By OLIVER WEBBImages courtesy of Sony Pictures.Fly Me to the Moon explores the relationship between marketing executive Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) and NASA official Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) as he makes preparations for NASAs historic Apollo 11 moon landing during the tumultuous 1960s Space Race between the United States and Soviet Union. As the public loses interest in the race, Jones must reignite public excitement around NASA and the space program.Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) and Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) in Fly Me to the Moon. The film is not a space movie, but a love story focusing on the people on the ground. (Photo: Dan McFadden)Framestore led the asset team on [the Saturn V rocket], and the detail that they put into that model is something Ill geek out on forever. I also just want to give credit to our in-house team because they were paramount in determining the creative look of a lot of stuff and finding the right research and stock footage to make sure it worked. Then cutting in the stock footage and using that as previs to then basically do a CG version of it later.Sean Devereaux, Visual Effects SupervisorSean Devereaux served as Visual Effects Supervisor on the Apple Studios/Sony film, joining the project as post-production commenced in March 2023, with production wrapping a year later. Harry Jierjian, the Editor, was editing throughout production and had a really good assembly, so we were ready to work immediately, Devereaux states. Director Greg Berlanti likes to see stuff pretty far along before some of the cuts, so we brought on three in-house compositors who absolutely saved our butts and were a huge creative part of the show, not just to get temps out, but to really help us develop the look of things.Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) and Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson). Creative references included 1960s Space Race documentaries and recent films such as First Man. (Photo: Dan McFadden)When it came to creative references, the team looked at the available Space Race documentaries as well as recent films such as First Man. We watched all the films, Devereaux notes. We didnt avoid watching them, but we certainly didnt want to mimic them. It would be impossible for us to not look at films that were so well researched. We looked at the Apollo 11 documentary and licensed some of the footage that came from that documentary. We had a full-time archivist, and we looked through every frame of film that was available to us, which was a lot. A self-proclaimed Space Race geek himself, Devereaux enjoyed watching everything he could get his hands on, which included hundreds of hours of material. Some things I had never seen before, he admits. We did change some shot designs if they were too similar to, say, First Man and make it our own, even if it wasnt intentionally duplicated.The 1960s Space Race between the U.S. and Soviet Union serves as the backdrop of the film. While the Space Race isnt the central premise, effects were essential to project realism and heighten the drama. Invisible VFX were required for period corrections. (Photo: Dan McFadden)Director Greg Berlanti likes to see stuff pretty far along before some of the cuts, so we brought on three in-house compositors who absolutely saved our butts and were a huge creative part of the show, not just to get temps out, but to really help us develop the look of things.Sean Devereaux, Visual Effects SupervisorDevereaux and his team worked closely with NASA, who were constantly involved with the project. We used a lot of stock footage from NASA, but we also had CG shots that had to feel like they were stock footage. At that point in time, it was the most photographed event in history, so we have dozens of hours of footage. Greg really wanted it to feel authentic. Its not really about space, its about the love story. So, he wanted the story to be about the people on the ground, not about whats happening in space. In order to do that we really had to nail the realism, so at no point are you taken away from the story. Even if you have a really stunning visual effect shot, it was visual effects no matter how real it looks. So, we really tried hard to place our cameras where they could only be placed. For example, the Apollo 11 moon landing only had a single camera position, but with Apollo missions 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, they had a lot more camera placements, so we did use stock footage and match-mimicked stock footage with CG just to give the audience more of a sense of the story. Technically, a lot of the cameras werent there until the later missions, but we took some creative liberty there.Apollo 11 astronauts rehearse for a moonwalk on a moon set, which served as a backup just in case the mission failed, because failure was not an option for NASA in Fly Me to the Moon. There were about 1,000 visual effects shots required for the film, with work split up between Framestore, RISE, Zero VFX, Nexodus and Ingenuity Studios. (Photo: Dan McFadden)Berlanti was adamant that he didnt want the effects to be showy in any shape or form as he felt concerned this would take away from the central premise of the film. I storyboarded a launch sequence that followed the rules and only put cameras where NASA put cameras, but once Greg saw it, he said it looked too prepared for what we were doing, Devereaux explains. Greg felt that was too much and was taking away from the people on the ground by showing how majestic this launch could be. We still want to obviously show the scale of what happened, which is massive. The Saturn V rocket is still the most powerful machine ever built by man, so we wanted to show that power. We got to do it in some longer shots that we let sit, rather than doing cutaways to rockets going off. That was the biggest visual language, and Greg needed to make sure that our stuff was not at all discernible from the stock footage. This includes crowd shots, rocket launches, moon landings and all the period corrections.[T]he Apollo 11 moon landing only had a single camera position, but with Apollo missions 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, they had a lot more camera placements, so we did use stock footage and match-mimicked stock footage with CG just to give the audience more of a sense of the story. Technically, a lot of the cameras werent there until the later missions, but we took some creative liberty there.Sean Devereaux, Visual Effects SupervisorThe moon set. The VFX team studied the Apollo 11 documentary and licensed some of the footage that came from that documentary. They also had a full-time archivist and combed through every frame of available footage.Although Devereaux knew hed be facing a daunting challenge, he was excited to get started on the project and already had a few ideas in mind in terms of what he wanted to achieve. Greg knew the movie, and he won that battle quickly, but initially, my scope was to go bigger with this. Very few people on this planet will be able to tell what is stock footage and what are our CG shots. The approach to this project is different because its so real, so Im not going to change what is there, but thats my job to give the director options and understand their vision as quickly as I can. The creative in this wasnt like other movies where you have a completely blank slate to work with, we had very clear elements and pieces we had to work with. It was a more technical than creative approach because we really did go down and figure out and mimic all the things that NASA had previously done, so when you are watching the film you cant tell that it was visual effects.Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) and Ruby Martin (Anna Garcia).Visual Effects Supervisor Sean Devereaux and his team worked closely with NASA, who was constantly involved with the project to ensure authenticity.There were just over 1,000 visual effects shots required for the film. The work was split up between five vendors Framestore, RISE, Zero VFX, Nexodus and Ingenuity Studios who were all brought on to provide their unique skillsets required for the film. There was a variety of work that included the moon, rocket launches, stars in the sky and a lot of period fixes and crowd work. Theres also a lot of CG cars in this because there were only so many cars we could get from 1969 that looked brand new. There are thousands of CG cars in this movie that was a really fun challenge. Most of my work is invisible, and as I said before, its hard to see what we did. This movie fits squarely into that category, which I honestly love. I want the story to be highlighted and not show off effects.The astronauts in Fly Me to the Moon. Director Greg Berlanti needed all the imagery shot for the film seamlessly blended with the stock footage, including crowd shots, rocket launches, moon landings and all period corrections.Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) and Ruby Martin (Anna Garcia), The actual Apollo 11 moon landing only had a single camera position while other Apollo missions had more camera placements. Taking some creative liberty, stock footage and newly-minted stock footage with CG was used to give the audience more of a sense of the story.The entire control room set was built on a gimbal, allowing production to shake the set on lift-off of the giant rocket. VFX was tied into the shaking to make the moment feel as dramatic as possible.NASA headquarters in Fly Me to the Moon. There are many CG cars in the film due to the limited availability of brand-new-looking cars from 1969.Director Greg Berlanti wanted to show the massive scale and power of the Saturn V rocket, but he felt that by showing how majestic the moon launch could be would take away from story of the people on the ground. Longer shots rather than cutaways were used to show the power of the launch rocket going off.A lot of stock footage from NASA was used, so the CG shots had to feel like they were stock footage to ensure that few people would be able to tell the difference. Director Greg Berlanti didnt want the effects to be too attention-grabbing that they distracted from the focus of the film.There was a variety of work that included the moon, rocket launches, stars in the sky and a lot of period fixes and crowd work. Theres also a lot of CG cars in this because there were only so many cars we could get from 1969 that looked brand new. There are thousands of CG cars in this movie that was a really fun challenge. Most of my work is invisible, and as I said before, its hard to see what we did. This movie fits squarely into that category, which I honestly love. I want the story to be highlighted and not show off effects.Sean Devereaux, Visual Effects SupervisorOne of the most challenging aspects of the project for Devereaux and his team involved the Apollo 10 launch. Its actually a side scene and not really a focus of the story of the film, he explains. Its not a huge story point and its barely mentioned in the movie, but its the first time Scarlett Johanssons character really understands the weight and power of what she is involved with. Shes never seen a launch before, and its a nighttime launch. We had no stock footage of it, so we did do a lot of CG there. We had a balance between Dariusz Wolskis cinematography that was lit dark, but also being able to backlight Scarlett from rockets that shes looking at. The entire control room set was built on a gimbal, so they shook the set, and we had to just tie our visual effects into that and make it feel as real as that.VFX was deployed to put wings under the romance between Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) and Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) in Fly Me to the Moon.Concludes Devereaux: Getting to create a Saturn V rocket was probably the most enjoyable part of the project. It still blows my mind that we put people on a 33-story building and sent it into space. It does not cease to amaze me the more I learn about it. Framestore led the asset team on it, and the detail that they put into that model is something Ill geek out on forever. I also just want to give credit to our in-house team because they were paramount in determining the creative look of a lot of stuff and finding the right research and stock footage to make sure it worked. Then cutting in the stock footage and using that as previs to then basically do a CG version of it later. They were a huge asset, and they were there from before I was until the very end. They went from temp work through to final shots.

By TREVOR HOGGEstablished in 1966, the Ultraman franchise remains alive and well in its ongoing battle between extraterrestrial supernatural beings and kaiju, with ILM entering into the cosmic fray to make a career ambition for American animator/director Shannon Tindle a reality for him and Netflix. The concept gets turned on its head for Ultraman: Rising as a baseball phenomenon struggling to accept and execute the responsibilities of Ultraman becomes the guardian of a baby kaiju hunted by an unscrupulous government agency. Having previously worked on Lost Ollie for Tindle, where a digitally-animated toy rabbit had to be integrated into live-action plates, Visual Effects Supervisor Hayden Jones found himself in the middle of a CG animation feature narratively driven by some serious parental angst.The way that Art Director Sunmin Inn depicted the moon and stars in the concept art resembled a crib mobile, which was retained for the final image.The toughest challenge on Ultraman: Rising was being true to the artwork created by Production Designer Marcos Mateu Mestre and Art Director Sunmin Inn, which had a beautiful style that merged manga and anime techniques. We have to be able to light our characters in any way possible but still keep the look. What we have to do is play off of shape, form, shader design and baked-in textures. We have a lot of filtration on the image that creates this slightly marker-pen watercolor feel. Its about balancing all of these things together to find something that feels like the original artwork but gives you the flexibility to introduce elements of cinematography and animation.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMAfter a 13-year-long lull. ILM has gotten back into feature animation with Transformers One and Ultraman: Rising. Because so many live-action films now are becoming so large, and having such a large amount of environment and character work being brought in, theyre almost getting to the stage where the pipeline has to deal with them like animated features, notes Jones, who partnered with ILM facilities in London, Vancouver and Singapore. On an animated feature, youre obviously building the whole world, so theres the sheer volume of objects that you have to build, especially when its stylizing the world as well because you cant take objects off the shelf. Then there is the complexity of having the world built, bringing the camera in and layering in animation. There are so many stages, and youre in control of everything. Its a huge logistical challenge to make a feature animation.When Ken Sato starts to connect with Emi through baseball was one of the first scenes that demonstrated to ILM that the animation style was working.Growing up in the U.K., Jones was not familiar with Ultraman, so Tindle provided DVDs of the original animated series to familiarize him with the franchise. I remember watching them and realizing the cultural importance of Ultraman. We had a responsibility to make the Japanese culture feel as authentic as possible. We had a cultural committee who was onboard from the beginning to help us get the details right. There were some amazing things like the way Ken and Ami break apart their chopsticks and pick up the food; every single detail has gone through multiple layers of people to make sure thats exactly the way it would happen in Japan. Tokyo is a character in its own right. Were creating a stylized version of Tokyo that is not photoreal but has Tokyo Tower, Tonkatsu Tonki is a real restaurant where you can eat the best tonkatsu in Tokyo, and the bookstore that Emi walks up to and shatters all of the windows really exists in Yokohama.Tiny details were worked into the glowing eyes of Ultraman to indicate his emotional state and the direction of his gaze.The toughest challenge on Ultraman: Rising was being true to the artwork created by Production Designer Marcos Mateu Mestre and Art Director Sunmin Inn, which had a beautiful style that merged manga and anime techniques, Jones states. If you look at the illustration, the lighting is baked in to perfection for that one frame. We dont have the luxury of that when creating a movie. We have to be able to light our characters in any way possible but still keep the look. What we have to do is play off of shape, form, shader design and baked-in textures. We have a lot of filtration on the image that creates this slightly marker-pen watercolor feel. Its about balancing all of these things together to find something that feels like the original artwork but gives you the flexibility to introduce elements of cinematography and animation.Even though Tokyo is stylized, if one looks carefully, actual landmarks were incorporated into the urban layout.There were some amazing [authentic] things like the way Ken and Ami break apart their chopsticks and pick up the food; every single detail has gone through multiple layers of people to make sure thats exactly the way it would happen in Japan. Were creating a stylized version of Tokyo that is not photoreal but has Tokyo Tower, Tonkatsu Tonki is a real restaurant where you can eat the best tonkatsu in Tokyo, and the bookstore that Emi walks up to and shatters all of the windows really exists in Yokohama.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMA Gigantron hatchling known as Emi gives competition to Grogu when it comes to infantile cuteness. There is a great scene when Ultraman keeps changing between Ultraman and Ken to make Emi realize hes not a threat, Jones describes. Emi goes through a change of personality almost every second, and that actually came from Shannon showing me photos of his daughter literally taken over the space of a minute, and you can see that shes curious, happy and a massive tantrum all in quick succession. An unexpected difficulty was the armor suit worn by Ultraman. We couldnt shade Ultramans suit with a metal shader and expect it to feel like an illustration. We came up with layers of texture work so we could smear the edges so they feel more like a marker-pen reflection.Hair was another important element to get right. The hair is such an intrinsic part of the character, especially for Ken and Ami, Jones remarks. We didnt want it to feel like we were simulating every strand. The hair pieces needed to feel blocky and as sculpted forms that were part of the character design, but then taking that and making it feel like an illustrative version of hair. Its lots of unseen, helping texture passes where we take highlights and smear them down the forms of the hair. It makes you feel there are hair strands, but its actually smearing highlights that creates this beautiful graphic sense rather than a sense of realism.A lot of design work went into the various Spacium Beams to reflect the characters of Ultraman, Emi and Gigantron.Sunglasses are a motif for the protagonist Ken Sato and his antagonist Dr. Onda. Ken Satos sunglasses were a dream! Jones laughs. We placed stylized reflections in the sunglasses in exactly the same way between Ken Sato and Dr. Onda, but the character design for Dr. Onda makes the sunglasses feel quite threatening whereas Kens looks cool. The scene where Ken is having his interview with Ami Wakita and he is leaning back and then forward into the light; we were developing that as one of our look-of-picture sequences. One of our artists came up with the idea of doing a graphic wipe across the lenses. Version one is what you see because it looked so good.Getting the groom right for Ken Sato required modular pieces and smeared highlights to create the impression of strands of hair.There is a great scene when Ultraman keeps changing between Ultraman and Ken to make Emi realize hes not a threat. Emi goes through a change of personality almost every second, and that actually came from [director] Shannon [Tindle] showing me photos of his daughter literally taken over the space of a minute, and you can see that shes curious, happy and a massive tantrum all in quick succession.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMDramatic moments include the parental killing by the Kaiju Defense Force leading to the hatching of the egg containing Emi. Shannon had had this idea for an Ultraman movie 24 years ago, and that death scene was one of the few that has stuck through all of the different versions of Ultraman: Rising, Jones reveals. We saw the storyboards that John Aoshima [co-director] made and were excited because of the fight outside of the baseball stadium and sky chase, not only for the performance but also visually. You have to calm everything down. Its the calmness in the scene that allows subtle animation to play out. We created this bioluminescence look to Gigantron so as she gets angry all of these bioluminescence veins appear across her wings and down her back. It was designed to be aggressive in bioluminescence, but we actually realized what we wanted was to convey this heartbeat that is gradually slowing to the moment where she dies.When Ultraman witnesses the hatching of Emi, it was important to evoke the sense of wonder that a father has when looking at his daughter for the first time. When we saw the concept art from, Sunmin Inn, the Art Director, had created this beautiful piece of Ultraman looking at Emi in the ocean, and the moon and stars were almost hanging on wires above, Jones recalls. I remember saying, This is so beautiful. Why dont we use that as the background? Lets separate the elements out, hang them dimensionally and recreate that painting. Over 50% of that shot is actually Sunmins painting.Footage from actual toddlers of the production team were referenced when devising how Emi would walk and move.Missiles destroy the home of Ken Sato in a scene that resembles the Malibu mansion attack in Iron Man 3. One of the joys of Ultraman: Rising has been rethinking how we do effects work to make the effects feel stylized in this stylized world, Jones explains. For that, I was collecting anime and manga references for months to see how stylized we could push explosions, rocket trails, water and smoke. Underneath all of our effects there is an animation element so we can art direct. When the house explodes, we created modular pieces of explosion that we could almost art direct and create shapes to give a stylized form to everything. There is some great work on the rocket trails, which have little smears, streaks and ink lines that give you the sense of motion.To create an illustrative quality, a Copic maker aesthetic was incorporated into the animation style.Fatally damaged during the home attack is the spherical personal supercomputer assistant to Ken Sato known as Mina. We gave Mina color coding so when she gets angry her eye strip goes red and looks threatening. Mina tilts her head down and tells off Ken at one stage, Jones states. Its amazing how much character you can get into something that is essentially a floating sphere. Her death scene is traumatizing. We built this variant where she has been impacted by the explosion and is slowly losing consciousness. I had the effects team simulate little sparks. As the scene progresses and she slows down, the sparks get fewer so its like a heartbeat that is slowing down.Laser beams are part of the persona of the kaiju and Ultraman. We knew that at the end of the movie we were going to have not only Ultraman using the Spacium Beam but also Gigantron and Emi blasting at the same time, Jones notes. We needed to differentiate all of these different styles of beams against each other. Obviously, we had to pay homage to traditional Ultraman Spacium Beams. It was looking at what made the Spacium Beam so iconic in the first place and bringing that into our style. But with Gigantron and Emi we had to make sure that they felt related.Baked-in textures and filtration were key components in emulating what an illustrator would do.Whether we could animate Ultramans eyes was a big question [early on] because in most of the Ultraman series his eyes are completely static. Because Ken is so often in his Ultraman form and has to carry quite a lot comedic and moving moments, we started testing how to give him eye movement. Even though it looks traditionally like Ultraman, actually lots of small details went into those eyes to connect with the character.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMUltraman: Rising was one of the first films at Netflix to be HDR. All the way through the process, whenever we were doing any lighting or compositing, we were always looking at it in HDR, Jones states. We had so much more latitude in exposure and color because you can not only get brighter but way more saturated in HDR imagery. The color palette is huge in this film. There are great moments in the final battle where the sky almost goes completely purple, but with a bolt of lightning its bright. Getting that real dynamism in the lighting and grade was helpful by using the HDR pipeline.Facial movement is not something that can be relied upon for Ultraman. We dont have eyebrows and his mouth is completely static, so its a huge challenge for the animators to bring a character to life when theres so little to animate, Jones remarks. Whether we could animate Ultramans eyes was a big question [early on] because in most of the Ultraman series his eyes are completely static. Because Ken is so often in his Ultraman form and has to carry quite a lot comedic and moving moments, we started testing how to give him eye movement. Even though it looks traditionally like Ultraman, actually lots of small details went into those eyes to connect with the character.Ultraman: Rising marks the return of ILM to feature animation after Rango, which was released in 2011.Ultraman battles a mechanical Gigantron sent to trick Emi into revealing the whereabouts of Kaiju Island.A cool visual element were the sunglasses worn by Ken Sato, which provided the opportunity to have graphic wipes across the lenses.The art department at Netflix designed the gunships. I hope that we get toys of them because I want to own one! Jones chuckles. The gunships we were playing into Osprey planes and helicopters in the way that they move. One of the big challenges was when you had vehicles that could never exist in the real world. The Destroyer at the end is probably the most iconic of all of the vehicles. Luckily, our Layout Supervisor, Kyle Winkelman, had done many Transformers movies, and he had some great ideas about how to break the ship apart, pull it around and create a sense that it transforms in midair, has huge jets that are slowing its descent and switch off at the last minute, and lands with a huge eruption of water. Kyle spent a day or two blocking out these ideas, and I remember seeing them with Shannon for the first time and everyones faces lit up and said, Oh, yeah. Thats our bad guy.