In a recent interview with THR, Director Josh Boone and visual effects supervisor, Jake Braver, discuss how visual effects were used in The Fault in Our Stars to give a the film a social media feel.
“We can’t have them staring at phones the entire movie,” director Josh Boone tells The Hollywood Reporter of his discussion with cinematographer Ben Richardson. “So we looked at House of Cards and Sherlock, and said, ‘We should do something like this, but make it more like a Twitter-Tumblr aesthetic. That was the idea – to make it look like the fan art people had made for the movie, and feel like Tumblr.”
“The toughest part of those shots was making sure they communicated what they needed to for the story without being distracting to the scene,” says visual effects supervisor Jake Braver, who also worked onBlue Jasmine and the Cannes favorite Foxcatcher. After selecting pieces as inspiration for mockups alongside production designer Molly Hughes and meeting with Boone and producers Wyck Godfreyand Isaac Klausner, the final shots were executed by a company called Spontaneous. “We needed to find a way to see what Hazel and Gus were feeling as they read and typed the messages … I couldn’t imagine having handled the emails and texts in any other way.”