post, together with the Canadian dollar advantage, were the principal reasons the project stayed put north of the border.