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Peacock TV.Productions of an epic scale are a signature of Roland Emmerich, who shifts his focus from lunar destruction to a time when the Roman Empire appeased the disenchanted masses with blood sports that made gladiators famous and their patrons richer. Hitching a ride on the chariot through the 10 episodes of Peacocks Those About to Die is Peter Travers, Emmerichs go-to visual effects expert since Midway.Skies proved to be difficult because the clouds had to have the ability to move during takes and not become static.There is a point in the story where they have to collect some sulfur from Mount Vesuvius inside of the original caldera. We scouted a place at Vesuvius with a drone camera and flew the [Sony] Venice 2 into a lava flow that was there from the original eruption in 79 AD. We did 360s. That footage we brought back processed because the wall at Cinecitt Studios is eight meters tall by approximately 51 meters in circumference. We had pumice rocks onstage and had to build a diorama of the environment of Vesuvius, which was based on the tiles that we happened to get under perfect weather conditions. Then we did some augmentation to the plates.Peter Travers, Visual Effects SupervisorThis was an incredibly complicated show mainly because of virtual production, Travers notes. One of the lucky things was that we had an idea of what Rome looked like, but even then the scenes were complex. We had 900 visual effects shots at the end, but over 1,800 shots that were accomplished in virtual production without touching them. It was a 2:1 ratio of shots that were fully realized on the virtual production stage. The work was divided between DNEG and Dream Machine FX. Dream Machine FX handled the wide aerials of Rome and compositing shots. DNEG did all of the heavy lifting for Circus Maximus and the Colosseum. You can have vendor blow on a show like this because the data set is so massive. If we had too many vendors it would have been a mess because how do you share Rome across everybody? The most we could have was two, Travers says.Practical and digital horses were integrated with each other.Thirty-five unique environments were divided between what could be built on set and what had to be extended digitally. There is the footage that we shot that was primarily put on the wall, Travers explains. We had the weird subset of rendering out CG that was put out onto the wall that was pre-rendered. But the vast majority of it was Unreal Engine, so it had to be built and lightweight enough that we could get a 24 fps playback because we did do camera tracking on the show. Its getting the breadth of environments ready to go and all that it entails. There are a number of environments that are almost purely 2D even though we actually displayed them in Unreal Engine. There is a point in the story where they have to collect some sulfur from Mount Vesuvius inside of the original caldera. We scouted a place at Vesuvius with a drone camera and flew the [Sony] Venice 2 into a lava flow that was there from the original eruption in 79 AD. We did 360s. That footage we brought back processed because the wall at Cinecitt Studios is eight meters tall by approximately 51 meters in circumference. We had pumice rocks onstage and had to build a diorama of the environment of Vesuvius, which was based on the tiles that we happened to get under perfect weather conditions. Then we did some augmentation to the plates. The pixel resolution of the wall is 16K and is approximately a semicircle. If we had to build 360 dioramas, those were 32K, then they have to playback at 24 fps playback. We gen-locked it to the camera so youre right facing. That was an enormous undertaking. We had just enough resolution to maximize the wall but not too much that we couldnt achieve playback.The chariot racing with the actors was done as a poor mans process.The different stages of construction of the Colosseum happens in four episodes.One of the things Visual Effects Supervisor Peter Travers and his team discovered was that four horses charging at full gallop in one chariot results in a mess lacking all precision, with the horses bumping into each other and fighting.A lot of times, what we were able to do in order to creep into that daylight effect is that the wall was as bright as it could be. We put practical lights to simulate the sun and used the low-light capability of the Venice 2 to boost up the contrast and light intensity from our fake sun to get much closer to sunlight. Can you do noon sunlight on a virtual production stage? Not yet. But we crept in there. [Director] Roland Emmerich wanted to live in magic hour, so the vast majority of our scenes were in the desired lighting conditions.Peter Travers, Visual Effects SupervisorA major asset was the Venice 2 camera with its low-light sensitivity. Whenever you walk onstage the set is always brighter than whats on camera, Travers observes. This is the opposite. We would go on set and its dark. You cant see anything. Then you look through the monitor and go, Its there. A lot of times, what we were able to do in order to creep into that daylight effect is that the wall was as bright as it could be. We put practical lights to simulate the sun and used the low-light capability of the Venice 2 to boost up the contrast and light intensity from our fake sun to get much closer to sunlight. Can you do noon sunlight on a virtual production stage? Not yet. But we crept in there. Roland Emmerich wanted to live in magic hour, so the vast majority of our scenes were in the desired lighting conditions. It was rare that we would be shooting in noon sunlight anyway.Over 1,800 shots that were accomplished in virtual production without having to be augmented later in post-production.All of the departments were involved with the wall content, including costumes. The crowd shots that on the wall were cards, so [they became] pre-rendered people, Travers states. But even for those pre-rendered people, like the plebeians in crowds for Circus Maximus, we had to get those from the costume department way early on in pre-production and render them out and put them in. Circus Maximus and all of these other environments like the Colosseum were done in Unreal Engine with a 3D environment because we were using camera tracking. Lessons were learned along the way. The ongoing joke on set was, Were going to get really good at this on the last day of shooting! The first day of shooting was tough because we were trying to figure out where does the set stop and where does the Unreal Engine set begin. What we discovered [is that could be achieved by] layering of the practical set on the rotating stage and also having a layering even within the Unreal Engine environment. There are a lot of scenes, in particular Leptis Magna, where the slaves in North Africa are picked up and shipped off to Rome. The original background plates were shot in Morocco. We brought those plates in and started to build a 3D environment. We had to figure out with our Production Designer Johannes Muecke what kinds of cages because were going to have to build those virtually. We had a real giraffe on the virtual production stage, and behind it we needed to have a CG giraffe. We had to get started building the CG giraffe and put that in.Circus Maximus and all of these other environments like the Colosseum were done in Unreal Engine with a 3D environment because we were using camera tracking. The ongoing joke on set was, Were going to get really good at this on the last day of shooting! The first day of shooting was tough because we were trying to figure out where does the set stop and where does the Unreal Engine set begin. What we discovered [is that could be achieved by] layering of the practical set on the rotating stage and also having a layering even within the Unreal Engine environment.Peter Travers, Visual Effects SupervisorA number of environments are almost purely 2D even though they are actually displayed in Unreal Engine.Quick turn around is the biggest advantage of a rotating stage. Every show that you do, you have two people talking, and now you have to shoot it from this way, Travers remarks. It took a minute or two to completely rotate the stage 180. All of our sets worked in a 360 fashion. Then, in Unreal Engine we would look [at it] the other way and lock it in. By the end, we were turning around just as fast if we were on a practical set. Kit-bashing was not enough for the major environment build of Rome, so a massive Roman model was leased. People forget that Rome had transformed over the course of 500 years. We picked approximately 100 AD because the it was closest to when the Colosseum had been built. The most important thing was the layout, so where is Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, where is the Forum relative to that, how big is Palatine Hill, and how does the Tiber River go through? Had we not acquired this model we wouldnt have made it. But I dont want to undersell the amount of effort that DNEG did because the set decoration is at least double the data set that you have to consider. It got even more complicated because we needed to have digital crowds in the background. The thing with any kind of animation on a virtual production stage is, all of the animation has to loop, so we had to figure out intelligent ways to have digital characters walking in the background, which happens in almost all of our scenes. We had to hide them and then have them come around again. The takes were so long that we werent cueing the action. The different stages of construction of the Colosseum happens in four episodes. We had to go from its earliest construction to all of it being completed. We were constantly with cranes and activity. All of that stuff enriched the environment.The most important thing was the layout, so where is Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, where is the Forum relative to that, how big is Palatine Hill, and how does the Tiber River go through? Had we not acquired this model we wouldnt have made it. But I dont want to undersell the amount of effort that DNEG did because the set decoration is at least double the data set that you have to consider.Peter Travers, Visual Effects SupervisorThe chariot races were shot on a track situated at Cinecitt World in Rome.Skies proved to be difficult because the clouds had to have the ability to move during takes and not become static. Rendering volumetric clouds at that resolution would have been foolish, Travers acknowledges. DNEG had a proprietary tool that would take a HDRI and slowly loop over two minutes. You didnt notice it, but it had this beautiful movement in the sky. There are shots where we are looking straight up in the sky. During the road to Rome, youre looking up at this line of crucifixes, and the cloud movement that youre seeing is a procedurally animated still. It didnt pop when it looped. It smoothly went back to frame one so we could go on forever. There were a few times where we had to cue things, and it did loop in particular when we shot footage of Morocco and Sicily. Any of those things, like blowing reeds and grass, we had to figure out a way to intelligently get them to loop back to frame one. With those things, we did hit play when Roman yelled, Action. But we were also covered that it would loop, if in a pinch, if that happened. Unreal Engine was not suited for everything. The chariot racing with the actors was done as a poor mans process. We had them standing on a chariot, and then behind them youre seeing the other oncoming chariots; that was all pre-rendered at 16K at certain length. We would get the actors ready and shoot all of those shots by rolling back to frame one because those couldnt loop, but it was the only way to get horses on the wall that looked good. I was also the director of the action unit, so I shot all of the live-action chariot stuff [on a track at Cinecitt World]. We used that for rotomation, rendering and look development because we already had answers as to what photoreal horse chariots looked like. One of the things that we discovered is four horses charging at full gallop in one chariot is a mess. It is not precise at all. They are constantly bumping into each other and fighting. Because I had shot a lot at a high frame rate, we could even see in slow motion at 96 fps the details of how the muscles worked.There are a lot of scenes, in particular Leptis Magna, where the slaves in North Africa are picked up and shipped off to Rome. The original background plates were shot in Morocco. We brought those plates in and started to build a 3D environment. We had to figure out with our Production Designer Johannes Muecke what kinds of cages because were going to have to build those virtually. We had a real giraffe on the virtual production stage, and behind it we needed to have a CG giraffe. We had to get started building the CG giraffe and put that in.Peter Travers, Visual Effects SupervisorThirty-five unique environments were divided between what could be built on set and what had to be extended digitally.A major asset was the Sony Venice 2 camera with its low-light sensitivityA drone flew a Sony Venice 2 camera to capture a lava flow that was there from the original eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.The size of sets was determined by knowing what was going to be captured in-camera.All of the departments were involved with the wall content, including costumes.Those About to Die was shot on the LED volume at Cinecitt Studios in Rome.When youre building a set, you only build where you know youre going to go with the camera, Travers notes. In Unreal Engine we were constantly doing that, where we would start with the Rome model and know the envelope of where we were going to shoot in and start deleting all of these distant things that we werent going to need. Sometimes it was tough. There was a rooftop where we needed to look out at a lot of Rome, so we had to keep most of Rome in the distance. The challenge with that is we wouldnt achieve 24 fps playback. There is a lot of artistry in making things be efficient, load and playback, but you have to keep in mind it is set decoration and that can change. Roland would come to us and say, I want to move that temple over there. Can I do it? Sometimes we couldnt do it, but for the most part we could. Roland was good about not being a kid in a candy store and saying, I want to move everything around. Roland has always been good at working within the box of what he has.

By OLIVER WEBBImages courtesy of FX Network.Nominated for 15 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, the latest installment of Fargo takes place in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019. Season 5 follows Dot (Juno Temple), a housewife whose mysterious past begins to haunt her after she gets in trouble with local authorities. Soon, Dot must find a way to protect herself and her family as the law begins to close in on her. Created by Noah Hawley, all five installments of Fargo stream on Hulu.Sienna King as Scotty Lyon, left, and Juno Temple as Dorothy Dot Lyon in The Tiger, Episode 5, Season 5 of Fargo. Mavericks VFX was the main vendor based on the fire work they completed for The Handmaids Tale. (Photo: Michelle Faye)[O]ne of the characters is in a room and has mud all over his hand, and he puts his hand on the wall; its blood/mud and he wipes it. The [print] they had on set felt like just a handprint. We couldnt get it right, so instead I put my hand in some of the fake blood. Then I did it a bunch of times and sent a screengrab to [Post Producer/Editor] Regis [Kimble]. He picked one, and thats the one thats in the show. Shooting the elements ourselves, just small little pieces, is a fun part of the job, and there is a ton of it in the show.Brendan Taylor, President and VFX Supervisor, Mavericks VFXBrendan Taylor, President and VFX Supervisor at Mavericks VFX, served as VFX Supervisor on Season 5. Taylor had worked closely with Executive Producers Kim Todd and Warren Littlefield on The Handmaids Tale. They were looking for someone to help them with Fargo, Season 5, Taylor explains. I picked up Unreal Engine over the pandemic and had been using it on Handmaids to help them plan things out. When Kim called and asked about Fargo, I was really excited as I loved the Coen brothers and the movie Fargo as well as the series. It was honestly one of the most rigorous interview processes Ive ever been through. It became clear early on that I wasnt going to be able to be out in Calgary the whole time, so I had to find a visual effects supervisor that I could partner with, who would be there for the on-set portion, and that was Jesse Kawzenuk. The only way I could do it was to get someone to go there, then Id be there for all the big shots. I would be there on the calls, reading the scripts through and talking to Jesse about approaches. He did a great job on the ground in Calgary.Juno Temple as Dorothy Dot Lyon, left, and Sienna King as Scotty Lyon in The Tragedy of the Commons, Episode 1, Season 5. The VFX in Fargo is used to complement rather than dominate. (Photo: Michelle Faye)One thing that was quite different on this one, that became apparent as we started going into post, was the involvement of Regis Kimble, who was the Post Producer and Editor for Noah, Taylor adds. I love his process. He will just do a screenshare in the edit as he reviews the shots, as opposed to sending notes out to us. There have been times when its like two and a half hours of just looking at visual effects shots. He is so kind and his temps are amazing, and he is so understanding of the visual effects process that it makes for such a great partner. You look forward to those client calls every single day. The entire post team for the production were such friends of visual effects and so understanding. They knew if something came in late that there was a reason for it. The whole thing was really great.Jesse Kawzenuk was first approached by Dana Gonzales (Producer, DOP and director). He broke down the large VFX sequences and explained that they were looking for someone who could join the team as a creative and be able to offer collaborative solutions to problems that would arise throughout the shoot, Kawzenuk says. Dana was very specific about bringing in someone who would inherit this passion for Fargo and be transparent about the creative choices throughout. Having been a big fan of the show and knowing that the bar is set quite high, I thought that this would be a very interesting yet challenging project to be a part of. We knew that there was going to be some relatively large-scale VFX fire work in the show. Mavericks VFX was to be the main vendor based on the fire work they completed for The Handmaids Tale. We had a base amount of artists on it. Mark Ferguson was our producer. I think we had 10 or 11 compositors on it and a couple of CG artists. Usually, we can get by with just that, but when a show comes in and we start bidding it, we usually need one or two more people, so we either pull from other shows within the company or bring on more people. The good thing was that because of the communication, Regis or Christie would let us know that, say, Episode 7 is going to be quite heavy but Episode 8 will be a bit light. So, we would work that way. Its making sure that you are thinking far enough ahead into the future.It is all about the storytelling. You need to create a barrier so the bad guys cant come into the room, but you also need to create this ticking time bomb where the family needs to go out of the window, otherwise theyll catch on fire. You always try and do it practically on the day as much as possible, but at the end of the day you dont know how its going to be cut together; you could have too much fire in one spot to tell the story. My approach with fire is always do it real. Its really intensive and difficult to get right.Brendan Taylor, President and VFX Supervisor, Mavericks VFXJuno Temple as Dorothy Dot Lyon and Jon Hamm as Roy Tillman in Blanket, Episode 8, Season 5 of Fargo. In many situations, the planned VFX shots werent executed because the practical SFX led by Special Effects Supervisor David Benediktson was so strong. (Photo: Michelle Faye)There were several challenging visual effects shots throughout the show. First, Taylor points to Episode 1. There is a scene where they throw the ice on the ground. What they use in movies instead of ice is rubber, as ice is such a pain to clean up. Sometimes plastic is used instead, but in this particular case they used rubber as ice. The point is that it doesnt feel like ice, so when it slides across the floor it should slide, but it actually crumbled; it just felt like plastic cubes. One thing I personally love to do is shoot things, so we went and got a bag of ice. We have a greenscreen stage here, then we just tossed ice on the ground and replaced it. That was pretty fun. Joe Keery as Gator Tillman and Jon Hamm as Roy Tillman in The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions, Episode 3, Season 5. VFX played an important role in supporting the narrative by adding mystery and suspense to scenes with atmospherics such as fog. (Photo: Michelle Faye)Lamorne Morris as Witt Farr in Blanket, Episode 8, Season 5. For Visual Effects Supervisor Jesse Kawzenuk, the most challenging shots were all unplanned, such as when production shifted a scene from night to day and VFX was called upon to assist. (Photo: Michelle Faye)Sam Spruell as Ole Munch in The Tragedy of the Commons, Episode 1, Season 5. The fire scene was handled practically, shooting with the actors, taking the actors out, then doing a bigger burn. EmberGen, fire-and-smoke software, was also employed. (Photos: Michelle Faye)Another challenge for Taylor and the Mavericks team was finding the right amount of blood to depict to be as realistic as possible. When Dot cuts the bottom of her feet on glass, we needed to track where she had been, Taylor says. That one is so closely related to the storytelling. [The scene] needed to feel like she had been taking steps, and the more steps she takes, the more blood comes off, so the next step is going to have a little less blood. It was about finding the balance, but its so nice to be working with someone like Regis in those situations where you can really just talk about it. We couldnt get the blood prints right. We had gallons of fake blood at the studio. I just poured some into a little painters pan and put my foot in it, and started walking around. I almost fell because the stuff is very slippery. That was one of the ways that we would tackle things. There is another part where one of the characters is in a room and has mud all over his hand, and he puts his hand on the wall; its blood/mud and he wipes it. The [print] they had on set felt like just a handprint. We couldnt get it right, so instead I put my hand in some of the fake blood. Then I did it a bunch of times and sent a screengrab to Regis. He picked one, and thats the one thats in the show. Shooting the elements ourselves, just small little pieces, is a fun part of the job, and there is a ton of it in the show. Juno Temple as Dorothy Dot Lyon and Lamorne Morris as Witt Farr in The Tragedy of the Commons, Episode 1, Season 5. Visual Effects Supervisor Brendan Taylor and his Mavericks VFX team worked to find the right amount of blood to use to create as much realism as possible in capturing bloody footprints and handprints. (Photo: Michelle Faye)On a TV schedule, you cant be messing around with the look of the fire. That whole scene was around 60 shots, and it was really about getting everyone onboard with what the edit will look like and the story were trying to tell. Thankfully, we have done so much of this fire in the past that we are actually pretty good at it now, so it was less about the look and more about making it the most impactful scene it can be.Brendan Taylor, President and VFX Supervisor, Mavericks VFXIt was crucial that all the elements came together when dealing practically with the fire scene. It is all about the storytelling, Taylor explains. You need to create a barrier so the bad guys cant come into the room, but you also need to create this ticking time bomb where the family needs to go out of the window, otherwise theyll catch on fire. You always try and do it practically on the day as much as possible, but at the end of the day you dont know how its going to be cut together, so you could have too much fire in one spot to tell the story. My approach with fire is always do it real. Its really intensive and difficult to get right. On a TV schedule, you cant be messing around with the look of the fire. We try and shoot with the actors, take the actors out, then do a bigger burn there. We did use some EmberGen, which is a good piece of fire-and-smoke software. That whole scene was around 60 shots, and it was really about getting everyone onboard with what the edit will look like and the story were trying to tell. We know were trying to push them out of the window, but we cant do it too soon. It was all about pushing and pulling. Thankfully, we have done so much of this fire in the past that we are actually pretty good at it now, so it was less about the look and more about making it the most impactful scene it can be.Juno Temple as Dorothy Dot Lyon in Linda, Episode 7, Season 5. The VFX teams knew that Episode 7 would be VFX heavy, so the large VFX sequences were all broken down in advance. Originally, the sequence was going to be captured as a single shot but proved to be too much of a challenge. (Photo: Michelle Faye)The car crash sequence in Episode 7 was one of the most arduous aspects of the show. The car crash was a great example where we shot two versions, one which would allow for a CG car to hit Dot, Kawzenuk says. We shot a series of clean plates and did proper reference passes. [Visual Effects Supervisor] Cody Hernandez led his team to create this seamless sequence, and it looks incredible. Its a great example of how the VFX is used in Fargo to complement rather than dominate. The car crash sequence at the diner was necessary for timing and camera position as well, but mainly for the stunt department to see where and how to place the stunt double. The car crash sequence at the diner in Episode 7, Season 5 was necessary for timing and camera position, but mainly for the stunt department to see where and how to place the stunt double. (Photo: Michelle Faye)We figured out well in advance where we were going to put the car, where we would put Dot so that the spins feel real. The kiss of death for us as visual effects artists is when we have to break physical reality. Everyone can spot it right away. We had a dummy car there that was actually hit by an 18-wheeler to give us that moment of impact, and it actually turned a little bit, but it didnt do a full 360. So we knew we would have to do it in CG.Brendan Taylor, President and VFX Supervisor, Mavericks VFXOriginally, the car crash was going to be captured as a single shot but proved to be too much of a challenge. You are a slave to physics at that point, Taylor adds. They didnt end up doing it as a oner because there was too much information in the single shot that we needed to take in, so it did end up being in cuts. We did a lot of previs in Unreal, and it was great because Noah was on the call. It was all about how many spins, how many rotations and how fast it was all going to go. We sort of figured that out well in advance where we were going to put the car, where we would put Dot so that the spins [of the car] feel real. The kiss of death for us as visual effects artists is when we have to break physical reality. Everyone can spot it right away. We had a dummy car there that was actually hit by an 18-wheeler to give us that moment of impact, and it actually turned a little bit, but it didnt do a full 360. So we knew we would have to do it in CG. We ended up building the entire model of the Dodge Charger and replacing the one that was hit. Then we did effects simulations for the explosion part to match the practical, and we did all the animation. It took a long time to get it right. The hardest part was not the initial impact or the spin, but the moment when it hits Dot. There were lots of revisions, but finally we got there. Another really difficult part of the sequence was the snow, as snow is really hard to get right. It had this clumpiness on the ground, and if you make it too clumpy it feels like foam, and if you make it not clumpy enough if feels like sand. So it is about finding that sweet spot. I think we were overdoing the snow quite a lot because it looked good but didnt feel real. The actual effects simulations that are in there are quite subtle but really effective. Thats what really sells the shot. You have a layer of snow on top of the car that goes up in the air as it turns, which is really nice. I think its the two best shots in the series and one of the best that we have done at the company.Juno Temple as Dorothy Dot Lyon in Linda, Episode 7, Season 5. The VFX team ended up building the entire model of the Dodge Charger, replacing the one that was hit. Two versions of the car crash were shot, one which would allow for a CG car to hit Dot. The VFX team did previs in Unreal Engine. (Photo: Michelle Faye)For Kawzenuk, the most challenging shots were all unplanned. In Episodes 9 and 10, Dot is sneaking around the Tillman Ranch, trying to move around unseen, Kawzenuk details. Production made a schedule change that shifted scenes originally scripted as night to take place during the day. Once the sequences were cut together, it was clear the lack of suspense and mystery was hurting the narrative. We looked at what VFX could do to assist and decided that adding fog to each shot would sell the suspense. We shot the whole sequence over a 10-day span, and the weather changed drastically from overcast to full sun, to snow, to sometimes real fog. Getting the consistency without altering the original plate too much was a real challenge. Trying to layer the fog and create a series of large volumes moving across these open plains was difficult. The Editor, Regis Kimble, has such a strong eye and really guided the look of these scenes right from the editing bay. I think that Tom Turnbull and his team at Rocket Science VFX really executed these episodes effectively. Kawzenuk concludes, The most enjoyable part of being on Fargo was being a part of this family. This was my first time working in Calgary, and the crew there is phenomenal, a hard-working team that really wants to provide the resources required to make the VFX work effectively. In many situations, the planned VFX shots went away because the practical SFX led by David Benediktson was so strong. I think Fargo continues to be one of the best television series. Having spent over a year working on the show from pre-production planning right through to post-production has made me a much stronger VFX supervisor.

