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" Scott Pilgrim&amp;#039;s precious little life is just like a video game. When he falls hard for Amazon.com delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the 20-something slacker (Michael Cera) discovers that if he wants to date her, he must first defeat her seven evil exes. The battles are gravity-defying, bam-bif-pow affairs, and when Scott bests his opponents\u2014sometimes with a flaming sword, sometimes with his fists\u2014they burst into coins. If he needs to get a life, Scott does so by grabbing a 1UP symbol floating above his head. He takes on every challenge with a Mortal Kombat-like flair. Or a Super Mario Brothers\u2013like flair. Or a\u2014well, you get the idea. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a love letter to classic 16-bit video games\u2014and there are so many references that VFX supervisor Frazer Churchill, who created the film&amp;#039;s in-your-face visuals, doesn&amp;#039;t even know them all. &amp;quot;People keep finding them, and I didn&amp;#039;t even know were there,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;There is a sequence where a character jumps down a pyramid, and somebody said, &amp;#039;That&amp;#039;s a Qbert reference!&amp;#039; I didn&amp;#039;t see that one.&amp;quot;  Designing Scott Pilgrim&amp;#039;s visual effects was a unique process. Most of the film&amp;#039;s game-influenced style was lifted directly from Bryan Lee O&amp;#039;Malley&amp;#039;s Scott Pilgrim comics, including fallen evil exes bursting into coins. &amp;quot;[Director Edgar Wright] was very keen to translate Bryan&amp;#039;s vision to film in a faithful way,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;So where people are bursting into coins, that&amp;#039;s Bryan&amp;#039;s idea. Old-style video games plus anime influences are two things that are present in Bryan&amp;#039;s artwork. We had to try to translate that onto film and make it photographic.&amp;quot; Taking a black-and-white comic from the page and turning it into a full-color movie took two years. Wright and brother Oscar, the film&amp;#039;s concept designer, made a storyboard of the whole movie before principal photography, which Churchill says gave everyone involved a good idea of what was needed visually. Also part of the preproduction process was a proof-of-concept shoot, where Wright shot test footage of one of the fight sequences to see if it would work. &amp;quot;We had that in the bank before we went into principal photography, so we had some of the look and methodologies worked out ahead of time,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;And having all the boards was obviously an invaluable resource as well.&amp;quot;  Shooting the VFX-heavy fight sequences required a massive amount of collaboration between departments. The actors trained heavily in martial arts and swordplay before production, and Churchill worked closely with production designer Marcus Rowland, cinematographer Bill Pope and stunt coordinator and fight choreographer Brad Allen to pull off the scenes. Then 150 people of all ages worked on the visual effects to bring Wright&amp;#039;s full vision to life. &amp;quot;You take all of your influences and put them all on board, and you have them in your mind,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;d watch the footage, and maybe one of the younger members of the team would say, &amp;#039;I saw some really cool graphics in a game\u2014why don&amp;#039;t we have a look at those?&amp;#039; And we&amp;#039;d have a look at them, and one would pop out as being a style that fit.&amp;quot;  Churchill and Wright didn&amp;#039;t play any old-school video games to get a feel for the graphics. They didn&amp;#039;t have to. &amp;quot;Edgar and I were sort of from an era of playing video games like Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;So when he comes in and says, &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s like Super Mario World,&amp;#039; we know what he&amp;#039;s talking about.&amp;quot; But filmmakers didn&amp;#039;t focus exclusively on 16-bit games; for certain sequences in the film, Churchill&amp;#039;s team also looked at footage from newer games, like Naruto, Tekken, Street Figher IV, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Sole Calibur. &amp;quot;We wanted to try and make impact graphics\u2014when people get punched\u2014that were a bit more sophisticated than the old-style video arcade games,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;Those games kind of gave us ideas for how on-screen graphics could work in a cinematic way, because lots of the modern games are very much based on cinema. They have similar camera angles and similar aesthetics to film. So it was interesting looking at modern games for ideas to incorporate into a film; it usually works the other way around.&amp;quot; Still, Churchill and Wright didn&amp;#039;t necessarily try to put specific references in the movie. &amp;quot;The film is informed by video-game style, but it&amp;#039;s not like we looked at games and thought, &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;ve got to put that in there,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s kind of like there&amp;#039;s been a general language of games that&amp;#039;s evolved over the years, and people accept that bursting into coins and getting a life is just part of playing a video game. So that&amp;#039;s included in Scott Pilgrim to create that alternate reality.&amp;quot; Another riff that plays off video game culture, but doesn&amp;#039;t come from a specific game, is Scott&amp;#039;s pee bar. &amp;quot;It indicates how much he needs to pee, and you see it go down. That doesn&amp;#039;t feature any particular game. It&amp;#039;s just a gag,&amp;quot; Churchill says.  There was one notable game Wright did mean to reference, however. &amp;quot;Edgar wanted people to get the Zelda cues,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;Legend of Zelda music play is featured twice in the film. Everyone who&amp;#039;s played those early Zelda games on Nintendo will pick up on that music.&amp;quot; The end result is a film that speaks to a very particular generation of people who played\u2014and loved\u2014very particular types of games. &amp;quot;People bursting into coins doesn&amp;#039;t seem like such a ridiculous thing. It&amp;#039;s just part of a common visual language that we all share,&amp;quot; Churchill says. &amp;quot;When you see the movie, you go, &amp;#039;I understand what this is.&amp;#039; This is a video-game reference. This is Nintendo. These blocky graphics here signify a certain era of gaming. Maybe a generation above us wouldn&amp;#039;t be so familiar with those references\u2014certainly my mum wouldn&amp;#039;t understand\u2014but for us, they seem very natural.&amp;quot;      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a6024/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-video-game-fx/>