Creating Realistic Womb FX For LILLY LIVES ALONE
Go behind the scenes with a mixture of liquids and miniatures to make magic on an independent budget.
Lilly Lives Alone is the story of a struggling mother on the tenth anniversary of her daughter’s death. Tucked away in her small rural home, she experiences a series of hauntings throughout a drug-fueled night. As the ghosts close in and her world becomes more fractured, Lilly will have to come to terms with her greatest fear.
Throughout the film, Lilly experiences a rapidly forming pregnancy. This begins as cell division and quickly becomes a visibly distended abdomen. Our FX artist Carlo Mery designed a practical rig for the outward transformation while on location. For the internal effect, I turned to a mix of liquids and in-studio miniatures.
To feel gritty and realistic, I knew that these shots had to have a certain level of physicality to them – they needed to have weight and dimension. I’ve always preferred practical effects whenever possible, so I began researching and experimenting with a range of materials and set up shop at Framework, a shooting stage in Portland.
For the cellular division, I used a macro lens to focus closely on a mixture of dish soap, oils, and paint in a baking dish. I then prompted various reactions by mixing the elements with an eye dropper. This created surreal effects that played out perfectly for our “cellular mitosis” look. We used a pulsating box fan to give the cells some life and movement.