By OLIVER WEBBImages courtesy of Paramount Pictures.A Quiet Place: Day One is the third installment in the Quiet Place franchise and serves as a prequel to the events of A Quiet Place. Day One was directed and co-written by Michael Sarnoski (Pig) while John Krasinski (IF) returns as co-writer and producer for Paramount. Set in New York City, Day One follows Sam (portrayed by Lupita Nyongo), a terminally ill woman on an outing to Manhattan. After the city comes under attack from an alien invasion, Sam, along with other survivors, must navigate a way to safety. It soon becomes apparent that the aliens are drawn to even the slightest of sounds.The bulk of the footage was captured in Manhattan. A helicopter unit shot aerial plates around the city to provide more scope and authenticity. Production then shifted to London.ILMs Malcolm Humphreys (The Batman), who served as Visual Effects Supervisor on Day One, was familiar with the previous two films in the franchise as both were ILM projects. They were supervised by Scott Farrar, who is a huge character at ILM, so it was a bit daunting in terms of stepping into that [history], Humphreys says. The first couple of films were smaller budget, and there were a smaller number of creature shots, but they grew between the sequels. For Day One, there are aspects of the creatures that weve seen before that are definitely already established. For this film, we see them on a larger scale and a larger number of them.For Day One, there are aspects of the creatures that weve seen before that are definitely already established. For this film, we see them on a larger scale and a larger number of them. [T]here is a new mother-size creature that we developed, which has a whole different scale, size and weight, and the texture of that creature is very different. We also created little baby creatures that eat some of these strange mushrooms that they open up during the film.Malcolm Humphreys, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMThe VFX team crafted fresh details to enhance the alien Death Angels and fleshed out how the aliens interacted with building and cars, and operated with a hive mentality.Humphreys and his team inherited some of the creatures from the previous films, but the base-level creature required a revision as well as some additional sculpting and detail work. There is a scene thats inside a construction site, and there is a new mother-size creature that we developed, which has a whole different scale, size and weight, and the texture of that creature is very different. We also created little baby creatures that eat some of these strange mushrooms that they open up during the film, Humphreys details.Data capture from Chinatown rooftops provided reference for the built-out bridge. Reference documenting the demolition of a bridge helped capture the huge explosion and displacement of water as the bridge collapsed.Humphreys and his team were given a lot of creative freedom when it came to the shot design of the film. Updating the creatures performance was one of the most important goals to achieve. If you watch the first two films, the creatures sort of exist in these two different states. The first is snatch and grab, which is super-fast and you cant really see whats going on, or they are moving very slowly, Humphreys notes. In this film, one area we fleshed out a little bit more was when you are seeing them in daylight for a lot longer, and how they work together in a herd-like manner towards a common goal was quite enjoyable to explore. If you watch the first two films, the creatures sort of exist in these two different states: The first is snatch and grab, which is super-fast and you cant really see whats going on, or they are moving very slowly. In this film, one area we fleshed out a little bit more was when you are seeing them in daylight for a lot longer, and how they work together in a herd-like manner towards a common goal was quite enjoyable to explore.Malcolm Humphreys, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMLupita Nyongo (Us, 12 Years a Slave) stars as Samira, a terminally ill woman caught up in the alien invasion of Manhattan. An important atmospheric element was the massive dust coating caused by meteorites destroying buildings.Although Day One takes place throughout New York City, the majority of the film was shot in London. Shooting in New York, especially for the amount of augmentations that were needed, proved to be impractical. Theres a whole load of visual effects work we were doing to make that possible, by doing set extensions, for example, Humphreys explains. I love doing creature work, but then theres also bits of every other type of visual effect in the film as well. It was shot primarily at the backlot in Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios, just outside of London, and some additional location work around London. We were shooting locations and then augmenting them to look like New York. There was a mixture of some drama photography done in New York, a minimal shoot, and some additional plate photography, then quite a large data-capture of different neighborhoods in New York. The story is essentially a journey from the tip of New York in Chinatown all the way up through the neighborhoods and into Harlem. Thats quite a large distance, and the architecture and geography change quite dramatically between those locations. Keeping the look of New York is an added challenge on a project like this, and that was particularly difficult to achieve but was ultimately a rewarding process. I was very lucky, as we went and did the data capture on my first day in New York, partly just to immerse myself in the story. I actually walked from Chinatown all the way to Harlem, which is quite a long distance, about a four-hour walk. That helped me really engross myself in the geography and the feel of the city as it changes. That in itself was invaluable research.The architecture and geography between Chinatown and Harlem changes dramatically. There was a large data-capture of different neighborhoods in New York.It was shot primarily at the backlot in Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios, just outside of London and shooting locations [around London], then augmenting them to look like New York. I was very lucky, as we went and did the data- capture on my first day in New York, partly just to immerse myself in the story. I actually walked from Chinatown all the way to Harlem, which is quite a long distance, about a four-hour walk. That helped me really engross myself in the geography and the feel of the city as it changes. That in itself was invaluable research.Malcolm Humphreys, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMLondon was the primary hub for the visual effects work. We had multiple sites working on it, Humphreys adds. We also had teams in Vancouver, San Francisco and Mumbai. Most of the work that we did and the way I like to work is segment the work into logical chunks that we could give to each of the offices so that they have a little bit more autonomy and ownership of the work. Its not always possible, but it does help make it a bit more manageable and enjoyable for everyone.Meteorites striking Manhattan in the daytime precede the alien invasion. There was a mixture of drama photography done in New York, a minimal shoot and some additional plate photography.Overall, the film consisted of roughly 450 visual effects shots. It was a nearly perfect job for me, in the sense that there was a lot of 2D work, creature work, environment work, and there are some really quite large-frame oners, Humphreys details. They were just an undertaking of finding the right artists and team to work on those shots because they run for so long. They are multiple shots tied together. All the shots we worked on were challenging in their own different way. The last sequence in the film was quite a technical challenge. That was made up of multiple locations, including an airfield at Bovingdon, a location on the River Thames on a pier, then a boat that was docked and some additional tank work. Our job was to stitch all those locations together so that Joseph and Lupitas characters could smoothly move from one location to the next. Then we also needed to make it feel like its all taking place in New York. That was quite a technical challenge, but was quite enjoyable to do. There were some really enjoyable shots, like one shot in the upper East Side for example. The backlot that we had was quite successful for some of the work, but when we got the one shots where we wanted to make it look quite different, it was trying to make the backlot look like a whole different environment or a different part of New York, and that was quite satisfying.The last sequence in the film was quite a technical challenge. That was made up of multiple locations, including an airfield at Bovingdon, a location on the River Thames on a pier, then a boat that was docked and some additional tank work. Our job was to stitch all those locations together so that Joseph and Lupitas characters could smoothly move from one location to the next. Then we also needed to make it feel like its all taking place in New York. That was quite a technical challenge.Malcolm Humphreys, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMA Manhattan crowd scene moments before the aliens attack. Manhattan footage was mixed with the backlot shoots at Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios outside London where New York sets and extensions were created.A new mother-size creature was developed with dramatically different scale, size, weight and texture.Although Day One takes place throughout New York City, the majority of the film was shot in London.A major action sequence takes place in a submerged subway where a large underwater gimbal allowed the platform to be lowered.The creatures, their numbers, movements and mentality were updated for Day One, and some of their textures differed from the previous films.The film was shot primarily at the backlot in Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios outside London and at various locations around London.Dust and ash float through the streets of Manhattan. Keeping the look of New York was an added challenge for VFX Supervisor Malcolm Humphreys and his team in London.A large amount of physical debris was needed and more belongings like bags and shirts were added in post.Humphreys and his team were given a lot of creative freedom in terms of shot design, and one of the main elements was fleshing out the creature movements in more detail.Having the creatures flip over cars in New York City was one of the creative choices that Humphreys and his team employed. Most of the visual effects work consisted of 2D, creature and environment work and some large-frame oners.Roughly 450 visual effects shots were created for the film. ILM was the primary vendor along with Important Looking Pirates, Proof, Cadence Effects and an in-house team.Out from the shadows where they lurked in the previous films, the creatures in Day One hunt openly in daytime.In Day One, the creatures work together in a herd-like manner towards a common goal.VFX Supervisor Malcolm Humphrey walked from Chinatown all the way to Harlem to immerse himself in the story and to get an accurate feel of the geography of New York City.Humphreys kept a close, running dialogue with the crew throughout the production, which was key on a project of this scale. It was a tight-knit group of us discussing how we were going to achieve certain shots, he says. Then going into post with Michael and building a really strong relationship with him was quite enjoyable. Michaels fantastic to work with because he gives you enough room to offer up ideas and help add to his vision.

By JIM McCULLAUGHImages courtesy of the VIEW Conference, except where noted.Mark your calendars for October 14-19, 2024, as the VIEW Conference in Turin, Italy, celebrates its 25th anniversary. This international symposium on Animation, VFX, Games, AI, AR, VR, XR, MR, Virtual Production, Metaverse, Storytelling and Immersive Media promises to be a landmark event.VIEW CEO and Executive Director Maria Elena Gutierrez and VFX Supervisor Kyle Odermatt (Raya and the Last Dragon, Moana, Wish) onstage at the VIEW.Over the past quarter-century, the VIEW Conference has welcomed literally thousands of people into a supportive global family of creatives, innovators and visionaries, says CEO and Executive Director Maria Elena Gutierrez. Weve provided them with opportunities to learn from the industrys best in digital media. Our mission has always been to inspire, educate and innovate, all within an atmosphere of love, support and inclusivity. Were not just a conference were a community.The incredible quality of our speakers means our content is always of the highest standard.Maria Elena Gutierrez.CEO and Executive Director, VIEW ConferenceReflecting on the journey, Gutierrez muses, It seems like only yesterday when it all started those 25 years went like a dream! In the early days, our biggest challenge was putting the conference on the map. It was tough getting top talent to make the time commitment necessary to visit Italy, a country not known for its animation, VFX and games industry.German film score composer and music producer Hans Zimmer wows the crowd at the VIEW.Today, the landscape has transformed. I regularly get calls from filmmakers working on their latest projects, asking if they can present at VIEW Conference when the movies finished! When they come to Turin, they stay for the entire week remember, these are people whose time is so precious that its usually hard even to get 15 minutes with them. I believe this happens because weve succeeded in creating an experience that people genuinely love and want to prioritize.[The VIEW Conference] creates an environment where top-level speakers challenge themselves to deliver more. As a result, the VIEW Conference program is always gold standard, frequently filled with exclusives and occasionally delivers a stunning surprise.Maria Elena Gutierrez.CEO and Executive Director, VIEW ConferenceGutierrez attributes the conferences success to its unwavering commitment to quality and its unique approach. We dont just string presentations together, she explains. We spend many months curating a meticulous program of keynotes, talks, workshops and masterclasses designed to inspire and teach both professionals and students. This is supported by a year-round program of free online sessions, such as panels, that bring together awards contenders on the run-up to the Oscars. The incredible quality of our speakers means our content is always of the highest standard.American cartoonist ND Stevenson, animator Troy Quane, animator Nick Bruno and Ted Ty of DNEG Animation at the VIEW.The VIEW Conference goes beyond delivering top-notch content. It creates an environment where these top-level speakers challenge themselves to deliver more. As a result, the VIEW Conference program is always gold standard, frequently filled with exclusives and occasionally delivers a stunning surprise. Also, it has to be said that the timing is good. VIEW Conference takes place just as the industry is gearing up for awards season, making us the perfect showcase for the leading contenders to present their achievements. And it doesnt hurt that Turin in October is just so beautiful.Jeff Rowe, American writer and director, brings the VIEW audience into the world of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.She adds, Hans Zimmer also blew me away with a rousing retrospective on his amazing career. Tom McGrath and Mireille Soria moved me deeply with their highly personal talks about the influence their families have had on their work. Peter Sohn and Doug Chiang wowed us with their dazzling creativity while at the same time speaking eloquently about their experiences growing up in immigrant families in the U.S. And I have a special place in my heart for the extraordinary hour I spent at VIEW Conference 2022, when Rob Minkoff, director of the original The Lion King, took to the stage with his ukulele and treated us all to a never-seen-before musical journey through his experience making one of the best-loved animated features of all time. If Im allowed a shameless plug, you can enjoy that session and more through our extensive online archive of recordings just visit the VIEW Conference website.Gretchen Libby, Director of Visual Computing at Amazon Web Service, addresses VIEW attendees.Shannon Tindel, American animator and storyboard artist, and Peter Ramsey, American illustrator and storyboard artist, share insights with the VIEW audience.Christina Heller, film producer known for Trolls, Hotel Transylvania 3 and Over the Moon, at the VIEW.French cartoonist and animator Benjamin Renner.Peter Ramsey, American illustrator and storyboard artist, and Portuguese-American animator and storyboard artist Joaquim Dos Santos.Doug Chiang, Senior Vice President and Executive Design Director at Lucasfilm, packs the VIEW auditorium.Danielle Feinberg, director of photography and visual effects supervisor, at the VIEW.German-American animator Andreas Deja.Director Chris Sanders will be at VIEW 2024 to discuss The Wild Robot along with Production Designer Raymond Zibach and VFX Supervisor Jeff Budsberg. (Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures)Shannon Tindle, director of Ultraman: Rising, will be a featured speaker at VIEW 2024. (Image courtesy of Netflix)[W]eve succeeded in creating an experience that people genuinely love and want to prioritize.Maria Elena Gutierrez.CEO and Executive Director, VIEW ConferenceLooking ahead to this Octobers program highlights, Gutierrez remarks, There simply isnt enough time to list them all! Suffice it to say, VIEW Conference 2024 promises a unique lineup of award-winning creatives discussing their latest projects alongside top-level Silicon Valley innovators. Live on stage, well have the directors of this years big animated features Inside Out 2, Ultraman: Rising and The Wild Robot, to name but three but as always, we go deeper. For example, in addition to speaking about his movie, Josh Cooley, director of Transformers One, will also be teaching a special masterclass on the story, designed to enlighten and inspire professionals and students alike while passing on a wealth of practical advice and insight. We dive deep with VFX, too. Our exploration of Dune: Part Two boasts no less than five presenters, including triple-Oscar-winning Production VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert. Were also proud to welcome the VFX supervisors of big movies like Twisters and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and hit streaming series like Fallout and 3 Body Problem.Inside Out 2s director Kelsey Mann will be a speaker at VIEW 2024. (Image courtesy of Pixar/Disney)Production VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert and second unit VFX Supervisor Patrick Heinen will be speaking about Dune: Part Two at VIEW 2024. (Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)Jay Worth, Overall VFX Supervisor of Fallout, will be a featured speaker at VIEW 2024. (Image courtesy of Amazon Prime Video)Steven Fangmeier, Production VFX Supervisor of 3 Body Problem, will be a featured VIEW 2024 speaker. (Image courtesy of Netflix)Twisters VFX Supervisor Florian Witzel will be a featured speaker at VIEW 2024. (Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon. Courtesy of Universal Pictures)Jason Greenblum, VFX Supervisor for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, will be a featured speaker at VIEW 2024. (Photo: Jaap Buitendij. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures/Sony)Josh Cooley, director of Transformers One, will be speaking about the film and also teaching a special masterclass on story at VIEW 2024. (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures)Additionally, she continues, We offer a comprehensive range of sessions on game design and animated short films not to mention special tracks dedicated to business, generative AI and education and youll quickly see that our 25th anniversary edition will be one to remember.For more information, visit the VIEW website at viewconference.it.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Arcadia Motion Pictures, Lokiz Films, Noodles Production and Les Films du Worso.It was a pleasant surprise when the Spanish-French co-production Robot Dreams, which deals with themes of loneliness, companionship and people growing apart without a word of dialogue was nominated for Best Animated Feature at this years Academy Awards. Masterminding the adaptation of the graphic novel by Sara Varon was live-action filmmaker Pablo Berger (Blancanieves), who decided to try the world of animation, and in the process of doing so came up with some imaginative dream transitions. One transition in particular occurs when the Coney Island-stranded Robot is covered by snow, falls out of the frame, gathers himself and turns the image around to reveal a Hollywood set that resembles something out of The Wizard of Oz.A background of Coney Island where a major narrative turning point occurs.That is also one of my favorite scenes, Berger laughs. Jean-Claude Carrire, my favorite writer of all time, once said, Theres only one rule in cinema. You have to surprise the audience. I like the idea that whenever I write the script its almost like a Weeha! and I let myself go. In Robot Dreams, I brought a lot of references and inspirations from The Wizard of Oz to Buster Keaton and Busby Berkeley. I mix it all together. One of my favorite animators, Osamu Tezuka, is the king of breaking the fourth wall, and its also a homage to him. The aspect ratio had to be taken in consideration to effectively accomplish the visual gag. We were thinking about the previous shot so we could trick the audience. It should feel like a surprise, so we had to reduce the aspect ratio to be able to do that surprising effect, Berger remarks.I love the idea in animation that with just two circles and one dot you have an eye and with a single line you have a mouth, and how many things you can express with just one line. And how, with the mouth, Robot can teach the bird to fly; we worked a lot on that one. In the first storyboard, he did it with the eyelids going up and down, but then we realized it wasnt so clear. Suddenly, we decided to do it with the mouth.Pablo Berger, DirectorStoryboards are a major part of the filmmaking process. Even for my live-action films, I spend a year doing the storyboards. Especially when you make an animated film, the storyboard is the treasure map, Berger explains. Every single shot, the angle, size and duration are already planned. In a way, before the animation started, we had the film already finished. We made it with a small team five people working for a year and a half to make a rough animation. Every shot is clear. Of course, then you can do small changes when you begin to do the animation. The source material broke the fourth wall in way that worked within the confines of a comic book panel. Notes Berger, In the graphic novel you just see Robot getting out of the square, but it gave me an idea that I wrote in the script. When I started doing the storyboards, I had to decide where to put the camera for every single shot. Once you get animators and animation directors, they can bring you things. Animators are like actors and can propose certain actions.Research went into depicting areas of New York City during the 1980s such as Chinatown.Grunts and groans replaced actual lines of dialogue by the characters. I had great support from the voice director, who was also the voice of Dog, Ivan Labanda, Berger explains. All of the big Hollywood films that have young characters are dubbed by him. For us, it was important to have a little giggle or laugh. It was a different kind of acting, but in our case it was pleasurable. I was not alone doing this. Ivan cast a group of his friends to do it, which became a little ensemble. With six actors, we created all of the voices, grunts, laughs, screams and little noises. For example, during the sledge race in snow, the Anteaters had to make specific noises. It was definitely hard work, but we also had a fun time doing it.Nuances, such as cheese from the macaroni splattering against the glass window of the microwave, had to be meticulously orchestrated yet feel accidental. You have to realize, Im a live-action director, Berger notes. If directors have one superpower, we can close our eyes and see our film finished. However, in live-action, there are so many accidents that the film changes completely from what you were thinking about. In animation, the final film comes close to the dream, so I can feel my fingerprints in every single frame. Of course, Im working with a big team of artists, but I was involved with every single detail that happens because what you have to realize is, first you do the storyboard followed by layout, rough animation and then final animation; there are so many steps that you can make small adjustments.There are dream sequences in the film, with this being the background for the Flowerland, which resembles something out of The Wizard of Oz.An interesting creative choice was not to give Robot mechanical actions. The trending topic nowadays is AI and robots, but we started this film over five years ago, Berger observes. This robot is a metaphor for a friend, lover or companion. It doesnt have any chip inside. There is no software. Its like gears, wheels, bolts and springs. We wanted to do an old-style robot from the 1950s. It was also inspired by Hayao Miyazakis Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Introducing motion meant that some of the character designs had to be altered. Daniel Fernandez designed the characters, but then it was important when Animation Director Benot Froumon got involved. Initially, Robot was much rounder in the character design, but then early on Benot said, We need more rough edges so we can make it more 360. The designs at the end had to be approved by the animation director because hes the one who is going to have to animate.The interior of a Radio Shack where robot companions are on display.One of the clever moments is when Robot teaches a chick to fly through the motions of his mouth. I love the idea in animation that with just two circles and one dot you have an eye and with a single line you have a mouth, and how many things you can express with just one line, Berger reveals. And how, with the mouth, Robot can teach the bird to fly; we worked a lot on that one. In the first storyboard, he did it with the eyelids going up and down, but then we realized it wasnt so clear. Suddenly, we decided to do it with the mouth. Its a collaboration. The director gets the credit of the film, A Film by Pablo Berger; however, I had Benot Froumont, Sylvain Chomet [French writer and animator], Tom Moore [Co-Founder of Cartoon Saloon] and Art Director Jos Luis greda, who has made amazing films. You feel like you have good players next to you, and they helped me in the making a lot of the decisions.[T]here are so few animators in the world nowadays who know how to draw and create in 2D. Most animated films are using 3D. I also believe that when you want to create something new, you have to look to the past. I dont think you always have to look forward. Hand-drawn animation still has so much to offer to animation. We can talk about Spider-Verse animated movies, which use 3D, but theyre doing an old style so that it looks like 2D. Why not?Pablo Berger, Director2D animation was chosen over a 3D style. As a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, everything was hand-drawn animation, Berger states. Robot Dreams takes place in the 1980s and is based on a graphic novel. For me, it was important that when people watch the film, they have to feel like its a graphic novel that is alive. We did not have any doubts thinking about 2D or 3D. 2D was definitely much more complex to find a team because there are so few animators in the world nowadays who know how to draw and create in 2D. Most animated films are using 3D. I also believe that when you want to create something new, you have to look to the past. I dont think you always have to look forward. Hand-drawn animation still has so much to offer to animation. We can talk about Spider-Verse animated movies, which use 3D, but theyre doing an old style so that it looks like 2D. Why not?A color script for the sequences when Dog receives his robot companion delivery and when he and Robot do a rollerblade dance in Central Park.In the first draft of the script, it was already September [September Song by Earth, Wind & Fire] because I needed a song that Dog and Robot could roller-dance to in Central Park. The producers were not happy in the beginning because music rights are expensive, and if you want one of the most popular songs in pop history it was an expensive song. But it was worth every penny that we spent. Definitely, the music was key. When you dont have dialogue, music becomes the voice of the characters.Pablo Berger, DirectorThe growing popularity of adult animation has led to a hybrid approach to animation. There is this amazing software called Blender, and you can combine with 2D, Berger remarks. You can get the best of both worlds. One of my favorite animated films in recent years is I Lost My Body, which has 2D and 3D, but you dont notice it. Whatever works to tell the story. In order to get the television screen to illuminate the face of Dog, some digital compositing was needed. The good thing about doing a 2D hand-drawn film now is you can use digital compositing software and different ways to provoke color correction. You use visual effects elements in a 2D world because in the end youre doing compositing as well.Exploring the different times of day for street exteriors.Along with making the transition to animation, Berger had to set up a pop-up studio called Lokiz Films, which has 100 animators working in Madrid and Pamplona. We were going to make this film with Cartoon Saloon, and suddenly we are not, Berger recalls. And its my first animated film. We had to make this big decision. I thought I was Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Lets put a show! Lets make a pop-up animation studio. That was the hardest thing. We looked for animators all over Europe. It was the time of COVID-19. We didnt want to work remotely. It was mandatory that the animators had to come to Madrid or Pamplona. It was absolutely hell!Also, a pipeline was being created from scratch. The first time I heard the word pipeline was in animation because we dont use that term in live-action, Berger reveals. Pipeline? What is a pipeline!? Someone explained to me the animation pipeline, and I went, But this doesnt work for me! It was hard work to create a pipeline that worked for me. For me, the scenes had to be truthful, good acting, and I had to see them in continuity. I couldnt think about a shot; in animation and visual effects we talk about the shot. For me, it had to be beats of 30 seconds or one minute to approve.Examining what the interior of Dogs apartment will look like under various lighting conditions.Not having to convert the methodologies of an established animation studio was beneficial. At the beginning we thought it could be suicidal to create a studio, but after three or four months of fighting we realized, This is working. Were doing things our own way, Berger states. We created our own pipeline. Although I love Cartoon Saloon and have been in Kilkenny, I know if we had done Robot Dreams with them, it would have had a Cartoon Saloon-like style, which is great, but this gave it a unique personality; we created our own style of animation. Benot Froumont worked on The Triplets of Belleville as an animation director, so the spirit of Sylvian Chomet is in the film. And Benot also worked with Tom Moore on The Secret of Kells, so he knew Cartoon Saloon as well. Definitely, Benot brought a lot of knowledge, and his style is in the film.Central throughout is the song September by Earth, Wind & Fire. In the first draft of the script, it was already September because I needed a song that Dog and Robot could roller-dance to in Central Park, Berger explains. Then I realized, what if this song becomes the theme of the film? It was great to have that decision so early on. The producers were not happy in the beginning because music rights are expensive, and if you want one of the most popular songs in pop history it was an expensive song. But it was worth every penny that we spent. My producers spoiled me, and were able to put it into the budget. Definitely, the music was key. Not only the diegetic music like September but also Alfonso de Vilallongas [Composer] created a beautiful, jazzy, original soundtrack with strong melodies of piano. I could say that Robot Dreams is musical. When you dont have dialogue, music becomes the voice of the characters.Conceptualizing the anatomy and shape language for Dog.New York City in the 1980s is a principal cast member. Without a doubt, New York is the third protagonist of the film next to Robot and Dog, Berger remarks. But in the graphic novel, New York is not there. Its just an American city. For me, to make New York a protagonist was key. I did a masters in film at NYU, then continued to live in New York for 10 years. This was my love letter to New York, and you cannot have New York without New Yorkers! What a better metaphor than to have a jungle of animals representing all New Yorkers. Sometimes with animated films, the characters in the background dont move, but for me every single character in the background had to be doing something and dressed in a specific way. They have to have personality. Thats a good thing about animation. You can watch an animated film many times because theyre so rich in details. For people who love Robot Dreams, its worth to see it a second time just looking at the characters in the background!There are some dark moments with Robot getting a leg chopped off and his head severed. I realized early on in the process that although it was an animated film, this was no different from my live-action films, Berger states. Instead of using a camera, I was using artists who were drawing. The tone connects with my previous films. All of my films are tragic comedies; there is humor but also a lot of drama. I love that my films are filled with emotion. I love to think that Robot Dreams is a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Like in real life, there is drama. I hope that Robot Dreams will move people in many deep ways and they can have an emotional connection with the story. Drama is a big part of Robot Dreams.Experimenting with a selection of poses for Robot and Dog for a variety scenarios.Inspiring the visuals was the source material. The graphic novel by Sara Varon has what is called ligne claire in French, which means clear lines, Berger notes. Its an aggregate style from French and Belgium comic books. The colors are solid and the palette is stylized. It was important to get the New York colors, the buildings and streets, and the colors of the cars. It was also inspired by the research to have an 1980s feeling in the film. It had to be like candy. The film had to be very appealing visually, so the color is a big protagonist as well. Close-up shots are part of the visual language. I made a film called Blancanieves, which didnt have dialogue. When you have to tell the story with images, you need numerous close-ups. Robot Dreams is filled with close-ups and dollies, but what you need is a lot of shots to make the film feel alive. Its a combination of how I make films and the needs of a dialogue-free film.Doing a version of a 2D turntable for Robot.A critical component in making the shots feel alive are the New York characters that populate the background.One of the more complex shots is Dog and Robot walking down the street with various New Yorkers going about their daily lives.Without a doubt, New York is the third protagonist of the film next to Robot and Dog, But in the graphic novel, New York is not there. Its just an American city. For me, to make New York a protagonist was key. I did a masters in film at NYU, then continued to live in New York for 10 years. This was my love letter to New York, and you cannot have New York without New Yorkers! What a better metaphor than to have a jungle of animals representing all New Yorkers.Pablo Berger, DirectorOne of the most complex shots is the first time that Robot and Dog walk on the street together, Berger states. There is a long wide shot that is almost 10 seconds of traveling, and you see Robot and Dog, the Boar dancing; there are so many characters at the same time, and we have cars. Also, to find how Robot walks was one of the first things we did. Maybe the next time, if I do a live-action film I would even do an animatic, a moving storyboard.Originally, the animation was going to be done by Cartoon Saloon, but director Pablo Berger had to create a pop-up studio called Lokiz Films.Great attention was paid to the timing of the eye movements to achieve the proper comedic and dramatic tone.Dog takes a break while assembling his newly-acquired robot companion.Robot Dreams was not made for a specific demographic. Its for cinephiles, Berger notes, for people who want to go to the movies every weekend and have a fun time, and for kids. Its a film that does not exclude audience members. Its made of different layers, and every type of audience will get a different layer. That is what made this film unique for me. Being an Academy Award nominee was something to treasure. It was a great adventure. It was fantastic to go to the Oscars and meet other fellow directors. I even got to meet the great Steven Spielberg. I chatted with him. That was my Oscar!

