How ‘Welcome to Chechnya’ Became the First Doc Ever Shortlisted for the Visual Effects Oscar

The first documentary ever shortlisted for Best Visual Effects, “Welcome to Chechnya” beings with a disclaimer acknowledging its use of movie magic: “For their safety, people fleeing for their lives have been digitally disguised.”The film by director David France (2012’s Oscar nominee “How to Survive a Plague”) is a chronicle of the violence against the LGBT population in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Because being exposed as gay is punishable by torture or death, 23 individuals seen in the film had their faces masked in post-production with the faces of volunteers.Visual effects supervisor Ryan Laney (‘Ant-Man’) filmed the anonymous volunteers at a Brooklyn studio using an array of nine cameras to data capture their range of expressions. Laney then spent a year at an undisclosed location in California, doctoring the original footage.France and Laney spoke to TheWrap about making the historic project, days after the Oscars announced that ...

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