Nope's rampaging chimpanzee, Gordy, is just as terrifying in human form in a behind-the-scenes look at Jordan Peele's latest horror film. Peele's third directorial effort after Get Out and Us, Nope follows horse-wrangling siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood (played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer), who attempt to capture video evidence of an unidentified flying object hovering over their ranch. After debuting in theaters earlier this summer, Nope has garnered positive reactions from critics and audiences alike on its way to grossing over $149 million worldwide.

While Kaluuya and Palmer's characters are the main focus, Nope also features a memorable subplot involving Gordy the Chimp. In the film, Ricky "Jupe" Park (played by Steven Yeun) is a former child actor turned theme park owner who wants to buy the Haywood Ranch. In 1998, while Jupe is filming an episode of the sitcom Gordy’s Home, the titular chimp actor has a violent outburst on set, killing and maiming many of his human co-stars while Jupe hides under a table and watches. Afterward, Gordy finds him, and the two have a strange connection before Gordy is abruptly slain by police.

Related: 1 Hidden Jupe Easter Egg Foreshadowed Nope’s Twist Ending

During a discussion with befores & afters, Nope's visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron talks about how the film's alien entity, dubbed Jean Jacket, and the CG chimpanzee were created on-screen. The interview is accompanied by a number of behind-the-scenes images, one of them revealing Terry Notary, the actor who played Gordy, who looks just as terrifying in human form. Check the BTS images below:

To bring Gordy to life in Nope, Rocheron explains that they began by building an oversized set in which every prop was 30 percent larger than normal size. This way, Notary could interact with the objects on set and everything would appear to be at chimp scale. When it came time to actually film the scene, they used a total of seven witness cameras and employed "faux-cap,” a variation of a traditional motion capture setup. This allowed Notary to deliver a raw performance in the moment, and VFX was added later to create the terrifying chimpanzee audiences know as Gordy.

These BTS images from Nope provide an interesting window into the complex process that was used to bring Gordy to life. A lot of the credit goes to the actor, Notary, a noted mocap performer who previously played a chimpanzee in the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy. However, Gordy also wouldn't have been possible without Rocheron and his team of VFX artists. While Nope is primarily a UFO movie, the Gordy’s Home rampage seems to have been the standout sequence for many. Learning how it all came together only makes the scenes more impressive, though it likely doesn't do much to diminish the overall terror that comes from watching it.

Source: befores & afters