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney+.When Jedis associated with a tragic incident that took place in a witch coven situated on Brendock are assassinated, a Jedi Master is drawn into the mystery. When it is suggested that his former padawan is responsible for the killings, the Jedi Masters investigation uncovers a much larger Sith conspiracy. A force to be reckoned on the High Republic Era set of the The Acolyte, which occurs a century before the Star Wars prequel trilogy, is creator, executive producer, showrunner, director and writer Leslye Headland. Consisting of eight episodes, the Lucasfilm and Disney+ production has Julian Foddy moving from being a visual effects supervisor at ILM to working client side where he was responsible for digitally augmenting 2,800 shots.Ive done quite a lot of big Marvel films and various other Star Wars projects where they had a lot more reliance on CG content. [Director] Leslye Headland wanted to try to keep everything real and practical. The mantra was, What would have George Lucas done when he was making the original trilogy? Creatures and sets should be real. I had to approach the project with the view to minimizing the number of visual effects in most shots.Julian Foddy, Production Visual Effects SupervisorApproximately 2,800 visual effects shots were produced for the eight episodes by ILM, Rising Sun Pictures, Luma Pictures, Hybride, beloFX and Outpost VFX, with previs created by Proof.This is the first show that Ive done where I was the overall Production Visual Effects Supervisor, so straight away it was a different experience, Foddy states. Ive spent a lot of time on set for various projects before but have never been involved quite as early as I was on The Acolyte. As the Production Visual Effects Supervisor, youre onboard from day one, so I was party to original drafts of scripts and had a creative voice throughout all of the prep. That was fantastic, and Im keen to stay in a production role.The forest world of Khofar, where the Wookiee Jedi Master Kelnacca lives in isolation, is introduced in The Acolyte.Amandla Stenberg plays twin sisters Mae and Osha Aniseya, and Lee Jung-jae portrays Jedi Master Sol Mogra under the direction of Leslye Headland.Extensive work was done by beloFX to achieve the proper mood and lighting for shots.Other differences were prevalent. It was a change from things Ive worked on over recent years. Ive done quite a lot of big Marvel films and various other Star Wars projects where they had a lot more reliance on CG content, Foddy notes. Leslye Headland wanted to try to keep everything real and practical. The mantra was, What would have George Lucas done when he was making the original trilogy? Creatures and sets should be real. I had to approach the project with the view to minimizing the number of visual effects in most shots. Despite the practical mantra, CG elements were unavoidable. One thing that is all CG are the ships with the exception of a shot where we used a miniature. Often, we had a practical ramp, or the inside of a compartment was a real set, but whenever you see the whole ship from the outside, whether its on the ground or out in space, those area always CG. The ships were designed by Kevin Jenkins [Production Designer] and the art department, and they always built physical models. Quite often, we had gray scale or balsawood models. We always had something there to visualize the form of the ship before getting it into CG; that allowed us to talk about things like the scale of the ship and what movement characteristics would they have when in space.One thing that is all CG are the ships with the exception of a shot where we used a miniature. Often, we had a practical ramp, or the inside of a compartment was a real set, but whenever you see the whole ship from the outside, whether its on the ground or out in space, those area always CG. The ships were designed by Kevin Jenkins [Production Designer] and the art department, and they always built physical models. Quite often, we had gray scale or balsawood models. We always had something there to visualize the form of the ship before getting it into CG.Julian Foddy, Production Visual Effects SupervisorThe mandate was to rely more on practical locations and sets, with beloFX doing some of the needed digital augmentation to the landscape and sky.CG also assisted in transitioning a signature pink Lightsaber from The High Republic novels into its cinematic counterpart. Full confession, declares Foddy. While all of the other Lightsabers do have tubes of LED lights, the Lightwhip itself did not have a practical component for safety reasons, as well as for technical and practical ones. The Lightwhip was something that Leslye desperately wanted to get into the show. I tasked the ILM art department with coming up with various concepts for how the Lightwhip might work and engaged in lengthy discussions with Pablo Hidalgo [a creative executive in story development at Lucasfilm] to make sure we got this right. Not only did we want to respect the fans of The High Republic novels but also discuss the technology of a Lightsaber and the physics of how the blade would work. We worked that out with Pablo to make sure that we did the whip so it felt plausible. We explored lots of different looks and pursued the idea that maybe the whip was made from small sections of a chain consisting of short Lightsaber blades or like a cat o nine tails that had more than one strand. Ultimately, we came down to the simplicity of the single strand. Its down to the nonchalance of how Vernestra Rwoh uses the whip as well. There is the touch of Indiana Jones in the way she flicks it. Leslye was keen to make sure we see that the Lightwhip is not only the badass weapon, but that Vernestra looks like a total badass when she uses it. It is a normal Lightsaber and has been modified to turn into the whip. There is an instance when Vernestra deploys or retracts the whip, and it snaps into a straight blade before returning into the hilt.Bluescreen was unavoidable but not heavily relied upon by the production.Martial arts and ninja tactics such as throwing daggers were incorporated into the lightsaber fight choreography. Wherever we could do it for real. we did it for real, Foddy explains. Obviously, you cant throw real knives, but we did have rubber-bladed ones that could be thrown; however, that is still dangerous. In Episode 101, when Mae [Amandla Stenberg] is fighting Indara Force [Carrie-Ann Moss], who snatches the knives from her that was a mixture of cunning switcheroos on the day [of shooting]. Amandla Stenberg would hold the knives in position, wed cut the camera, shed drop the knives, then we would run the camera again. There are some CG knives in the instances where theyre thrown or when Indara Force pulls them out of Maes belt. Most of the shots where you see Mae flipping the knives into her hands, thats all real. Amandla learned all of the knife skills and the manual dexterity to do those things, like twirling the knives from her palm into her grasp.For safety and logistical reasons, the daggers thrown by Mae were digitally added.Practical LEDs were used for the Lightsabers to get the correct interactive light, except for the Lightwhip.The architecture and spaceships of the High Republic are not significantly different from what are seen in the prequel trilogy, which occurs 100 later, as technology evolves slowly in the Star Wars universe.Anything that the cast would have to interact with was physically constructed and the rest extended in CG.A simple design language was utilized for the UI.Coruscant of the High Republic Era had fewer levels than what was seen in the prequel trilogy.Elements like hyper drives were treated as heavy bulk attachments for the spacecraft.The Trade Federation Fallon freighter ship is brought to life by ILM.Full confession. While all of the other Lightsabers do have tubes of LED lights, the Lightwhip itself did not have a practical component for safety reasons, as well as for technical and practical ones. The Lightwhip was something that [Director] Leslye [Headland] desperately wanted to get into the show. I tasked the ILM art department with coming up with various concepts for how the Lightwhip might work and engaged in lengthy discussions with Pablo Hidalgo [a creative executive in story development at Lucasfilm] to make sure we got this right.Julian Foddy, Production Visual Effects SupervisorTwins Leah and Lauren Brady were used for the scenes of Young Mae and Young Osha, while Amandla Stenberg portrays the adult versions of both sisters. You will see more of the adult twins together as the series progresses, Foddy reveals. It has been a mixed approach. Amandla had a performance-double named Shanice Archer, who was fantastic, and she spent several months in prep with a movement coach learning to adopt Amandlas physicality. All of the over the shoulders are Shanice. Quite a few shots have split screens. Also, we had quite a lot of involvement in the walk-throughs with the directors of photography and talked about how we could shoot scenes in a way that favored over the shoulders or seeing the two girls from behind. There are only very few instances where we had to worry about being able to do both of the twins faces. As well as split screens, we quite often shoot switcheroos as well, where I would literally have the girls swap places. In some cases, that gave us a facial element to put on the other actor who was done in the exactly same lighting conditions and camera position.A breakdown of a shot by ILM from plate to final compositing.Impacting the world-building was the time period of the High Republic. We are 100 years before the prequels. This is something we consulted with Pablo Hidalgo and Dave Filoni [CCO at Lucasfilm] about, Foddy states. Dave pointed out that the Republic has existed for thousands of years, so technology evolves at a fairly slow rate in the Star Wars universe. What that meant is, for the previous 100 years, things are not going to look radically different in terms of ship design, technology available or weapons. We did change a few little things to help sell that 100 years. If you look at Coruscant, the city is constantly building on top of itself, and the layers keep growing. A hundred years earlier, the surrounding buildings around the Jedi temple were all a bit lower. You can see that in some of the establishing shots. Its a subtle touch while still keeping it recognizable for the audience. A good example of different technology are the ships. While the ships are capable of hyperspace travel, hyper drives at this point in time are so big and bulky that theyre a separate attachment. Weve seen this in the Star Wars prequel films where ships have a hyper drive ring that they attach to the ship that allows them to travel at light speed. Every ship in this era has to have an attachment because theyre too big and bulky. We see that in Episode 101. When the Polan-717 arrives at Karlach, it detaches from its rear section and makes its way down to the planet.Ultimately, we came down to the simplicity of the single strand [for the whip]. Its down to the nonchalance of how Vernestra Rwoh uses the whip as well. There is the touch of Indiana Jones in the way she flicks it. [Director] Leslye [Headland] was keen to make sure we see that the Lightwhip is not only the badass weapon, but that Vernestra looks like a total badass when she uses it. It is a normal Lightsaber and has been modified to turn into the whip. There is an instance when Vernestra deploys or retracts the whip, and it snaps into a straight blade before returning into the hilt.Julian Foddy, Production Visual Effects SupervisorAmong the extensive simulations for ILM was fire involved with burning down the witch coven castle on Brendok.Full CG elements were among the most complex to design, create and execute. The Coruscant establishers were quite a lot of work to provide all the level of detail of the city and the ships flying in the background, Foddy remarks. For Episode 103, with the big fortress on the top of the mountain [which features fire and destruction], anytime you bring effects simulations into the mix and animation, thats where things get complicated. There were lots of layers going into the composite and multiple departments involved. There is also some complex creature work. In Episode 103, the look development for the translucent butterfly creatures that the girls are playing with at the opening took a long time to get right. There is an almost Jell-O-like feel, and you can see light scattering through them. They had an iridescence to them. That was complex work to get that looking right and feeling natural, in particular when the creature lands on her finger and sits there.Miniatures of the spaceships were created as points of reference by Production Designer Kevin Jenkins.The Acolyte forges its own way narratively and aesthetically. The Acolyte is the first live-action series to explore new characters in a completely new story arc outside of [LEGO Star Wars:] The Skywalker Saga. When Disney acquired Star Wars, there was talk about exploring the Star Wars universe, and that is what The Acolyte is doing. Its allowing existing Star Wars fans to see more of what goes on in the other planets and in the history of the galaxy prior to the times that weve seen in the films. Also, for people new to Star Wars, you come at this fresh and dont have to have seen any of the other films or books because its all new characters. Hopefully, it will open your eyes to the bigger galaxy.

By NAOMI GOLDMANCaptain James Tiberius Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series.(Image courtesy of CBS Studios/Paramount)William Shatner has boldly taken audiences to the final frontier throughout his remarkable seven-decades-long career. As an Emmy-and Golden Globe-winning actor, director, producer, writer and recording artist, Shatner remains one of Hollywoods most recognizable figures. With his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk in the legendary science fiction television series Star Trek: The Original Series and in seven Star Trek movies, Shatner is the originator of one of the most iconic science fiction characters in history.William Shatner has been at the center point of compelling stories that use visual effects to enhance unforgettable storytelling for decades, and his work continues to leave an indelible mark on the cultural landscape, said Nancy Ward, VES Executive Director.For his exceptional work in the epic Star Trek franchise and in recognition of his cinematic legacy that continues to touch new generations of filmmakers, creatives and audiences, the Society recently honored Shatner with the VES Award for Creative Excellence at the 22nd Annual VES Awards.The Twilight Zone episode Nick of Time. (Image courtesy of CBS Photo Archive)With James Spader in Boston Legal.(Photo: Carin Baer. Courtesy of ABC)Shatner became the oldest person to fly into space at age 90 after completing his mission on Blue Origin NS-18 on October 13, 2021. (Image courtesy of Blue Origin/Reuters)The Twilight Zone episode Nightmare At 20,000 Feet. (Image courtesy of CBS Photo Archive)T.J. Hooker. (Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Television)With friend Seth MacFarlane backstage at the 22nd Annual VES Awards after receiving the Societys Creative Excellence Award.(Image courtesy of the VES)Seth MacFarlane, award-winning actor, creator of Family Guy, The Orville and Ted, gave an epic tribute in presenting the Creative Excellence Award to his longtime friend: Star Trek laid out a vision as relevant then as it is today, of a future where we all aspire to be nobly forward-looking and to improve the human condition. It continues to live large in our collective consciousness and remains relevant for generations of viewers. But Star Treks center of gravity has always been William Shatner. Bill has done something we all can only hope to do. He has made a permanent mark on this industry that is all his own. His work will endure for as long as there is an entertainment industry. He is a colossal talent, a great performer who has never lost his sense of curiosity or adventure.In accepting his award, Shatner remarked, This industry is filled with the most creative people; every one of them is an artist who is always thinking ahead. The work is progressing at such a great speed, and its amazing what visual effects can bring to life. In the beginning [of Star Trek], it was just a flashlight and a cardboard Enterprise! Visual effects have become a truly visual organic and immersive experience, and I accept this award for those great artists men and women who work beyond the imagination. Thank you to the Visual Effects Society for bestowing me with this honor.

