If you had asked me to guess how the Arc de Triomphe scene in John Wick 4 was made, I'd definitely guess that much of it was recreated elsewhere. Obviously they didn't film it at the Arc itself, but I don't think I'd be able to predict that the entire cobblestone road was digitally added in post, which just goes to show how well they nailed it. Watch this and be impressed:
This article from Before & Afters goes into a decent amount of details with Javier Roca, VFX supervisor at Rodeo FX, who did the sequence.
b&a: You mentioned cobblestones there. When I talked to Janelle and Jonathan, they both mentioned Rodeo’s cobblestone work. How did you approach it?
Javier Roca: I’m very passionate about cobblestones now. Selling the ground was very important. You’re constantly looking at it from so many different angles with so many different lights that are affecting it. Some areas are wet and some areas they wanted to keep as dry patches. We were going through leaving tire marks, too. It was also important what time of year it was, in terms of what kinds of leaves needed to be around, if it was Fall. How clean did it need to be?
We ended up leaving it as clean as possible and just focusing on providing as much detail as possible, especially for close-ups. I would say that the cobblestones are the most important assets that we built and the one that we put the most amount of work into.
I am quickly turning into one of those guys who slams the table whenever someone just shits on "CGI in films" to say "no, you hate bad CGI in films." When stuff like this is executed well, with the proper mix of real footage and comped or rendered imagery, then things click. Compare this to the final scene of the film, where that sunset is just... woof. Pretty rough.
[You can read the whole article here, I think it's worth it!]