Interview: Visual Effects Supervisor Frank Petzold on the Blending of What is Real and What is VFX in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’

One of the more hidden elements of All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) because of the way it seamlessly blends with in-camera cinematography is the Visual Effects. Although the production effort strived to achieve significant amounts of visual detail on set, many of the film’s war elements had to also be incorporated in post-production.

Awards Radar spoke with ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Visual Effects Supervisor Frank Petzold about his existing collaboration with Director Edward Berger and the planning behind what would be recorded in camera vs. in visual effects post-production. Petzold discusses how he draws on his experience with Tippett Studio to inspire the atmosphere of the WWI setting and treating the tanks as a ‘creature’ to introduce to both the characters and the audience. He describes the tank scene here:

“There’s of course the sequence that everybody remembers when the tanks go over Paul, there’s one shot of Paul looking up when the tank rolls over and that was the very few first film footage pieces that I found from World War I. There was one shot where somebody filmed that [and] I showed it to Edward and he was calling me back, he’s like ‘Can we do this shit please?’ It’s one of those shots where on the one hand you’re very proud…at the same time it’s very graphic and a horrific image so you don’t want to talk about it.”