By NAOMI GOLDMANLifetime Achievement Awards recipient Joyce Cox, VES with her award.Acclaimed Producer and VFX Producer Joyce Cox, VES describes her job as a wire walker between creative goals and financial restrictions, one who helps realize a filmmakers vision to create the best project possible on time and on budget. A self-described lover of puzzles, Cox built a brilliant career out of her innate talent for organizing people and moving parts, a skillset that has branded her a luminary in the world of visual effects producing and one of the most respected producers in our industry.With credits that include Titanic, The Dark Knight, The Great Gatsby, Men in Black 3, Avatar and The Jungle Book, Cox has been instrumental in shaping popular culture for decades, and her work has put VFX squarely at the center of big box office filmed entertainment. She has produced 13,000 visual effects shots with budgets totaling in excess of $750 million and won three VES Awards for her work on Avatar and The Dark Knight. In 2018, Cox was honored with the title of VES Fellow.In recognition of her exceptional career as an educator, changemaker and exceptional contributor to the visual effects craft and global industry, the Society honored Cox with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award at the 22nd Annual VES Awards.After receiving a standing ovation from her peers, Cox shared her appreciation: Im truly honored to be given this prestigious award from the VES celebrating my career, one of the opportunities to facilitate the work of the thousands of artists, technicians and visionaries it took to create these movies. Its been a privilege to work with and learn from so many brilliant, dedicated people who gave life to words on a page, transforming pixels and dreams into worlds that captivate and inspire, and that is nothing short of magic. This award celebrates not just my achievements, but the collective triumphs of a creative community, and shines a light on the value of Visual Effects Producers.Cox continued, Because being a VFX Producer is still a fairly new position in the film industry, we tend to disappear, with most of the emphasis on how VFX is made falling to the VFX Supervisor. But to produce and succeed in this job, you have to understand every departments role and absorb their demands and restrictions and precisely how VFX can support and achieve the end goal of producing the best movie. So having this role recognized by the VES, and me as a woman in this role, means so much.Harkening back to her early life, Cox recounted, Unlike many of in this industry who set their sights early in life for a career in film, I arrived along a circuitous path of happy accidents. I grew up in a small Kansas community in the 50s and 60s. A time and place where most girls, including me, were not mentored toward careers. Certainly not a career in film. Cox highlighted her parents as her first role models. My mother had a brilliant math mind, and my friends referred to my dad as a metaphysical cowboy a poet trapped in a laborers body. They married young and neither had a high school degree. Looking at my moms trajectory, she riveted nose cones on fighters, taught herself how to do the books in the aircraft industry and went on to become one of the first women executives at Boeing Military. That focus and drive to grow and achieve was a great source of inspiration.VES honoree Joyce Cox, VES backstage with VES Chair Kim Davidson, VFX Producer Richard Hollander and VES Executive Director Nancy Ward.I get to explore the diversity of highly creative and exceptionally smart people and be a part of how those minds take words off the page and realize them through an intense process into a beautiful film experience.Joyce Cox, Producer and VFX ProducerCox pursued her education in Kansas, taking classes at Wichita Business School and Kansas City Community College, and got an early exposure to business working in a series of office positions in everything from manufacturing aircraft parts to real estate. Then she was enticed to start her creative career. My brother worked in advertising as an art director in Chicago at hot boutique agencies and his life was really appealing, so I moved to Chicago and started representing artists. It was the mid-70s when I started my first company, Joyce Cox Has Talent, which was really the window into the creative process and the gateway to my future. I was smitten with the way concepts were realized into images and stories for the funniest person I have ever met. In addition to the value of humor, Jim taught me the value of the film professionals and what it takes to execute a production.VFX producing is difficult on both the vendor and client side. It is just amazing how Joyce was able to carve out the Joyce side by asking both the client and the vendor equally hard questions, sometimes in front of each other. I called it the Joyce quasi-state, a place between the two sides. She was able to walk that thin razors edge revealing, with her characteristic humor and wit, the underlying issues and keep the production on track.Richard Hollander, VESVES honoree Joyce Cox, VES shows off her VES Lifetime Achievement Awards.VES honoree Joyce Cox, VES hits the VES Awards red carpet with friends and family.VES Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Joyce Cox, VES shares a warm moment with VFX Producer Richard Hollander before the gala.Cox moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and over the next 15 years produced hundreds of commercials, eventually taking a position as the executive producer for Bruce Dorn Films where she had her first opportunity to work with digital visual effects. In the mid 90s, a time when digital technology was rapidly evolving into its present role as a creative and technical cornerstone for filmmaking, Cox transitioned from the role of commercial producer to producing visual effects for feature films.Several years producing commercials, many involving visual effects, from storyboard concepts to final delivery, proved to be the perfect primer for producing visual effects for movies. One day, a dear friend, Lee Berger, asked me to fill in for him on a project at VIFX, a digital facility that had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. Always looking for a new challenge, I said sure. That was the beginning of the career VES honored with this award. The timing was perfect. I stepped into this world at the beginning of its rapid growth into the massive industry we have today.For the next five years, Cox worked as a facility VFX producer on numerous film projects, including Titanic, Pushing Tin, Fantasia 2000, Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.One of the first projects I worked on at VIFX was Out to Sea with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, then I moved on to Titanic. I was there to help organize the facility to be more effective at a time when that was really needed. Richard Hollander, VES was the President and Senior Visual Effects Supervisor for VIFX under Foxs ownership and for my collaborator on Titanic. I just started asking Richard questions about digital art and how to organize a production workflow. He was a huge influence in providing knowledge and mentorship.Cox continued about her work on Titanic. It was like jumping into the pit of fire and learning under pressure, all at once. Jim [Cameron] was popular, but not like now, and we were looking at a runaway budget while he had the power to hold onto the reins. Plans constantly evolve. Movies are all theory until you shoot and cut and try to actually make them. This experience was intense and challenging, and coincided with my husbands cancer diagnosis, which actually helped me keep perspective on what matters most in life as I went about my job.Jim is one of those uncompromising directors who wants to push things to the edge with the use of technology. The drowning scenes were shot in a tank in Mexico, and since it was very hot, you could not get any visible cold breath coming from the actors. At the time, the capacity to render cloud particles to that degree was unreliable, so we built a black cold room and my husband shot it. We had an actor in black read the lines. We captured his breath and had compositors working on Flame roto-ing hands and placing breath. It was one of many shots that called for our best problem-solving to bring the directors vision to life. And it looked cool.In presenting the VES Lifetime Achievement Award to Cox, Richard Hollander, VES extolled her keen abilities. I began working directly with Joyce as my VFX Producer on several projects including Titanic and Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. I was able to experience her skillsets first hand. She was able to glide through discussions with our clients, portray the situation and tell them the truth, which was not something they always wanted to hear. Even with this frankness, our clients trusted her. There it was. A natural in our VFX workplace. I knew then that her career was only beginning.Hollander continued, VFX producing is difficult on both the vendor and client side. It is just amazing how Joyce was able to carve out the Joyce side by asking both the client and the vendor equally hard questions, sometimes in front of each other. I called it the Joyce quasi-state, a place between the two sides. She was able to walk that thin razors edge revealing, with her characteristic humor and wit, the underlying issues and keep the production on track.VES honoree Joyce Cox, VES celebrates with friends at the VES Awards.Cox was honored with the title of VES Fellow in 2018, presented to her by former VES Board Chair Mike Chambers.In 2000, Cox moved to the production side. Over the next 20+ years, she worked with some of the worlds most talented directors and crews, creating beautiful, powerful and groundbreaking films, including: Superman Returns and X2: X-Men United with Bryan Singer; Avatar with James Cameron; The Dark Knight with Chris Nolan; The Great Gatsby with Baz Luhrmann; Men in Black 3 with Barry Sonnenfeld; and The Jungle Book with Jon Favreau.My time in digital facilities was instrumental because I now had the ability to understand and be compassionate and demanding of facilities. On the production side, I liked being one of the first hired and one of the last out, so I could participate and observe the entire creative process.Looking back at her decades in the film industry, Cox points to her takeaways and what she considers markers of success. I have learned something on every single movie Ive ever done because the technology is moving so fast and is antiquated by the time Ive jumped to the next project. I get to explore the diversity of highly creative and exceptionally smart people and be a part of how those minds take words off the page and realize them through an intense process into a beautiful film experience.During the making of the films, I see all the pieces thousands of times, but when all is done and were in the theater and the audience knows none of the pain it took to birth this project it feels good. It means were giving people something that inspires or enriches their lives.My job is not necessarily the most fun as the one with fiduciary responsibility, but it has also been my love of challenges, of puzzles that has made this such a rewarding career. Motivating people to the common goal of making the best movie on time and on budget is where I have had the opportunity to excel. When asked how I do it? I maintain altitude. I get my ego out of the way to help the team achieve. And together, we navigate the often-rocky journey and create something that is greater than what we could have achieved without this harmonic convergence.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.Capturing Owen Teagues distinct facial expressions allowed the actors face to come through in the character Noa.Where the original Planet of the Apes pushed the boundaries of prosthetic makeup and the prequel trilogy introduced photorealistic CG apes, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes provided an opportunity to expand upon the digital cast members and their ability to speak without relying heavily on sign language.The story takes place approximately 300 years after War for the Planet of the Apes as Proximus Caesar attempts to harness long-lost human technology to create his own primate kingdom. This is about apes all the way through. The world is upside down and the humans are now these feral little creatures running around in the background, states director Wes Ball, who was responsible for The Maze Runner franchise and is laying the groundwork for another Planet of the Apes trilogy. Were going to have more talking, and the apes are going to be acting more human-like because this is marching towards to the 1968 version where they are full-on walking on two legs.Continues Ball, In terms of the visual effects of it all, youve got all of these amazing new developments that Wt FX has done from Avatar: The Way of Water. Rise of the Planet of the Apes came on the heels of the performance capture leap forward. [We looked at] all the tech on Avatar Wt FX had provided, and then we took it outside, Visual Effects Supervisor Erik Winquist recalls. From a hardware and technology standpoint, one of the improvements is now were using a stacked pair of stereo facial cameras instead of single cameras, which allows us to reconstruct an actual 3D depth mesh of the actors face. It allows us to get a much better sense of the nuance of what their face was doing.The beach sequence was inspired in part by the original 1968 movie.Avatar: The Way of Water used old Machine Vision cameras that straddled the matte box on the main hero camera. We did the same thing here in every instance, and it has allowed us to get a wider field of view and also a stereo mesh of whatever was standing in front of the camera, Winquist explains. If we need to harness that to help reconstruct the body performance of what the actors are doing, we can use that as an aid in terms of reconstructing what their limbs were doing that we couldnt see off-screen from the main camera. Unlike the previous three films, this was shot with Panavision anamorphic lenses, so we no longer had that extra real estate above and below the frame lines like we did when we were shooting spherical, so that came in handy there. The other obvious thing that we took from Avatar: The Way of Water was the water itself. There were literally two shots in War for the Planet of the Apes where Caesar goes over the waterfall and winds up in the river down below. Those shots were definitely a struggle back in 2017 when that was done. Since then, with all of the additional tech that had to be done for Avatar: The Way of Water to deal with the interaction of hair and fluids, we could leverage that in this movie to great affect.Kevin Durand had a great time portraying Proximus Caesar, as demonstrated by his vocal performance.The Eagle Clan was modeled on Mongolian cultures that are deeply tied to eagles.The most difficult character design to get right was Noa (Owen Teague), who is shown here with Dar (Sara Wiseman).Clean plates had to be shot without the motion capture performers, which meant that camera operator Ryan Weisen and actress Freya Allan, who plays the human character Mae, had to recreate the camera movement and performance from memory. Ryan has gotten really good in repeating the moves, states Cinematographer Gyula Pados. In the last couple of weeks, Erik came up with the Simulcam system where they can live playback what we shot overlayed on the camera so you could see the actors as simple 3D apes and play it back. It was equally difficult for the cast. Having to act against air is not an ideal situation, Freya Allan admits. That was probably the hardest part of it, of not being able to stare, like have a proper conversation with somebody when youre looking at them at least. I also had to do some bizarre things, like I had to hug the air. The suits and cameras didnt bother me too much. They embody the apes so well that I was more focused on that than what they were wearing or the camera on their head. Though sometimes they had to take the camera off because if they were too close to me, it would start bashing me in the face. I spent more time making fun of them, especially when they had to wear blue suits to interact with me.From a hardware and technology standpoint, one of the improvements is now were using a stacked pair of stereo facial cameras instead of single cameras, which allows us to reconstruct an actual 3D depth mesh of the actors face. It allows us to get a much better sense of the nuance of what their face was doing.Erik Winquist, Visual Effects SupervisorThe amount of dialogue has been increased, with one of the more talkative being the orangutan named Raka, portrayed by Peter Macon.Different cultures were represented by various ape clans. Originally, we were talking about they having their own coins but that never came necessary in our narrative, Production Designer Daniel T. Dorrance explains. The Eagle Clan is primitive and lives off of the land. Nothing from the human environment. Everything is organic, made from the earth. They never went beyond the Forbidden Zone because they knew once youre in the human world, theres danger. For when were traveling, for the most part, we did all of these different things along the way. Noa meets Raka, and were starting to see human elements creep in a little bit. Raka is a picker and has little stashes of things around his place. As we get to the end of the movie with Proximus Caesar, we see that theyre living off the human environment. Everything is made of metal that theyve taken from the ship, and they have turned it into things that help them to survive. Village scenes were not straight forward. You can only capture five people at a time, Dorrance reveals. Normally, in Maze Runner we have a street full of people, and theyre crossing the street doing the things that extras usually do. None of that happened. Youre sitting in front of a whole village set with everything that we dressed in that would normally be people chopping wood or whatever it might be. Those things were there, but no one was doing them on the day. All of that was done in post.Outside of a last-minute production change that saw principal photography take place in Australia rather than New Zealand, the trickiest part of shooting outdoors was the amount of greens required. Part of the fun of this movie is [observing up close how] so much time has passed that our world is slowly erasing, Ball states. There is this great story about these guys when they found all of these ruins in South America that at first looked like a mountain. They didnt realize that it was a giant pyramid until they cleared away thousands of years of overgrowth and trees. I loved that concept for our world, and thats how we get to the 1968 version where there are Forbidden Zones and whole areas of worlds that have been lost to time. Thats what were building in this world. This sense of the Lost World living underneath Noas nose, and one that he has to uncover and learn about and ultimately be affected and changed by it.Decommissioned coal factories and power plants were photographed and painted over digitally to create ruined buildings overtaken by centuries of vegetation. One of the things that I was looking at early on was the book The World Without Us that hypothesizes what would happen in the weeks, years, decades and centuries after mankind stopped maintaining our infrastructure, Winquist explains. You start pulling from your imagination what that might look like, and we had concept art to fallback on. We started from the bones of some the skyscrapers that Wt FX did for Wes The Maze Runner films, stripping away all of the glass, turning all of the girders into rust and then going crazy with our plant dressing toolset to essentially cover it up. The great thing is we still had that live-action basis that we could always refer back to. What was the wind doing? How much flutter in the leaves? You have a solid baseline for moving forward.A daunting task was getting the look of the protagonist right. When we first saw some of the concept art for what Wes had in mind for Noa, I was like, He looks a lot like Caesar in terms of the skin pigmentation and the specific way the groom sat,Winquist acknowledges. Some of that is deliberate, but Noa is his own ape in every way. We learned back on Gollum to incorporate the features of the actor into the character. Everybody has some amount of asymmetry to their face. but Owen Teague has this distinct slight difference in where his eyes sit in his face. What we ended up doing was mimicking a lot of those asymmetries. Often, when Owen would play frustrated or apprehensive, he does something distinct with his lips. There were some key expressions that we wanted to make sure that we nailed. When its working, its beautiful because you suddenly see the actors face coming through the character.Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes benefited from the stereo facial cameras that allowed for 3D mesh to be constructed of what the actors face was doing.The actor provides the soul of the character, but it is the animator who needs to figure out what that means in the context of an apes face.Concept art was assembled into a book by Wes Ball that was provided to the entire team and updated weekly.The culture and architecture of the Eagle Clan reflects their mantra of living off the land.Fortunately for Editor Dan Zimmerman, he had an established shorthand with Ball after cutting The Maze Runner trilogy and considering the mammoth task ahead of him, which saw him recruit his former first assistant editor Dirk Westervelt as a co-editor on the project. First of all, it was daunting because I have never done any version of this movie or production before in my life, Zimmerman reveals. I was like, They shoot a scene. I get the scene. I cut the scene. The cores of what you have are what they are. But sometimes you truly have limitless options. You can do what you want and not only with shot selection and performance. You can choose a word from one performance and put it into a different performance because someone didnt say that word right or flubbed it, or you can stitch performances together to create a performance that then goes into a shot. I had to wrap my mind around that whole aspect of cutting. I would turn the monitors off because what I would try to do is listen to the takes and try to figure out if I were to watch this scene what are the best performances of the scene that I want to make work, and the flow of it. I would basically do like an audio assembly of all of the different performances and go, That looks good. And then turn the picture back on and ask, What mess am I into now? And figure out from there how to manipulate it and then after that choose the shot that those performances go into. It was a whole process for me. There was a definitely a learning curve.Scenes and environments were mapped out in Unreal Engine. In terms of set work and set extension work, we used a lot of Unreal Engine in this movie, Dorrance explains. Every set that we designed and drew, and location, we would actually plug it into Unreal Engine and have it in real-time lighting. Wes likes to work in Unreal Engine so he can play with his camera moves. In doing that I have to extend it anyway in that environment, otherwise Im only dealing with the foreground. We continued to design the world beyond for every set possible. Cinematographer Pados also took advantage of Unreal Engine. Theres a big action sequence, which I thought maybe we can do in one shot, and I could build it and show it to everyone. It was like, This is what I thought. What do you think? That part is useful for me because before that you would start to talk and people were nodding, but you see that they cant see it. Sometimes I feel that using Unreal Engine has changed my life over the last couple of years. I can show them scenes, and its much easier for me to translate, Pados says. Improvements were made by Wt FX in profiling cameras. For the first time, we have actually built a device to measure the light transmission through the lenses in terms of what the lens are doing spectrally to work into our whole spectral rendering pipeline, Manuka, Winquist remarks. That has been one of those elusive pieces of information that we have never had before. Its not a huge thing visually, but it has been an interesting additional to our spectral rendering pipeline.All of the media in the cutting room was made available online for Wt FX. We were able to quickly hand over bins of cuts that would then relink to our media, which was the same on the Wt FX side in New Zealand, Zimmerman states. We call it Wttorial, and James Meikle [Senior Visual Effects Editor, Wt FX] was amazing over there. Basically, he and my visual effects editors, Logan Breit and Danny Walker, would communicate and say, He changed this. Were going to send you a bin, but then were going to send the paperwork with it. James could then open up that bin, and we could tag it in a way that he could see what the change was, or if it was a performance swap or something like that. James could then easily relay to Animation Supervisor Paul Story what the change was and when to expect the change and all of the data to make the change happen.Freya Allan is one of two human characters, with the rest of the principal cast being CG primates.Nature reclaiming areas once inhabited by ancient civilizations was a major visual motif.Proximus Caesar believes that ancient human technology is the key in being able to establish a kingdom.Some shots had to be done entirely in CG.The hardest part for Ball has been the sheer process of making Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Ball notes. To shoot something that isnt really the image, from the clean plates all the way to the end of making choices about shots, and looking at storyboards and not seeing that for six months until the last two weeks when you cant change it [is frustrating and difficult]. And it all has to come back together. I talk about this idea of the clich movie scene of the waiter with a whole bunch of stuff on a tray. He falls and it all goes up in the air and somehow it all comes back down and lands. Thats what were doing. How do you make something that feels organic, real, spontaneous and alive, but its so slowly pieced together by choices made over years? That has been a hell of a learning experience for me and a fun one. I enjoy a good challenge.

By CHRIS McGOWANOne of the biggest VFX achievements on Masters of the Air was the focus on historical detail, which carried over to the depth of the effects highlighted by a complex choreography of hundreds of planes in battle, diving, zooming past and breaking contrails.(Images courtesy of DNEG 2024 Apple Inc.)Big-screen VFX continues to stretch the small screen, and the effects keep getting more essential and cinematic, as evidenced by the shows eligible in the Outstanding Special Visual Effects categories (in a Season or a Movie or in a Single Episode) of the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 15. The contenders represent a rich segment of the VFX work that has become the backbone of high-end episodic television, including world-building, digi-doubles, face replacements, de-aging, simulations, environmental and invisible VFX. Following is a look at some impressive VFX-infused TV/streaming shows poised for an Emmy nomination, with VFX supervisors revisiting their VFX highlights.When it comes to world-building, no canvas is broader or more complex than sci-fi. The largest VFX challenge on Season 2 of Foundation was executing all of the different types of visual effects required on the show while maintaining the quality we had established on Season 1, states Visual Effects Supervisor Chris MacLean. The variety of visual effects was daunting given we had to complete complex CG environments, CG creatures, giant CG mechas, CG destruction, water simulation, CG vehicles, and holograms, just to name a few. If we are talking about a challenging sequence, I would have to say that the escape from Synnax in Episode 202 was one of the most difficult. There were a lot of practical sets and stunt work that had to seamlessly integrate with CG water simulation and stunt work. Beki, our domesticated Bishops Claw, was a huge win for us. Knowing how difficult it is to make a ridable CG animal feel grounded in reality, the team planned and executed this flawlessly.Jason Zimmerman, VFX Supervisor on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds for Paramount+, embraces the opportunity to add to the Star Trek legacy. A big challenge with any Star Trek show is always working with canon on some of the fans most beloved characters, ships and effects, he says. In the case of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, we saw more of the Gorn than had been seen in many years. In addition to the stellar work from Legacy Effects in creating the practical Gorn, we worked to augment it with additional facial animation, drool, breath, etc. We also did entirely CG shots of the Gorn or CG Gorn with practical actor interaction to help tell the story in the final episode of the season. It was crucial to our showrunners that we seamlessly integrate the CG moments with the practical to aid in the storytelling.Season 4 of For All Mankind saw a huge expansion of the Happy Valley Mars Base, which included designing and creating dozens of new modules, landing pads, roads, terra-forming, vehicles and connecting infrastructure to show the huge growth over roughly a decade. (Images courtesy of AppleTV+)Zimmerman points to the Gorn fight and the conclusion of the last episode of the season as peak experiences. In addition to the full-CG Gorn, facial performance enhancements and fight sequence, we had the scene take place on a backdrop of a partially destroyed ship hull destined to crash. Combining the practical and CG fight action and set extensions inside, with the exterior full CG beats as the ship begins to enter the nearby planets atmosphere, was both challenging and fun to play with as a team and with our vendors. The full CG exterior shots and destroyed ship assets were massive, requiring quite a bit of simulation in the debris field, re-entry fire and smoke, etc. Cut together with the interior fight scene with CG Gorn, along with the eventual escape of our heroes to the exterior in what became a full-CG shot with digi doubles, was quite challenging but ended up as one of our favorite shots during our tenure on the show.Complex CG environments, CG creatures, giant CG mechas, CG destruction, water simulation, CG vehicles and holograms were just a few of the many VFX tasks required on Season 2 of Foundation. (Images courtesy of AppleTV+)Beki, the domesticated Bishops Claw, was a big success for VFX on Season 2 of Foundation, knowing how difficult it was to make a ridable CG animal grounded in reality.