Episode 15: Making the Impossible Possible – The Visual Effects of The Walk

Guest: Kevin Baillie Even a death-defying high-wire artist has to start somewhere. As a boy, Philippe Petit dreamt of performing daring feats for dazzled crowds. As an adult, his life’s ambition came true when on August 7, 1974, he successfully walked between the Twin Towers, 110 floors up with no harness or net! Our guest Kevin Baillie’s journey also reads much like a film script. By the age of seven, after being inspired by films like Back to the Future, he had already chosen his career path and was best friends with Ryan Tudhope, with whom he would later co-found the visual effects studio Atomic Fiction. With his dream, much determinacy and hard work, Baillie was working at Skywalker Ranch at just 18 years old! Flash forward; Baillie is the Visual Effects Supervisor on The Walk, and along with the team at Atomic Fiction, worked with legendary director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Flight) to bring Petit’s seemingly impossible stunt to life in The Walk. In this highly anticipated film staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it is the absolutely stunning visuals that make this vertigo-inducing journey so believable, a feat that meant recreating the twin towers and New York in the 70s. Baillie has worked with Zemeckis on multiple films. Remember the gut-wrenching plane crash in Flight? That was his work! His resume also includes work on Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, Hellboy, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Sin CIty and Star Trek Into Darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices