Josh and Jake Braver talk Visual Effects with THR

The Hollywood Reporter chats with director, Josh Boone, and VFX supervisor, Jake Braver, on the texting/emailing effects, added cannulas, and more.

On Gus and Hazel's unique visual texting: 

Josh: We can't have them staring at phones the entire movie. 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.

Jake: ...We needed to find a way to see what Hazel and Gus were feeling as they read and typed the messages. This scene was a lot of fun, because it's a whole conversation between Hazel and Gus where there is no dialogue, aside from the messages that are displayed onscreen.

Jake on the film's VFX: 

There are almost 350 VFX shots in the movie, and on a movie like this, it's my job to make sure they are invisible. Hopefully, those moments feel organic enough that no one is thinking "How did they do that?"

Jake on the added cannula: 

While editing, Josh and his editor Robb Sullivan found this amazing close-up of Shailene from later in the scene when she had taken off her cannula, and she is looking at Gus, but they wanted to use it right at the beginning of the scene. So we added a computer-generated cannula -- it was a bit tricky to add, only because it was a close-up of Shai's face, and the cuts right before it and after it were of her with the real cannula, so it had match perfectly. Hopefully, it's seamless. 

Definitely seamless, Jake!

Please be sure to check out the rest of this great in-depth interview (there are some spoilers) at the source.