(Image courtesy of AppleTV+)Orchestrating the wide variety and different types of VFX work necessary to bring the story to life was a daunting task for Jay Worth, Visual Effects Supervisor on Fallout for Amazon Prime Video show. I have worked on shows in the past where they were primarily a set extension show or genre or world-building, Worth says. However, in this one we had everything. We needed to help create the overall look and feel of the world we were inhabiting. We needed to develop multiple real-time environments for use in Unreal for shooting on a volume. We had multiple creatures with various skins and textures. We had human characters that needed photorealistic replacements to portions of their face. We had characters we were de-aging using new and cutting-edge methods. And unique hard-surface vehicles that needed to match 1:1 to practical production vehicles as well as a lead character that needed to have a CG nose replacement throughout the entire series.Worth and his team fell in love with the Cyclops. I remember [Executive Producer] Graham [Wagner] calling me to say they wanted to do a cyclops, Worth recalls. When we started to talk about it, I realized how crucial this character was and how nuanced his performance would be. So, we tested a few methodologies a pure compositing approach and an AI-generated approach. However, both of those had limitations in terms of the variety of environments we were shooting in along with performance flexibility we knew we would need. Chris Parnells performance was the primary thing we knew we needed to nail if we were going to pull this off, so we partnered with our long-time collaborators at Important Looking Pirates in Sweden and were ecstatic with the results. We were able to capture Chriss performance, the humor, heart and nuance, while creating a full CG effect. I feel like we were able to push past the uncanny valley.Visual Effects Supervisor Douglas Purver adhered to an extraordinary level of detail for Season 2 of HBOs The Gilded Age. With a show this opulent in its set design, costumes and more, theres been a fine line to walk with the effects work. We dont ever want to call attention to ourselves while maintaining the level of detail that seamlessly blends in with whats captured on camera. Most of the time we can use elements from whats practically there. Im constantly taking stills of textures and architectural details, or we bring in a team to get high-resolution scans. But often we are creating things from scratch and finding a real-world reference is challenging, involving a deep dive into historical texts and postcards or a significant collaboration with our production designer and locations department to find elements that can fit into our world.The seasons climax found Purver and his team at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House, which was filmed in three different locations, weeks apart from one another, at a stage in Albany, New York, the main Opera House in Philadelphia and a set of five opera boxes built on our film stages, Purver details. Getting them all to sit together, especially when the camera wraps around Bertha as she enters her box for the first time, was extremely satisfying. Building the CG crowd to blend with our tiled plates filled the entire venue and gave it the grand opening it deserved. Being able to collaborate with the production designer on how much to build and where, with the cinematographer on light placements how and when to move the camera the director on which story pieces to shoot where, along with the amazing VFX team who contributed countless hours to allow the viewer to stay in the moment and marvel at this climactic, cinematic moment in our story was just a fantastic experience.Adding to the legacy was an opportunity and a challenge for the VFX team on Season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, as they explored new worlds and new ways to combine the CG moments with the practical to aid in the storytelling. (Image courtesy of Paramount+)Orchestrating the wide variety and different types of VFX work necessary to bring the story to life was a daunting task for the VFX team on Fallout, including the development of multiple real-time environments for use in Unreal Engine for shooting on a volume. (Image courtesy of Amazon Prime Video)Tim Crosbie, Visual Effects Supervisor on Season 3 of The Witcher for Netflix, called out Episode 6 where almost every shot required some form of VFX, from the spells cast during the battle to the many set extensions throughout all of the exterior fights, then the destruction of Tor Lara and Aretuza towards the end. Our on-set teams had their work cut out. We knew we needed to provide very accurate lighting and LiDAR data to ensure that post-production ran as smoothly as possible because the schedule was going to be tight to get all the shots through. All of our vendors came to the party and produced really beautiful work to help tell the story. This show was one of the more collaborative ones Ive worked on, with everyone pulling in the same direction. I think the most satisfying accomplishment for us in VFX was how much value we were able to bring to the story.Charlie Lehmer, Visual Effects Supervisor on All the Light We Cannot See for Netflix, cited the rampart run sequence in Episode 4 as the most challenging. Early on in pre-production, director Shawn Levy emphasized the need for its immense scale, leading us to explore numerous shooting solutions. However, as ambition grew, on-location filming became unfeasible. Constructing a fully-CG, period-accurate St. Malo [an historic port city in France] environment demanded rigorous research and planning. The core difficulty lay in marrying historical fidelity with our artistic narrative vision. Lehmer says. We dedicated a week to thoroughly scanning and photographing St. Malo. Archival footage, both pre-and post-bombing, was further analyzed to ensure as much accuracy as possible. ILM did an amazing job digitally transforming the modern town into its 1944 counterpart. The result was a full CG city of St. Malo, procedurally built to allow for extensive bombing and collapse of various buildings.Crafting the detailed destruction of St. Malo was a great source of pride for the VFX team. Much of our ground-based filming was set in the charming Villefranche-de-Rouergue, Lehmer reveals. Digitally transforming it into a ravaged postwar St. Malo presented a considerable yet rewarding challenge. We aimed to surpass conventional depictions of bombed-out cities which focus solely on brick and mortar, instead prioritizing granular detail for profound visual impact. Our rubble wasnt mere debris; it was imbued with poignant elements: teddy bears, pianos and intricate paintings lending an unsettlingly personal dimension.John Haley, Visual Effects Supervisor on Marvel Studios Echo for Disney+, was heavily focused on the main action sequences in Episode 2. Bushto and the train heist presented challenges due to their scope and complexity. Recreating the Choctaw Bushto environment for the stickball sequence, which takes place in the year 1200 AD in what is now Alabama, required careful research. The production and VFX teams worked with historians and cultural consultants to ensure that the sensitive historical details were correct. All the shots in the sequence were augmented with visual effects to make the game and scene as realistic as possible. The team at ILM thoughtfully created the environment and CG background characters to portray life in 1200 AD before the arrival of Europeans.An extraordinary level of detail was required for Season 2 of The Gilded Age. Working in close collaboration with the production designer, the VFX team referenced historical texts and postcards to produce effects that seamlessly blended in with what was captured on camera. (Images courtesy of HBO)Almost every shot required some form of VFX on Episode 6, Season 3 of The Witcher, from the spells cast during battle to the many set extensions throughout the exterior fights, to the destruction of Tor Lara and Aretuza. (Images courtesy of Netflix)Continues Haley, [For the train heist], combining live-action acting, stunt performances, digital doubles, face replacements, practical train cars, CG train cars and effects in photographed and digital environments seamlessly into the action-packed Train Heist sequence was no easy feat. When Maya Lopez plunges off the highway overpass onto the speeding train below, the VFX team used all of those resources to achieve the shot transitioning from the plate photography of Alaqua Cox to stunt photography on blue screen to a full Maya digital double, back to Alaqua on a bluescreen, all in a photorealistic all-CG environment. Whew! We wanted the train heist sequence to feel grounded and gritty, choosing camera positions as if we were shooting the scene on a fast-moving train or from a pursuit vehicle. Day-for-night train array plates were shot and color-graded, then used as a basis for the environment. Then, the nighttime environments were modeled and designed to give a sense of speed, danger and depth. Each shot was balanced and composited so it appeared as though it was photographed using only available moonlight and artificial practical light sources.Haley adds, Orchestrating the collaboration between ILM and Digital Domain to create and bring the photoreal Biskinik bird to life [was also an accomplishment]. We were very pleased with the look, animation and attention to detail of the final shots. With the Biskinik bird being such a big part of Choctaw tradition, and Mayas story, it was important that the bird be completely believable.The audiences emotional reaction, particularly from fans of the book, to a couple of moments in Episode 8, the season finale, stood out to Andy Scrase, Visual Effects Supervisor on Season 2 of The Wheel of Time for Amazon Prime Video. One was the death of Hopper. The performance of our Czech Wolfdog, Ka Lupinka, was fantastic! We supplemented that performance with an animated color flash to the eyes and added a pool of blood from Hoppers fatal neck wound forming around the head. I think that little addition emotionally pushed everyone over the edge! It was straight-forward VFX work, but it gave such a payoff because it complemented the performance and initiated sadness and horror among those watching.Not long after Hoppers death in the episode is Mat Cauthon blowing the Horn of Valere. Again, Scrase notes, this seemed to get a big reaction with the book fans, but at the other end [of ] the emotional scale. Seeing the Heroes of the Horn form and emerge from a localized mystical fog brought a certain degree of euphoria. The fog moment features in the second book [The Great Hunt], and so it felt important to keep that component. We then used influences from the Hindi festival of Holi, fireworks exploding in thick smoke, and some beautiful photography I found of dancers holding poses in clouds of powdered paint to inspire the heroes appearing in our CG fog. The low of Hoppers death almost immediately followed by the excitement of Mat blowing the Horn heightened the emotional reaction from those in the audience. For me, it showed how our work in the industry is not just about flashy effects or seamless additions; it can emotionally contribute to a scene and an audiences reaction.Christopher Townsend, VFX Supervisor on Season 2 of Marvel Studios Loki for Disney+, had many loose threads and strands to tie up for the finale of the limited series. Creating some of the CG environments so they still fit in with the lo-fi, analog visual style of the whole show was challenging, particularly when outside the TVA, with swirling prismatic flares, a disintegrating spaceman-like suit and a massive floating loom weaving threads of time. The unique and original spaghettification and time-slipping effects were designed to fit within the visual motif of time represented as lines, threads and strands. The final tree-like Yggdrasil galactic image, showing the transformed timelines with Loki at its heart, felt like a beautiful and epic moment to end the show.Constructing a fully-CG, period-accurate city of St. Malo in France for All the Light We Cannot See, ILM digitally transformed the modern town into its 1944 counterpart. The fully CG St. Malo was procedurally built to allow for extensive bombing and collapseof buildings. (Images courtesy of Netflix)The production and VFX teams on Echo worked with historians and cultural consultants to ensure the accuracy of sensitive historical details. The Creation Pools sequence was rooted in Choctaw lore. Digi-doubles were made for the main Choctaw characters. VFX enhanced the realism. (Images courtesy of Marvel Studios)For Jay Redd, VFX Supervisor on Season 4 For All Mankind for Apple TV+, the biggest challenge was the sheer variety of VFX work for Season 4 and for every season of the show, and keeping our feet firmly planted in real physics and science while bending the rules here and there to serve the storytelling, he says. While we are an alternate timeline show, our approach is hard science. We put a major effort into making sure things feel real in space, on Mars and on Earth. A lot of this work comes early in the previs stages, me working with The Third Floor in designing shots and sequences, working on physics, pacing, and scale. We work hand-in-hand with our astronaut and technical consultants to keep things as realistic and scientifically accurate as we can, knowing there are times when drama and story call for changing the pace and timings of certain events, like ships docking, landings, etc.Redd continues, This year, we had two big challenges: the huge expansion of the Happy Valley Mars Base and the Asteroid Captures. Happy Valley was a 50-fold expansion from Season 3, so there was a massive amount of work in designing and creating the dozens of new modules, landing pads, roads, terra-forming, vehicles, and connecting infrastructure to show the huge growth over roughly a decade. We worked very closely with production design to make sure we integrated our look from Season 3 while also showing the epic scale of growth in Season 4. The DNEG Montreal team, led by VFX Supervisor Mo Sobhy, did an amazing job in hitting a massive amount of detail across the base and multiple landscapes under varying lighting and atmospheric conditions.The Asteroid captures in the beginning and the end posed major challenges for Redd and his team. Once again, we needed to make things as plausible and scientifically accurate as we could while serving a dramatic and emotional story, he states. Working with very limited set pieces on small stages, we had dozens of shots that are fully CG, partial live-action and hybrid/mid-shot blends utilizing extensions, digi-doubles, face replacements and big simulations for asteroid pebbles, rock and dust. The designs of the asteroids are based on real existing asteroids, and capture ships and mechanisms come from real-world examples and future-looking potential endeavors. We had conceptual challenges in showing ships firing engines but appearing to be moving backwards, and slowing asteroids to enter Mars orbit. The Ghost VFX team in Copenhagen, Denmark, led by VFX Supervisor Martin Grdeler did an incredible job in working with me on a ton of scope and detail in the models and simulations, and very specific lighting cues to show the scale and reality of these scenes.The uniquely original spaghettification and time-slipping effects for Loki were designed to fit within the visual motif of time represented as lines, threads and strands. The final tree-like Yggdrasil galactic image, showing the transformed timelines with Loki at its heart, dramatically closed out the show. (Image courtesy of Marvel Studios)Daniel Rauchwerger, Visual Effects Supervisor on Silo for Apple TV+, found that his biggest VFX challenge was the open-space, curved mega structure of the silo, where in every shot we see, continuous to the plate, a crowd that behaves naturally and actively reacts to the actions of our characters and tensions in the silo, he says. We had to make the natural feel of a living, breathing underground city where 10,000 people live, and make sure that we get the organic texture of movement and life combined with the mechanics and inner workings of the silo seamlessly. We are very proud that we managed to bring the character of the silo to life in an invisible way and become something the audience does not think about and instead accepts the silo and its residents as real, hopefully not thinking about VFX.Most challenging for the VFX team on Silo was the open-spaced, curved mega structure and creating the natural feel of a living, breathing underground city where 10,000 people dwell. (Image courtesy of AppleTV+)For Ben Turner, Visual Effects Supervisor for Season 6 of The Crown for Netflix, fidelity to character and story was paramount and going unnoticed was an achievement. The story of Princess Dianas death brought with it perhaps the most expectations, and the greatest burden of responsibility, of any subject we tackled in the preceding 52 episodes. It was clear from the beginning that the subject would have to be handled sensitively and our VFX team was at the heart of achieving this.Explains Turner, One of our biggest VFX challenges of the final series came in Episode 3 [Dis-Moi Oui]. A central location to the scenes in this episode was the famous Ritz Hotel, located in Place Vendome in Paris. The art department built a partial set [for the doorway of The Ritz] on the backlot at Elstree Studios in London. Our team created the rest of the enormous square in 3D, using extensive LiDAR scanning and photography of the real location in Paris. We then tweaked the CG to better match the art department build in order to create a seamless environment. The scenes required a building sense of frantic claustrophobia; we helped to heighten this by adding crowds and additional photographers to the square surrounding the characters and their cars.The low of Hoppers death almost immediately followed by the excitement of Mat blowing the Horn [of Valere] just heightened the emotional reaction from those in the audience. For me, it showed how our work in the industry is not just about flashy effects or seamless additions, but it can emotionally contribute to a scene and an audiences reaction.Andy Scrase, Visual Effects Supervisor, The Wheel of TimeThe VFX for Season 2 of The Wheel of Time demonstrated that the work isnt about flashy effects and seamless additions, but contributing to the story to evoke an emotional response from the audience. (Image courtesy of Amazon Prime Video)The VFX for Episode 8, the season finale of The Wheel of Time, was designed to complement performance. (Images courtesy of Amazon Prime Video)A VFX highlight for Turner occurred in the same episode. It sees a teenage Prince William shoot his first stag in the Highlands of Scotland. We were tasked with creating the animal fully in CG, together with tweaks to the environment, for a scene in which our work was literally in the crosshairs. We also had to make the CG creature match a real stag used on location for close-up shots of the animal. This required sculpting and grooming the model, to have an exact match for the antlers and fur coloring. It was a short sequence but very satisfying, as I dont think people will question it for a moment. These invisible effects sequences typify the VFX work on The Crown. We help bring the writers and directors visions to life but aim to maintain a quality, which means that the viewer would have no idea of the enormous amount of work thats gone into our shots.Working on a high-flying, high-profile project like Masters of the Air for Apple TV+ was technically and creatively challenging for DNEG VFX Supervisor Xavier Bernasconi. There were months spent on virtual production, featuring air battles with hundreds of planes in a war theatre on a scale never done before. DNEGs VFX work covered thousands of shots taking place over thousands of kilometers, including accurate 1940s 3D landscapes and cloudscapes from Greenland and Algeria to Norway and the South of France, all with hundreds of plane models, liveries and damaged variations performing in extremely complex choreography while being truthful to every historical detail, he explains.Masters of the Air was the biggest launch ever for Apple TV+. Viewership climbed after the premiere. Bernasconi notes, This meant that with DNEGs work we were able to engage the viewers and tell a believable and compelling story, while wrangling thousands of people across the globe to deliver incredibly complex work. Historians, air pilots and veterans alike have praised the attention to historical details in the VFX work.One of the shows biggest achievements was keeping that laser focus on historical detail, which carries over to the depth of the effects. The show has so many incredibly stunning shots, Bernasconi says. Everyone was crafted with the highest level of detail. If I had to pick [one outstanding shot] Id say the wide shots with hundreds of planes raging in battle each crewed with digi-doubles, fighters zooming past at 600mph breaking the stillness of contrails, and with realistic choreography of the events are a visual testament to the incredible work that our DNEG team produced.Netflixs 3 Body Problem, One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender, Amazon Primes Gen V, FXs Shgun, AMCs The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and Disneys Percy Jackson and the Olympians are among the other series eligible to be nominated.

By CHRIS McGOWANImages courtesy of Universal Studios, except where noted.In The Fall Guy, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) a stunt double for action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) suffers a horrific accident in a 12-story stunt fall in a building atrium. While recovering, Colt withdraws from both the film business and camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), with whom he had been having an on-the-set romance. Eighteen months later, Colt re-emerges when Toms producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddington) invites him to do stunt work on Metalstorm, an epic sci-fi movie directed by Jody, whose career is taking off, and starring Tom. However, when Colt arrives at the shoot, he learns that Tom has gone missing. Gail tasks Colt with finding him or the studio will pull the plug on Metalstorm and, with it, Jodys ambitions. Meanwhile, Colt is doing all that he can to win back an aggrieved Jody.Stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is suspended from a camera crane attached to a pickup driven by director Judy Moreno (Emily Blunt) in The Fall Guy, directed by former stuntman David Leitch.The plot of Universals The Fall Guy allows for a smorgasbord of dangerous feats, including a 150-foot fall out of a helicopter, a 225-foot truck jump, and a world record of 8 car cannon rolls. It is a spectacular ode to stunt work inspired by the 80s TV series of the same name. The frenetic action is directed by former stuntman David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train). While The Fall Guy is a tribute to old-school stunts, it is also proof that stunts, practical effects and visual effects can live harmoniously together.The over-the-top VFX for the Metalstorm movie-within-a-movie included fighting aliens, explosions and spacecraft. Flying through the air, leaping and sword-wielding were made possible by rigs and wires that were later painted out.David [Leitch] knows how to use VFX in his films to help the story. We had one rule when it came to the VFX on The Fall Guy Dont. Touch. The. Stunt. Everything else in the frame was pretty much fair game if it helped tell the story. The movie is stunt driven, a movie about a stuntman directed by a stuntman. The stunts are real. Thats the whole heart and soul of the film.Matt Sloan, Production VFX SupervisorProduction VFX Supervisor Matt Sloan comments, Working with David [Leitch], he is hugely inclusive and knows how to use VFX in his films to help the story. We had one rule when it came to the VFX on The Fall Guy Dont. Touch. The. Stunt. Everything else in the frame was pretty much fair game if it helped tell the story. The movie is stunt driven, a movie about a stuntman directed by a stuntman. The stunts are real. Thats the whole heart and soul of the film.To work on a movie inspired by a cult classic like The Fall Guy was a great experience, says Cinesite VFX Supervisor Jennifer Meire. The original series was known for its practical stunts and effects, so there was a delicate balance to strike between honoring the nostalgic elements and incorporating the more modern visual effects. She adds, Director David Leitchs background as a stunt performer and action designer brought a valuable perspective to the creative process, which led to some seriously mind-blowing action sequences. He and Matt Sloan had a clear vision for how the visual effects could enhance the storytelling and action sequences, and their expectations were focused on achieving a seamless integration of practical and digital effects to create great shots.The Fall Guy focused on executing difficult old-school stunts and practical effects that were cleaned up and amplified with the help of VFX.The Fall Guy was written by Drew Pearce and produced by Kelly McCormick, Guymon Casady, Gosling and Leitch. Jonathan Sela was Director of Photography, David Scheunemann helmed Production Design, Dan Oliver was Special Effects Supervisor and Chris McClintock served as Production VFX Producer. Contributing visual effects studios included Framestore (VFX Supervisor Nicolas Chevallier), Rising Sun Pictures (VFX Supervisor Matt Greig), Crafty Apes (VFX Supervisor Jordan Schilling), Opsis (VFX Supervisor Tefft Smith II) and Cinesite (Meire). Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) surfs with sparks flying on a tailgate across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia.[For the 225-foot truck jump] Logan Holladay jumped that car across the canyon on set. Utterly terrifying to watch. Naturally, there were a ton of cameras on that shot. For The Fall Guy movie [not Metalstorm] we cleaned a bunch of cameras out along with some crew vehicles and some distracting power lines in the BG. The Jody double got such a shock when the car suddenly roared over her that she did not pan her prop camera, so we fixed that as well. It was a perfect example of VFX being used to support a 100% real stunt.Matt Sloan, Production VFX SupervisorFor his work on The Fall Guy, Chris OHara received the first ever Stunt Designer credit from the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America. The recognition is well overdue, according to Sloan. If you think VFX has it bad when it comes to under-recognition, its nothing compared to the stunt department. These guys work hard. Like really hard. The planning and prep that went into the stunts on The Fall Guy were insane. Its a long and meticulous process, and it should be that shit is really dangerous. On top of that, the daily discipline required to maintain the levels of fitness and agility for each stunt performers skill set is incredible.Trucks on the beach readying for a cannon roll, which set a world record at 8 vehicle rolls. (Photo: Eric Laciste)Sloan continues, Of course the math part isnt sexy, so youll never really see that stuff in any of the behind-the-scenes footage. You just see a guy flying through the air, and you think, That looks cool. But in the end, the designer takes responsibility for a series of decisions and calculations that, if incorrect, could result in a member of their team and usually a friend being seriously injured or worse. Designing stunts is a high-stress, serious job and deserves any and all recognition that comes its way.Director David Leitch, left, readies a helicopter stunt with Ryan Gosling onboard for a Metalstorm sequence. (Photo: Eric Laciste)The Fall Guy had several death-defying stunts. The 225-foot truck jump was practical, Sloan says. Logan Holladay jumped that car across the canyon on set. Utterly terrifying to watch. Naturally, there were a ton of cameras on that shot. For The Fall Guy movie [not Metalstorm] we cleaned a bunch of cameras out along with some crew vehicles and some distracting power lines in the BG. The Jody double got such a shock when the car suddenly roared over her that she did not pan her prop camera, so we fixed that as well. It was a perfect example of VFX being used to support a 100% real stunt.Because the original Fall Guy TV series was known for its practical stunts and effects, Cinesite VFX Supervisor Jennifer Meire aimed for a balance between nostalgic elements and modern VFX. (Images courtesy of Cinesite and Universal Pictures)The high back-fall was again, real, Sloan explains. Troy Brown back-flipped from a helicopter and fell 150 feet into an airbag. Watching that happen in front of you is incredibly unnerving I did not realize I was holding my breath until the thumbs up came from the bag. Pure spectacle. VFX-wise, for safety reasons, we used a static helicopter buck as the platform for him to jump off. We replaced the helicopter buck so it could still be spinning in continuity with the rest of the sequence and added smoke from the gunshot damage. We did not touch the stunt itself!The Metalstorm shots were the antithesis of The Fall Guy, Massive, overwhelming VFX silliness. We threw everything in there. Fighting aliens, explosions, spacecraft and we even blew up the moon why not! A lot of the Metalstorm shots were shot deliberately as Metalstorm shots, but some were not. We had a VFX team getting data with cams and ref on pretty much every shot on the film because we really did not know on a shot-to-shot basis where we would have to step in.Matt Sloan, Production VFX SupervisorStunt double Ben Jenkin in flames on the set of The Fall Guy. Backup with a fire extinguisher is at the ready. (Photo: Eric Laciste)Each sequence is a series of different shots, each with its own VFX or stunt considerations, Sloan remarks. At the beginning of production, I told Chris [OHara] that I did not care how many wires/support equipment we needed to paint out as long as it was safe. He was great at minimizing the work we needed to do, but there were instances where we had a huge amount of rigging to remove, especially if it was Ryan and not one of the doubles. We opted for bluescreen for a lot of the interior car work; to shoot that practically would be too costly in terms of time. Time is the most expensive asset you have when you are shooting. David is super aware of this, and shooting that material on stage was just economically sensible. The work is perfectly serviceable to the story, and we could utilize that time-saving for larger, more complex shots/sequences. There was other bluescreen work on and off throughout the movie. Sloan notes, Our grip team had a bunch of fly-in screens that we could run onto the set if something came up that required them. In saying that, this movie used less bluescreen than any other Ive been involved in. [Yet it] also used more roto than any Ive been involved in!The stunt structure with wires for Ryan Gosling`s 12-story fall inside a building atrium.When it came to post-production [on the Metalstorm shots] and we started fleshing out the shots, it just kept going bigger and bigger. I always loved the telling silence from Nicolas Chevallier, our [VFX] Supe at Framestore, on our calls each time we would increase the scope in these shots. More explosions!, More aliens!, More lasers! and, of course, The moon should explode on frame 67. They took it in stride and produced some very fun and technically spectacular shots.Matt Sloan, Production VFX SupervisorThe use of visual effects was extensive for the movie within the movie. The Metalstorm shots were the antithesis of The Fall Guy, Sloan explains. Massive, overwhelming VFX silliness. We threw everything in there. Fighting aliens, explosions, spacecraft, and we even blew up the moon why not! A lot of the Metalstorm shots were shot deliberately as Metalstorm shots, but some were not. We had a VFX team getting data with cams and ref on pretty much every shot on the film because we really did not know on a shot-to-shot basis where we would have to step in. When it came to post-production and we started fleshing out the shots, it just kept going bigger and bigger. He continues, I always loved the telling silence from Nicolas Chevallier, our [VFX] Supe at Framestore, on our calls each time we would increase the scope in these shots. More explosions!, More aliens!, More lasers! and, of course, The