DNEG served as lead visual effects vendor on Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, delivering 510 shots across 15 sequences under VFX supervisor Sameer Malik and executive producer Philipp Wolf. What makes the work stand out is how little of it is meant to be noticed — nearly the whole film is built around invisible effects that support the story rather than show off.
The title structure itself, the glass-domed Onion, didn’t exist anywhere. DNEG built it in CG from concept art and on-set references, then had to make sure it read as a believable piece of architecture married to the rest of Miles Bron’s villa. The Greek island setting around it — both above and below the waterline — was extended and enhanced the same way, using photogrammetry and LiDAR scans the production team captured on location to keep everything grounded in something real.
Beyond the headline set pieces, the team handled a long list of smaller invisible fixes: a fully CG recreation of Miles’ Porsche Spyder for driving shots, the Alpha Cosmos aerospace factory, window and corridor extensions on several interior sets, and the deceptively tricky autostereogram effect on the film’s puzzle box. DNEG even had a hand in a few of the movie’s visual easter eggs, including the glass statues rising out of the water.
Several other studios contributed to the film alongside DNEG, including Weta FX, Outpost VFX, Lola Visual Effects, Buf, Mackevision, and Nineteen Twenty, working under production VFX supervisor Giles Harding. It’s a good reminder that some of the best visual effects work in a film is the kind you’re not supposed to notice at all.
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