Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Employed A Full-Time Animator To Render Fish Poop
If you've watched "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" several times to pick up on all of its little details, there is one you may have missed. Was it a costume that was referencing an obscure comic book issue? Nope. Perhaps there was something written in Wakandan somewhere that gives us a clue to the next film? No way. Is it the fact that Namor and friends are swimming in a very large toilet bowl? If you guessed that, some VFX people are going to be very happy.
See those little bits of light floating in the water around Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) in the picture above? Friends, that is fish poop, and the actual ocean is full of it. I apologize if this makes you think twice before swimming at the beach, but yes, you might as well be splashing around in the sewer when you hit the ocean waves. We usually don't think about it (or maybe we block it out), but when you're creating an environment from scratch, you have to consider these things.
In a ComicBook.com interview, Wētā VFX supervisor Chris White speaks about why creating and lighting fish poop correctly was important. Odd as that sentence sounds, it's true. Though well-lit marine waste is likely not the first thing you pick up on as you watch the "Black Panther" sequel, you might have subconsciously noticed its absence. No one is going to go on a Twitter rant asking why we were denied our shark turds in a film (at least, I don't think so), but the human eye can tell when something is "off" or unrealistic.
'Marine snow' just sounds less icky
White explains that the fish waste is also called marine snow, and yes, the production had a fish poop chart:
"If you want to talk about the minutiae, we were literally discussing the shape of the fish poop that makes up all of the stuff that's floating around, and how we need to make sure that shape is correct because when the lighters light it and it's not the right shape, it doesn't look like underwater. We have a chart of which someone has modeled of the different shapes of poop that fish excrete, and then made millions of it that floats around them."
If "marine snow" sounds too nice for you, it's also called "ocean dandruff." I didn't think I'd be writing about fish crap today, but here we are. Like the person who created all the bird poop in Númenor for "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," someone was responsible for all the floating bits in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever." White explains:
"We had someone who was full time just doing that marine snow. What he did the entire film, was for every shot, making sure that it picked up with right motion and had the right character, and the density was correct, and it had the underwater current, and he got notes back on it as well on how to make it better."
I really want to see that person's resumé now. It probably says, "marine snow creator" or something pleasant, but in my head canon, it's "crustacean crap creator" or "ocean poop soup maven" or something. Ah, Hollywood: A place where dreams come true!
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is currently in theaters.