moon should explode on frame 67. They took it in stride and produced some very fun and technically spectacular shots.One of the most dangerous stunts in the film is a 150-foot fall out of a helicopter. Here, Gosling hangs from a helicopter buck to capture the shot, though it was stuntman Troy Brown who back-flipped from a helicopter and fell 150 feet into an airbag.For Sloan, the Bin Truck chase was the most challenging sequence involving VFX. It was an incredibly complex, fast-moving sequence that made us utilize pretty much every trick we had, he says. We had multiple driving rigs, vehicles, doubles, locations and, of course, massive stunts. Face replacements, CG vehicles, background changes, adding sparks, huge rig removals. Added to that, we were shooting multiple cameras, so you never knew which angle was going to land in the cut. Some were great, and some were absolute monsters of roto and prep. There was a huge amount of work in that sequence, and the Framestore team did an amazing job.The third act with the helicopter work was a close second for most challenging, Sloan says. We utilized [a] helicopter buck for the majority of the sequence, and Rising Sun Pictures absolutely rose to the challenge, adding rotors, downwash, rotor flicker, smoke, explosions and backgrounds. Matt Greig and his team in Australia did some stellar work there.Face down in the sand for a Metalstorm sequence, Gosling gets flames added to his back courtesy of VFX, for safetys sake. (Images courtesy of Cinesite and Universal Pictures)Cinesite delivered over 350 visual effects shots to The Fall Guy, according to Meire. She notes, Fire was an important theme for much of our work, including a fire-breathing shot, a sequence where Colt is set on fire in a movie set stunt and a dramatic boat-chase explosion. Throughout our fire-related VFX, we utilized advanced computational fluid dynamics solvers and combustion models to simulate the turbulence of the flow of gasoline or relevant gaseous fuel. In addition, we generated realistic turbulence and heat release.Although the boat chase next to Sydney Harbour Bridge was largely captured on location and in-camera, Cinesite contributed some almost entirely digital shots. Meire says, The pontoon explosion was one of these. Colt speeds into a pontoon in the middle of the Parramatta River. The massive ensuing impact was created with a full CG boat, river, detonation, debris and smoke.Another sequence in a nightclub involved the creation of far more visible visual effects. Colts drink has been spiked, and he is attacked by some bad guys. A magical look was added to the subsequent fight, inspired by anime, with sparkles, lens flares and color effects to show the effect of the psychedelic substances Colt has unknowingly consumed. These effects were created by shifting the RGB channels blended with time warps. The visuals were made to be as fluid and organic as possible, with the addition of chromatic aberration, lens flares and the kind of optical effects we often add in typical visual effects, Meire comments.Colt (Ryan Gosling) in a Vietnam war scene in the Metalstorm movie being made in The Fall Guy. Cinesites contribution included the addition of multiple bullet hits, explosions, impact sparks and various composites. (Image courtesy of Cinesite and Universal Pictures)If it had been possible for the film to have been completed entirely using SFX rather than digital, I think that would have been David Leitchs preference. But there were many instances where SFX could take you most of the way there, but they needed help with the final 10%-20%. There were also instances where safety was a factor; for example the shot where we added flames to Ryan Gosling. They could not have achieved that shot seamlessly with the actual actor, close up, any other way.Jennifer Meire, Visual Effects Supervisor, CinesiteMeire notes, Other work that Cinesite contributed included the addition of multiple bullet hits, explosions, impact sparks and various composites. With regards to the action and stunt scenes, its important to emphasize that most of what the audience sees was generally captured in-camera, the result of fantastic stunts and SFX.Meire observes, If it had been possible for the film to have been completed entirely using SFX rather than digital, I think that would have been David Leitchs preference. But there were many instances where SFX could take you most of the way there, but they needed help with the final 10%-20%. There were also instances where safety was a factor; for example the shot where we added flames to Ryan Gosling. They could not have achieved that shot seamlessly with the actual actor, close up, any other way. Wherever possible, SFX were used, but digital effects are [now] an essential part of every film, action or otherwise.The Fall Guy is a spectacular ode to stunt work inspired by the 80s TV series of the same name. On set from left: Ryan Gosling, stuntmen Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ben Jenkin, Logan Holladay and Justin Eaton, and director David Leitch.Sloan points out the hard work that so often goes into invisible effects. There is one shot Id like to call out for special mention. It was, on paper, a super simple VFX shot a stitch between two plates. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we could not get the camera on the B-side to match the angle of the A-side. Not even close. To the point, we added a cut initially because we had almost zero confidence that we could make it work. It had huge parallax issues, and the lighting was noticeably different. It took months of brute force, meticulous roto, warping, relighting and CG replacements of parts of the set and props, but it worked. Its the definition of invisible VFX. But if youre reading this and worked on that shot, know that the work was appreciated. VFX is a form of magic. Expensive magic, sure, but still magic.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Skybound Entertainment and Prime Video.Subverting genres is something that American comic book writer, screenwriter and producer Robert Kirkman has done so well, whether it be zombies in The Walking Dead or superheroes in Invincible. The latter, which has been turned into an animated series for Prime Video. revolves around teenager Mark Grayson coming into his supernatural powers and having to deal with the revelation that his extraterrestrial father was sent not to protect but conquer Earth. The second season consisting of eight episodes was divided into half with Part 1 released in November 2023 and Part 2 in March and April 2024.To a certain extent I admit it is somewhat a detriment to my career that everything I do is different because a fanbase cannot go, I like A from that guy so Im going to like all of this other stuff, states Kirkman, Co-Creator, Co-Showrunner, Executive Producer. But I would be bored if I was doing things that were so similar to each other.Exploring the poses and colors for Angstrom Levy before and after his accident.We have the benefit of the series being completed and a 144-issue roadmap. Were able to say, This story is more important because it comes into play in seven different issues. We can spend a little time on that scene and put more foreshadowing to certain things that are going to come. I didnt have that when I was writing the comic book series. There were far reaching plans, but for the most part it was put together as I went along. It has turned the show into a second draft.Robert Kirkman, Co-Creator, Co-Showrunner, Executive ProducerInvincible is not the typical production in terms of size and scope. Ive never worked on a project that is this big, remarks Marge Dean, Head of Animation for Skybound Entertainment. Its 45 to 50-minute episodes as opposed to a 22-minute episode, so its twice the amount of content. But also, the nature of Invincible is that in every episode there is a big fight scene, lots of destruction, a high body count, even the main characters are constantly in flux in how they look because they get beat up or shot. What that translates into is an awful lot of pencil mileage. We have to draw all of those things. A major lesson was learned by Dean. With the scope and the way story is, its more like three times the [average] episode.Outsourcing animation to Korea has been going on since 1980s, so the industry pipeline has been refined. We have 70 people working on the show, and thats not counting the folks in Korea, Dean explains. You figure out the whole season and decide how each episode fits in there. Then you have those written, and thats given to the team. The directors are responsible for keeping the whole thing intact and on track. Once it gets to Korea, theyre replicating what we created. We have done a refined [version] and worked out a map for them of what we want the main animation to be, and this is in the form of our storyboards, animatics and model packs. All of the information that they need is there. Then we have conversations with them. When they send us the show, if there are things that do not fit the continuity or story or is not what we instructed them to do. we call retakes and make them do it again. When we make a mistake and do a creative retake, theyre given extra compensation.Experimenting with various facial expressions for Debbie Grayson.What has changed is the acceptance and popularity of adult animation around the world which has made shows like Invincible possible. In North America and Europe, people believed that animation was for comedy or kids, Dean notes. Then as anime started working its way out of Japan, and we have Millennials and Generation Zs who have grown-up with 24/7 animation on the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and have a broader understanding of animation as a medium not a genre. Then Adult Swim launched Toonami, which introduced anime to the general public, definitely in the U.S. and other parts of the world, and that blew the lid off because in Japan, they totally get that you can do animation for all of the different forms of audiences that you have. Its okay to make stuff for people who have a specific interest. There can be mature themes and stakes, and the characters dont have to be cute little kids but can be grungier older people or people starting their professional life. A mouth chart for Debbie Grayson to illustrate how various spoken letters are to be animated.Quite a lot [of CG animation] was used in Season 1. We still use an element of CG, such as to build our backgrounds that are sent to the overseas studio, but, ultimately, the background is drawn into the animation. The overseas studio usually has a CG team, and they may decide on their own to turn some vehicles into CG and blend them into the scene. We allow that to happen. Thats the extent of the CG.Marge Dean, Head of Animation, Skybound EntertainmentGiven the strengths and needs of animation, the series is not an exact replica of the comic book source material. Visually, everything has to be animated. Were a hand-drawn animated program, Kirkman states. With comics, everybody is drawing those panels one or two times, so its easy to put crazy detail and little flourishes on everything. But there is a streamlining process for animation. Then, with the story, most of the changes come from hindsight. We have the benefit of the series being completed and a 144-issue roadmap. Were able to say, This story is more important because it comes into play in seven different issues. We can spend a little time on that scene and put more foreshadowing to certain things that are going to come. I didnt have that when I was writing the comic book series. There were far reaching plans, but for the most part it was put together as I went along. It has turned the show into a second draft.Great attention to detail was paid to Mark Grayson down to his eyes.The sensibilities of Kirkman were different when he began writing Invincible. There are a few off-handed jokes in the old issues where I was like, That doesnt play so great these days, Kirkman notes. We were able to broom those things out and make everything more modern and updated. There are things that are antiquated as well, like technology, because the comic book series is 20 years old. Another thing is I feel that Ive improved as a writer, and so theres a lot of, I dont like how this dialogue goes. Or, I can make this sequence flow better. There is also this notion of trying to top myself, so youll notice that a lot of the big memorable moments in the Invincible television series are enhanced. An action sequence will go on longer or some sort of gut-wrenching sequence will have an element added to it that makes it more off-putting or nerve-racking, or the tension is heightened more. Some of that comes from the scenes in the comics werent moving and didnt have sound, and the show has that, so there is more latitude you can take in the individual scenes to amp up the emotion, scares and intensity.Determining the look of a bruise on the face of Omni-Man.Lessons were learned from turning the demonic-exorcism comic Super Dinosaur into an animated series for Teletoon in 2018. That show was so unsuccessful people might not be aware that it even exists, but we did 26 episodes, a half hour, and it was CGI, Kirkman recalls. It takes a lot to build CGI assets because every single character is constructed, and there are a lot of things that go into that. A lot of the budget is adding new characters into the show. I knew that Invincible could never be limited with how many characters that I could introduce per episode because this is such a vast world, and there are sprawling aspects that would be hampered tremendously by a 3D pipeline. There is a rich history in superhero programs having a 2D animation look so were playing off of that. There is CG animation in Invincible, but the amount was purposely reduced for Season 2. Quite a lot was used in Season 1, Dean states. We still use an element of CG, such as to build our backgrounds that are sent to the overseas studio, but, ultimately, the background is drawn into the animation. The overseas studio usually has a CG team, and they may decide on their own to turn some vehicles into CG and blend them into the scene. We allow that to happen. Thats the extent of the CG.That whole episode [Episode 208] was difficult, if you think about every single trip into the multiverse as almost a completely different show. Theyre going to completely different environments, characters, color palettes, and its a lot to ask of a team. I dont remember the actual number of dimensions, but that was monumental. It is great to have a team that is willing to push things and take those risks and put the extra work into accomplishing those kinds of things.Robert Kirkman, Co-Creator, Co-Showrunner, Executive ProducerOne of the characters who has a unique set of powers is Atom Even, as she can manipulate matter and energy at the sub-atomic level.The personalities of the Immortal and Bulletproof are what separates them as they essentially have the same abilities in being strong and durable.The heart of the storytelling is dealing with the trials and tribulations that the various characters experience, in particular Mark Grayson, who is trying to balance his personal life with being a superhero.Violence is depicted within reason. I want to stay on a narrow path, Kirkman states. If you go too far into different things it can distract from your story. The cool thing is that we have never had any content restrictions placed upon us by Prime Video. Each season needs to be bigger than the previous one, not only in action but also in emotion, character arcs and the cast interactions with each other. We have to make sure were not repeating ourselves and hitting those same notes. Were shifting the storytelling and trying to make sure that different things are happening, so when we do huge moments of graphic violence, as we do frequently, we need to have in mind how to maintain that sense of momentum through the show. If someone is watching this show in Season 5 and goes, Theyre not reaching the heights of Season 3, weve failed. Were always trying to have something new to spring on the viewer to shock and excite them and keep them engaged. In Season 1, the violence that Mark Grayson experiences is at the hands of his father, so you want to show that. In Season 2, it looks at the violence that Mark is capable of. The fact that Angstrom Levy is receiving it isnt as important as the emotions that Mark is feeling having done it.Character designs were simplified to streamline the animation process.There is also this notion of trying to top myself, so youll notice that a lot of the big memorable moments in the Invincible television series are enhanced. An action sequence will go on longer or some sort of gut-wrenching sequence will have an element added to it that makes it more off-putting or nerve-racking, or the tension is heightened more. Some of that comes from the scenes in the comics werent moving and didnt have sound, and the show has that, so there is more latitude you can take in the individual scenes to amp up the emotion, scares and intensity.Robert Kirkman, Co-Creator, Co-Showrunner, Executive ProducerCo-Creator/Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer Robert Kirkman has a preference for 2D animation, which is the style of choice for Invincible.Superpowers do not reflect personality traits. Were trying to make these characters feel real and three dimensional; they have hopes, dreams and aspirations, Kirkman explains. The superpowers serve the story and keep things moving. If youre really paying attention, youll notice that a lot of characters have a similar powerset. Every now and then you have an Atom Even, Rex Splode, Duplicate or Robot who have a unique powerset. But Bulletproof, Invincible, Immortal and Omni-Man, these guys have the same powers! What differentiates them is their personalities, and thats what makes them interesting. A particular character has benefited from the animated series. Debbie Grayson [Marks mother and wife of Omni-Man] was a major part of the comics and had a lot of big storylines, but there were long periods where the storylines were dealing with superpower, not human level stuff, so she would recede into the background. There is a tremendous opportunity in the show to find ways to keep her present. Then you also know that Sandra Oh is there to embody whatever we do. If we try to put some emotion into something, she takes that nugget and expands it. Its a good example of an actors performance taking over and guiding the character at the writing stage.The animation is outsourced to Korea, which is a trend that has been happening in the animation industry since the 1980s.One of the reasons that 2D animation was chosen over CG is that Kirkman did not want to be limited by the number of characters he could introduce.Serving as the main protagonist for Season 2 is Angstrom Levy, who has ability to open portals from multiple dimensions.A character who has received more story time in the animated series is Debbie Grayson.The growing popularity of adult animation, due in part by the streaming services, means that Invincible does not have to pull punches when depicting violence.Invincible delves into the multiverse, which runs the danger of being the answer for every narrative problem, thereby negating any sense of peril. The sweet spot of multiverse storytelling is witnessing other aspects of what could have been or seeing what happened in other dimensions and wringing as much emotion out of it as possible, Kirkman notes. Were also doing our best to keep it as simple as possible. There is one character who accesses the multiverse in Angstrom Levy, and everything that we experience with the multiverse is through that character. A riddle to solve was the portal sequence in Episode 208. That whole episode was difficult, if you think about every single trip into the multiverse as almost a completely different show. Theyre going to completely different environments, characters, color palettes, and its a lot to ask of a team. I dont remember the actual number of dimensions, but that was monumental. It is great to have a team that is willing to push things and take those risks and put the extra work into accomplishing those kinds of things. For most shows it would be like, You only get six of those. Often times, there are no corners to cut and we have to knuckle down and do it.

By OLIVER WEBBImages courtesy of Netflix.Based on Patricia Highsmiths 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, and stunningly told in black and white, Steven Zaillians eight-part Netflix limited series Ripley stars Andrew Scott as a grifter living in New York during the 1960s who is hired by a wealthy man to bring his vagabond son home from Italy. Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in Episode 101 of Ripley. Creator/director Steven Zaillian envisioned from day one that the show was going to be in black and white.Zaillian envisioned from day one that the show was going to be in black and white, so it was essential to develop a unique but efficient workflow for the internal VFX team and VFX vendors. Early on, we even considered a workflow in which vendors would deliver two deliverables of every single shot submission, one in color and one in black and white, VFX Producer Joseph Servodio notes. However, since we had over 2,000 shots, you can only imagine how much media management that would create for the vendors, VFX team and Editorial. Ultimately, what made the most sense was to work on the shots in color, then our team presented them to Steve, predominately within cut context in our black and white look. Occasionally during reviews, we would flip back to the color look just as a quality check. Since black and white tended to be more forgiving, we would sometimes be able to see flaws in the color that we otherwise didnt catch in the black-and-white viewing.[W]hat made the most sense was to work on the shots in color, then our team presented them to Steve [director Steve Zaillian], predominately within cut context in our black and white look. Occasionally during reviews, we would flip back to the color look just as a quality check. Since black and white tended to be more forgiving, we would sometimes be able to see flaws in the color that we otherwise didnt catch in the black-and-white viewing.Joseph Servodio, VFX ProducerVFX Supervisor John Bowers joined the show during the post-production stages. I was brought in by Executive Producer Ben Rosenblatt, who I have worked with for 11 years now, Bowers says. The show needed someone who could collaborate hands-on in New York with our director, Steven Zaillian, to take sequences to final, and someone who could translate his notes about overall look and feel into concrete visual terms.There were 2,146 visual effects shots in Ripley, most of which consisted of train windows, bus windows and apartment windows, as well as environment extension work.The VFX team worked on shots in color, then presented them to Zaillian cut in the context of a black-and-white look. Above: In Ripley, Tom (Andrew Scott) is sent to Europe to bring back a wealthy mans wayward son.EDI, led by VFX Supervisor Gaia Bussolati, was in charge of the part of Ripley set in northern Italy. Since everything was based on previous footage or existing locations, it was important for EDI to find documentation about Sanremo in the 60s and the paintings of late 16th-early 17th century Italian artist Caravaggio.Since Bowers was joining a show that was already in progress, he was able to watch rough assembled cuts. The visual effects when I joined were in varying states of completion, Bowers notes. Our director had actually been working on the show for years at that point, having started writing Ripley in 2019. My job was to come in and ask him as many questions as I could to understand his vision, both in general terms and for specific sequences and shots. We also always knew that Steves vision was to present the show in black and white. We did VFX work in color throughout, but editorial was cutting in black and white, so we were always designing shots with an eye towards how clearly elements and compositions would appear in their final form. It was coming in and understanding the conversations that had already happened between Steve and his editors and figuring out from that point how to carry it forward to final.We also always knew that Steves vision was to present the show in black and white. We did VFX work in color throughout, but editorial was cutting in black and white, so we were always designing shots with an eye towards how clearly elements and compositions would appear in their final form.John Bowers, VFX SupervisorBowers focused on period photography from the time, as well as black-and-white films from the 60s. Steve would frequently make reference to films from the period, for example La Dolce Vita, which was an important cultural touchstone for him, Bowers explains. A recurring visual motif throughout the show is Caravaggio paintings, which create visual drama through their use of light and dark. We took inspiration from that as well, but honestly, for shots where we were designing camerawork from scratch like our big CG sequence in Episode 3 the most important reference point was Robert Elswits cinematography from the rest of the show.Andrew Scott, who plays Tom Ripley, is in frame for almost every shot of Ripley. Shots were always designed with an eye towards how clearly elements and compositions would appear in their final black-and-white form.Fellinis lauded Italian film La Dolce Vita (1960) was an important cultural touchstone for Zaillian. From left: Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf and Eliot Sumner as Freddie Miles in Episode 102. (Photo: Stefano Cristiano Montesi)There were 2,146 visual effects shots in total, most of which consisted of train windows, bus windows and apartment windows, as well as environment extension work. Episode 3 had 400 shots in it, with as many shots in one 16-minute sequence as existed in some entire episodes, Bowers says. We had teams working all over the world: EDI in Italy, Wt FX in New Zealand and Redefine in Canada, India and Europe. In order to coordinate a team on that scale, you really have to have a consistent vision and clear communication. We always wanted to make sure that we were prioritizing and making progress on our most challenging shots, especially in Episode 3. With different vendors working on different things, we often had to work in batches to present the director with coherent sequences that were nearly complete before soliciting his feedback. It was risky, but for some sequences, it was the only path to success.The use of light and dark in Caravaggios paintings influenced the shots designed from scratch, inspiring Robert Elswits cinematography. (Photo: Philippe Antonello)Chris White was Wt FXs VFX Supervisor on the show. We were given a rough cut of the show when we began work, White explains. You could quickly tell it was a beautiful show with solid compositions and lighting. The visual effects would also need to support this aesthetic with attention to the subtle details of highlights, shadows, environment and composition. Creative reference is always an instrumental part of the process and gives us a clear target. Because the series had so many beautiful shots, we went through the season cut and requested footage of other shots to reference. We used the series cinematography as our first inspiration. I studied chiaroscuro at university many years ago, so I drew on my memories of those studies, along with references from the old masters and noir photography.Steve would frequently make reference to films from the period, for example La Dolce Vita, which was an important cultural touchstone for him. A recurring visual motif throughout the show is Caravaggio paintings, which create visual drama through their use of light and darkness. We took inspiration from that as well, but honestly, for shots where we were designing camerawork from scratch like our big CG sequence in Episode 3 the most important reference point was Robert Elswits cinematography from the rest of the show.John Bowers, VFX SupervisorWt FXs work for the show included two types of shots: the boat action sequence, where each shot had a unique action, and a series of shots in a static location on the water. For the action shots, our animation team crafted dynamic boats that could simulate motion through the water, White says. For the static shots, we invested in an automatic setup. Once the look of the sequence was established, we could run multiple shots through a setup and tweak each shot to taste. The setup was crafted as a primary lighting and comp scene, establishing the base look. The digi-double shots were the most challenging, but they also brought the most satisfaction. They needed to be spot-on likenesses to the actors, with the complexities of underwater clothing simulation, bubbles, hair motion and lighting while preserving detail. The way light exits skin underwater differs from in the air, so particular attention had to be paid to underwater digi-double rendering.The overall look of the series and its classic black-and-white aesthetic was one of the highlights of the show for Wt FX VFX Supervisor Chris White. (Photo: Philippe Antonello)For Bowers, the 16-minute boat sequence in Episode 3 was the most challenging sequence in the entirety of the show. Its the most important story point of the show. Everything in the first two episodes leads up to it, and everything that happens in the remaining five episodes happens because of it, Bowers explains. If people know just one thing about The Talented Mr. Ripley, its usually this murder scene. The success or failure of the show as an artistic endeavor really depended on the realism and the artistry of this one scene; that was the challenge for us, and those were the stakes. On the technical side, every shot of either Tom or Dickie underwater was a digi-double, and those were quite close-up angles. Andrew Scott, who plays Tom Ripley, is in frame for almost every shot of Ripley, so the audience would be intimately familiar with his face and expressions by this point in the show. To then hand off to a digi-double? In a close-up of his face, underwater? We had to get that exactly right.A main concern of production was related to the locations. All the required elements couldnt be found in one location at a time, so EDI focused on designing locations by assembling different components from different sources, like a collage, with great attention to detail.Continues Bowers, Wt FX did fantastic work throughout that sequence. The underwater effects they created to make the environment feel literally immersive was really outstanding work. There was one full-CG shot in particular near the end of the scene where the camera is pointing straight down into the water, and Dickies body is sinking down into the depths. That was definitely the most challenging visual effects shot to create in the entire series. It needed to feel still and quiet and sort of melancholy at the end, but we still wanted to have the feeling of the camera being 15 feet underwater and really present. The first version of that shot that we presented for creative approval was version 223, and the final comp was version 557, so it went through quite a lot of iteration.EDI was responsible for all of the Caravaggio shots, working on around hundred, spread over six of the eight episodes of the series.A recurring visual motif throughout the show is Caravaggio paintings, which create visual drama through their strong contrast of light and dark.Gaia Bussolati served as EDI VFX Supervisor on the show. We started work on this project in mid-2021. The inspection and pre-production began in June. We were involved from the very beginning, Bussolati says. Thanks to our well-established relationship with American supervisors and studios, the productions head of post-production visited us and asked us what kind of structure we had, if we had supervisors who could stay on set and follow their director, considering that there would be other main suppliers involved in the project. We were then told that we would take care of the part set in northern Italy.We always wanted to make sure that we were prioritizing and making progress on our most challenging shots, especially in Episode 3. With different vendors working on different things, we often had to work in batches to present the director with coherent sequences that were nearly complete before soliciting his feedback. It was risky, but for some sequences, it was the only path to success.John Bowers, VFX SupervisorWt FXs work for the show included two types of shots: the boat action sequence, where each shot had a unique action, and a series of shots in a static location on the water. (Image courtesy of Wt FX and Netflix)When Bussolati and EDI came onboard in the pre-production stages, they received the scripts for all the episodes, which they then read in order to understand the mood of the series. The main concern since the very beginning seemed to be related to the locations. Even the simplest, Atrani, which was the best preserved, did not seem to have all the elements that could reveal the directors vision. So we realized that the work ahead would have been designing locations by assembling different components from different sources. Like a collage. The directors vision was very clear; he knew what he wanted, and this was translated into a work with great attention to the smallest detail.Since everything was based on previous footage or existing locations, it was important for Bussolati and EDI to find documentation about Sanremo in the 60s and Caravaggios paintings. Our aim was to create the most realistic output for the story and the context, so any reference was based on real references. This meant a lot of historical and iconographic research on our end, says Bussolati. EDI was responsible for all of the Caravaggios shots and worked on around hundred, spread over six episodes out of eight of the series. We were also responsible for the St. Louis of the French Chapel in Rome, The Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence in Palermo and David with the Head of Goliath at Villa Borghese in Rome, Bussolati adds.For the action shots, Wt FXs animation team crafted dynamic boats that could simulate motion through the water. For the static boat shots, Wt invested in an automatic setup. Once the look of the sequence was established, they could run multiple shots through the setup and tweak each shot to taste. (Image courtesy of Wt FX and Netflix)If audiences remember one thing about The Talented Mr. Ripley, its the murder scene. According to VFX Supervisor John Bowers, the success or failure of the show as an artistic endeavor depended on the realism and artistry of this one scene.We were given a rough cut of the show when we began work. You could quickly tell it was a beautiful show with solid compositions and lighting. The visual effects would also need to support this aesthetic with attention to the subtle details of highlights, shadows, environment and composition. Creative reference is always an instrumental part of the process and gives us a clear target. Because the series had so many beautiful shots, we went through the season cut and requested footage of other shots to reference. We used the series cinematography as our first inspiration. I studied chiaroscuro at university many years ago, so I drew on my memories of those studies, along with references from the old masters and noir photography.Chris White, VFX Supervisor, Wt FXIn Episode 3, Bussolati continues, we worked on recreating Sanremo, since the original scene was shot in Anzio. We also worked on other paintings, including Picassos, which can be seen both in Atrani and Venice. Sanremos scenes on the boat were shot with blue skies and sunshine. But the narrative was intended to start with a slightly cloudy sky and end with an almost stormy one to match in continuity with another vendors following sequence. This implied a very careful work on each and every nuance. A couple of other interesting scenes were related to Caravaggios paintings. The one in the St. Louis of the French Chapel in Rome was shot in Naples with a greenscreen, and then we have rebuilt the chapel based on photo reliefs and database images. Then The Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence in Palermo, was quite challenging, since the original painting was stolen in 1969 it is in the world list of the 10 most important stolen masterpieces. According to the story, there was still the original, so we had to reproduce the brushstroke, the cracks, the texture of the canvas, and this was done thanks to an accurate analysis of documents and historical references.Dickies body sinking down into the depths was the most challenging visual effects shot to create in the series, according to VFX Supervisor John Bowers. Underwater effects were created to make the environment feel literally immersive. (Image courtesy of Wt FX and Netflix)Bowers enjoyed collaborating with the vendor side VFX supes at all the various companies that were working on the show. Working with Gaia at EDI, Chris White and Francois Sugny at Wt FX, Tehmina Beg and Eric Sibley at Crafty Apes and Teddy Wirtz at Powerhouse: just a great group of creative problem-solvers that were able to take sometimes vague, or seemingly contradictory direction, and work together to come up with solutions. That was, for me, the great pleasure of the show.Every shot of either Tom or Dickie underwater was a digi-double. The digi-doubles needed to be spot-on likenesses to the actors, with the complexities of underwater clothing simulation, bubbles, hair motion and lighting while preserving detail.For White, the overall look of the series and its classic black-and-white aesthetic was one of the many joys of the show. As someone who used to shoot black-and-white photography, I found the most enjoyable part of the show to be crafting images that reflected that aesthetic, White says.For Bussolati, the joy was in the depth of detail and quality of the result. We really loved the passion for the detail, the story, and we loved to work on historical documents about Italy, in particular about the landscape, the art and the buildings such as the churches. Were really glad that this series is getting the great worldwide success it deserves.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of HBO.Given the dark, satirical nature of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, where a police captain in Saigon who is a communist spy comes to America as a refugee at the end of the Vietnam War, Park Chan-wook was an ideal choice as a co-showrunner, director and writer to create a seven-episode adaptation of The Sympathizer for HBO.Split screens and table markers were critical parts that enabled the Captain to interact with his four dinner companions played by Robert Downey Jr.Park has a reputation for redefining genres, whether it is the vengeful Oldboy or psychological thriller The Handmaiden. Creatively, there are so much going on with him, notes Visual Effects Supervisor Chad Wanstreet (Dollface, S.W.A.T.). Director Park storyboards almost everything, and what isnt storyboarded he still comes with a specific shot list every day. There is very little deviation from that. Every once and awhile hell cut one and add something different.After we see Bons legs running down an airport runway while carrying his dead wife, the scene transitions into the Captains car driving on an American highway. At this moment, Bons legs are still visible as a reflection on the car body. This is a scene transition that brilliantly connects two timelines/two countries through the visual connection of running objects. The idea to show Bons legs on the car was entirely from Chad. Its not often that the visual effects team spontaneously brings new ideas, as it is hard enough to fulfill requests of the director. However, Chad has done so for this scene and many others.Park Chan-wook. DirectorThe Congressman portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. was partially inspired by Ronald Reagan.Visual effects are seen as way of elevating the dramatic or comedic aspect of a scene. There is a lot of punctuation, and he uses visual effects in that way to either set up a scene or environment, Wanstreet notes. We had lots of flies and rats, different small creatures that normally are throwaways, but he uses them in a manner to heighten the reality of whatever scene that youre in. We had one shot where the Captain and the General are in the latrine talking back and forth, and flies everywhere. The General is irritated; a fly comes in, lands on his cheek and then flies off. There are tons of subtlety and little things that director Park does where most people wouldnt think, Lets do a visual effects fly for comedy relief in this tense situation. But he is constantly doing these things that are contradictory to what is being established.Atmospherics, such as enhancing cigarette smoke, were important. There were moments where we matched cut one person blowing out smoke to another blowing out smoke, Wanstreet reveals. There is one where Sofia Mori is in the Vietnamese restaurant and Captain is outside talking to Bon. We transition from Sofia blowing out smoke to then Captain match cut blowing out the exact same level of smoke; these specific details where color and amount [of smoke] director Park wants them to match back and forth. Later, when Sofia Moi and Captain are lying in bed together and are smoking together, he wanted to have exact same cigarette smoke across the two of them so theres enhancement of cigarette smoke in there to make everything exact between the two.The rotating Happy Burger sign was achieved practically.Scene transitions are meticulously planned with a particular one standing out. After we see Bons legs running down an airport runway while carrying his dead wife, the scene transitions into the Captains car driving on an American highway, Park explains. At this moment, Bons legs are still visible as a reflection on the car body. This is a scene transition that brilliantly connects two timelines/two countries through the visual connection of running objects. The idea to show Bons legs on the car was entirely from Chad. Its not often that the visual effects team spontaneously brings new ideas, as it ishard enough to fulfill requests of the director. However, Chad has done so for this scene and many others.There is a lot of punctuation, and [directpr Park] uses visual effects in that way to either set up a scene or environment. We had lots of flies and rats, different small creatures that normally are throwaways, but he uses them in a manner to heighten the reality of whatever scene that youre in.Chad Wanstreet, Visual Effects SupervisorMany skies were digitally augmented to match the photographic vision of director Park Chan-wook.Digital assistance was provided to some of the scene transitions, such as when Captain is crossing names off of the evacuation list. We definitely helped out with that, Wanstreet notes. As you know, director Park is specific as far as lines being in parallel or how they converge. Composition is important to him. We took the footage and skewed it, realigned it and did some stuff to make it lay out better on the page. There is a little bit of elements to that ruler that are also visual effects. When Captain pulls it across, that wipe, were carrying that and roto his hand so as it comes in the background its there, but then the hand brings the rest of it in. That was one of the things he and I worked back and forth on to get that exactly the way he wanted because it was funky in the beginning.Fireworks proved to be complicated to execute. This is one of those [situations] where a lot of people go into a scene like that [and say], Were going to put fireworks in the sky, Wanstreet remarks. But director Park wanted the texture of the fireworks reflecting all throughout that scene, which is visually amazing, but you can imagine from budgetary standpoint, were like, Okay. We had big practical lights on the night. Those were great for interactive lights on the people and in some of the environments, but then they made nasty reflections on some of the metallics and the wet-down. We had to paint all of that out and then add fireworks reflections back in, so it was more organic and broken up. But at least we had something to start with. We took whatever was going on in the panels in the sky, then matched our colors of our fireworks to those so we had a match between practical interactive light and visual effects firework.A personal favorite of Visual Effect Supervisor Chad Wanstreet was the theater explosion.Having Robert Downey Jr. playing the roles of the priest, auteur. Claude (CIA agent), professor and Congressman harkens back to when Peter Sellers portrayed three characters in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The team that came on to do the makeup had done Perry Mason previously, and we had an excellent prosthetic artist as well, Wanstreet explains. They were upfront when they thought there would be an issue, and we went in touched stuff up, but for the most part what you see is what they did. Robert in the steakhouse and lounge were thoroughly planned-out scenes because getting him into prosthetics took three hours for each one of the characters, depending on which character it was. In order to shoot that, we wound up breaking it into multiple days; there were two Roberts on one day and two Roberts on the next day. He would do all of his lines, and we had markers all over the table for where cameras were, so we could replay how we shot one for when the next one came in. When Robert went away to do the prosthetics for another character, we would film backgrounds, like crosses of waiters from the different camera angles. so when we did the split screens, there was always movement in the background.We had one shot where the Captain and the General are in the latrine talking back and forth, and flies everywhere. The General is irritated; a fly comes in, lands on his cheek and then flies off. There are tons of subtlety and little things that director Park does where most people wouldnt think, Lets do a visual effects fly for comedy relief in this tense situation. But he is constantly doing these things that are contradictory to what is being established.Chad Wanstreet, Visual Effects SupervisorBuildings had to be altered and removed in order to recreate Saigon in 1975.When the time came to shoot the lounge scene, face replacements were necessary, which led to some unique challenges. When we were scanning Robert, it came down from director Park that he wanted the Congressman to lick whipped cream off this escort with a face replacement, Wanstreet recalls. Because were doing FACS and all sorts of expressions, I go, Alright Robert, I have one more expression for you. I need you to give me a face like youre going to lick whipped cream off of a naked womans breasts. He looked at me as if to say, What? I said, Trust me. Youre going to lick whipped cream off of this woman. Robert sits there for a second and goes, Alright. Ive got it. He makes this crazy expression, we scanned him, and he goes, Ive got a different one. We did that one as well. Then Robert comes out, and I go, Youre probably one of the most scanned actors in the world. Have you ever had to pose for licking whipped cream off of a naked woman? He goes, No. Youve got the first, Chad.A personal first for Wanstreet involved a certain cactus. Because director Park has this specific visual style, there were a lot of little things that popped up all over the place, Wanstreet explains. After Xuande gets blown up in Episode 105, he brought a cactus, and there was a line about a prickly dick. The cactus that we had on set wasnt cactus enough and didnt have the right needles; that became a thing. It was like, Wait a minute. What? We had to add more needles to this cactus, which is something Ive never had to do before. Another fun shot featured an alligator in a swimming pool. We had a remote-control alligator head on the day to give an eyeline for Robert. We would rehearse and take it away. Robert did wonderfully, as far as acting as if theres an alligator in the water when there clearly is not. Those were complicated shots. Just getting the right number of bubbles and the cavitation correct.Modern elements like electronic billboards had to be removed to make the imagery period accurate.Robert [Downey Jr.] in the steakhouse and lounge were thoroughly planned out scenes because getting him into prosthetics took three hours for each one of the characters, depending on which character it was. We wound up breaking it into multiple days; there were two Roberts on one day and two Roberts on the next day. He would do all of his lines, and we had markers all over the table for where cameras were, so we could replay how we shot one for when the next one came in.Chad Wanstreet, Visual Effects SupervisorLocations were the primary focus. We filmed in Los Angeles, and when we went to Thailand it was all location shooting, Wanstreet states. We did one day of bluescreen, and thats where we have Xuande going through the air. We had found a little road in Phuket that looked more French and had similar tones of what you might see in Vietnam. We spent about a month and a half going in and around the Bangkok area, then ended up in Phuket, Phang Nga, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Ban Phai. We were moving all around the country for bespoke one-off spots that we would augment with visual effects in post by adding monuments and things that were particular to that time. In Episode 101, when they do the farewell tour and drive through downtown Saigon, specific landmarks were wanted. Theres the opera house, ARVN monument and palace. I had gone to Vietnam and taken some photography, but all of those buildings had changed a ton since current day and 1975.Bluescreens were pivotal in being able to achieve the desired environmental scope.Around 1,200 visual effects shots were created for the miniseries, with the main vendors being Ingenuity Studios and Barnstorm VFX, along with Zoic Studios, Yannix, Incessant Rain Studios, BOT VFX, Mr. Wolf, Van Dyke VFX and Pidantic VFX. I work differently than a lot of people in that I have all of my shots pre-tracked on my show, Wanstreet says. Yannix did all tracking and touched almost everything in every episode. We handed that off to whoever the vendor was and also did paintwork. There are lot of shots where one person is painting or tracking, and then somebody else is adding maybe the set extension. There were also elements like the flares that we were passing back and forth because thats something that showed up a lot and was a thematic element that was in Episode 101, and we see it again in Episode 107, tying those two anchor points in those episodes. The helicopter was also a shared asset that moved around with different vendors; the same thing with the jet.For safety and art direction reasons, explosions close to the actors were achieved digitally.Elaborate re-timed split screens were incorporated into a couple of the 4,000 frame shots. They dont sound gnarly, but one of them in particular was when we filmed in the interrogation room where the Watchman was and there were metal grates all over the place, Wanstreet recalls. When you start to do a re-time in a room like that, it warbles and distorts like crazy. We cleaned up all that stuff over 4,000 frames, and there was some stuff on the floor that we needed to remove. There were reflections of the camera guy and Kim Ji-yong [Cinematographer] in the glass; over 4,000 frames, youre removing him over Roberts face. Were painting all of that out and trying to keep all of the metal grates exactly in line. Lens aberrations were important. Obviously, if youre nighttime and an explosion goes off, as a DP you have two decisions: You can try to expose for the fire or your talent. We were constantly playing with getting this perfect blend where we would see the fire detail for a moment and our actors would go out and everything is black. You would get flares and then pull back so youre seeing the talent again, and the explosions goes out and theyre brighter.It was impossible to wet down the entire tarmac, so the responsibility was given to the visual effects team.The actual filming had to be done with a fake airplane that only had the tail reproduced of the C-130.The most complex visual effects sequence was the tarmac escape, which occurs in Episode 101.Insects are an essential part of the visual language of director Park Chan-wook.Getting the proper reflections for the fireworks was a complex task.A remote-control alligator head was replaced by a CG version created by Ingenuity Studios.As for the experience of collaborating with Park Chan-wook and Robert Downey Jr., Wanstreet remarks, Working with director Park and Team Downey, who have a clear vision, you could imagine that there is this potential for a clash. Thats not what happened at all. Team Downey loved director Park and gave him a lot of latitude to do what he wanted to do. The two of them worked hand-in-hand. When it comes to naming his favorite moments, Wanstreet answers, I love the explosion of the theater and the finale as well. The ocean at the end is pretty and beautiful. There is a lot of stuff that is great in Episode 107. When the Captain releases the alligator into the auteurs pool is wonderful work.Practical explosions were incorporated into digital ones.Chad Wanstreet and the entire Sympathizer team are saddened by the passing of friend and colleague Dan Lombardo. Wanstreet remarks, Dan was an exceptional friend and a bright beacon on the VFX team for the show. His loving disposition and kind heart always made even the hardest days enjoyable and his dedication to the team was infectious. Dans hilarious stories about his many years in the VFX industry will be missed, and we will all proudly cherish working with him.Watch dramatic VFX breakdown reels on the making of The Sympathizer from Ingenuity Studios and Chad Wanstreet, Click here: https://vimeo.com/949982071/ff40298c9a?share=copy. And here: https://vimeo.com/946362668

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Prime Video and A24.Collaborating with a group of freelance animators and aided by financial support provided by Patreon, American animator, writer, director and producer Vivienne Medrano released a pilot episode for Hazbin Hotel via her VivziePop YouTube Channel, which revolves around Charlie Morningstar, the Princess of Hell, setting up a rehabilitation establishment for demons to avoid the yearly extermination imposed by Heaven. Contributing to the 109 million views over the past four years was A24, the independent entertainment company responsible for the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, which in turn got Amazon MGM Studios interested to produce a new pilot and seven more episodes to stream on Prime Video.A challenging aspect of getting Vaggie to emote properly is the X placed over the left eye.Hazbin Hotel is different in the sense that it came from a proof concept that went viral and also had the benefit of a company like A24 that is risk-taking. Its definitely not easy to put into a box that exists in the adult animation world, and Im excited because the adult animation world is starting to bloom into something different, and were seeing more diversity in the shows.Vivienne Medrano, Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner and Writer, Hazbin HotelI had spent most of my career as a freelancer, so I havent experienced the nitty-gritty of productions, states Vivienne Medrano, Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner and Writer of Hazbin Hotel. Ive mostly done visual development and things that never got to see the light of day. Hazbin Hotel is different in the sense that it came from a proof concept that went viral and also had the benefit of a company like A24 that is risk-taking. Its definitely not easy to put into a box that exists in the adult animation world, and Im excited because the adult animation world is starting to bloom into something different, and were seeing more diversity in the shows. Putting together a new pilot was complicated. We only had eight episodes and a tight time to tell the story. I didnt want to waste an episode on redoing the original pilot. We had to get the same information across, re-establish the world and characters, but also tell a new story with new characters and villains, Medrano says.Catering to Creator/Showrunner Vivienne Medranos attachment to zanier, sillier characters is Niffty.How Bruce Timm draws women, like Harlequin and Poison Ivy, the exaggerated shape language of Tim Burton, cartoonist Jhonen Vasquez and classic Warner Bros. Animation and Disney were major influences. It was fun to explore how to find an identity for the show and the style, Medrano remarks. The other aspect of my style is that its detailed with a lot of stripes; thats a Tim Burtonism! I like specific outfits and accessories. Its catered to my sensibilities. Angel Dust was simplified, while a different idea for Charlie was introduced, especially with her braids. Because its a hand-drawn show, I wanted to take off some of the superfluous details that were in the [original] pilot. However, I wanted to maintain those iconic, striking designs. Also, there were changes I always wanted to make to begin with from [original] pilot but we were too far in to do that. Black and red dominate the color palette. The biggest challenge of the show for my art director, Sam Miller, is that its a lot of red characters on numerous red backgrounds. It was a challenge to find the right balance and the tones of the reds that we use. Im trying to lean more into contrast in the second season, Medrano explains.Given that Vox is, in essence, a TV screen, side profiles of his head were avoided.Concept art for a billboard promoting politeness.A Morningstar Family portrait painting.I would red-line the change that I want; thats usually the easiest because they can take that and finalize it. I do that with character designs and ever so often with backgrounds. For storyboards, I also direct, so I do thumbnails. I use a Wacom Cintiq tablet where you can directly draw on to. I have a bigger one that Ive worked on since college and a smaller version that I use often. You can have it on your lap and work. Its much more mobile.Vivienne Medrano, Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner and Writer, Hazbin HotelRevisions are articulated by drawing over the work of artists. I would red-line the change that I want; thats usually the easiest because they can take that and finalize it, Medrano states. I do that with character designs and ever so often with backgrounds. For storyboards, I also direct, so I do thumbnails. I use a Wacom Cintiq tablet where you can directly draw on to. I have a bigger one that Ive worked on since college and a smaller version that I use often. You can have it on your lap and work. Its much more mobile. Adult animation has provided more of an opportunity to blend 2D and 3D techniques. The combination of 3D and 2D is cool. A great example is Arcane where they could have the 3D style, but it still has an artistic layering of texture. However, all of the effects are done in 2D, like fire and smoke. 2D effects are the coolest looking. For Hazbin Hotel, we dont utilize a ton of 3D because its outside the process and pipeline of being a 2D show. On my other series, Helluva Boss, we utilized 3D a couple of times, and its fun to stylize the 3D to match the 2D world.Logo designed for 666 News.Collaborating on her third project with Medrano is Skye Henwood. Its an across-the-ocean story of an online relationship working out, states Skye Henwood, Animation Director at SpindleHorse Toons. I needed a job, she had a job opening, and I joined her studio. We ended up in a studio chatroom, and it was like an instant click. Now, its an Amazon show, and everybody knows the name. Its crazy! SpindleHorse Toons animated Episode 108 while Princess Bento was responsible for the rest of the series. Its all done digitally. Even the storyboards. We use Wacoms and work in Toon Boom Harmony. Ive made like a million guides on how to do a basic shot. The stylization is easier in a way because the policy that Viv, Sam Miller, and I have is, as long as it looks cool or appealing, thats it. It doesnt necessarily have to look like the model sheet. You can stretch Charlie, make her eyes big, and if its cute or funny enough its getting in. There is a lot of creative freedom. This show is for artists by artists, Henwood states.A poster of Charlie with her showman father Lucifer performing in the background.A color key for the Pentious Airship.A color concept for the rebuild of the Hazbin Hotel.Its all done digitally. Even the storyboards. We use Wacoms and work in Toon Boom Harmony. Ive made like a million guides on how to do a basic shot. The stylization is easier in a way because the policy that Viv, Sam Miller and I have is, as long as it looks cool or appealing, thats it. It doesnt necessarily have to look like the model sheet. You can stretch Charlie, make her eyes big, and if its cute or funny enough its getting in. There is a lot of creative freedom. This show is for artists by artists. Skye Henwood, Animation Director, SpindleHorse ToonsStoryboards and animatics are an essential part of the creative process. The strength of the boards is the strength of the series, Medrano notes. Im excited because for the second season we have some incredible artists joining and have more action, so theres more of a uniqueness to the technique of the boards. The poses of the characters are figured out in the storyboards. We dont usually invent many new ones from the boards. Thankfully, for Season 1 we had some fantastic board artists, in particular for the song sequences. Then my studio [SpindleHorse Toons] was able to do a little of the animation plus the boards. Im glad that we got to do that because it heightened those moments. The songs are vital during the writing stage. The challenge for Season 1 was that I wanted the songs to be the length that they needed to be. Because we have a tight 22-minute run time, we had to work closely with the songwriters and figure out what part of the script was going to be music and what genre of music. What I love about musicals is that they go hand-in-hand with animation. The characters get to be really expressive, and the songs get to be bombastic and out there, Medrano observes.A pentagram city map of Hell.We have the music from the start, so we dont have to go back and change it, Henwood remarks. Dealing with a musical in animation is hard because musicals are beautiful and so out there and over-the-top, we have to get that Wow! feeling, and there are reasons for why things are done in live-action and animation. We have to compromise and find how we can fit the wonders of a musical into a 2D TV animation. We find a way to make the reason why the character sings believable. Its important to try to feel seamless when starting those musical moments. Henwood did the first shots animated for Season 1. I wanted to make it simple enough that any studio could do it, yet also capturing Vivs emotions and style of drawing, which is the hardest thing because we draw every frame ourselves, he says.Deciding upon the color palette for the Gates of Heaven.One of the many key props that had to be designed was the Valentinos favorite gun.Maintaining the proper poses is more difficult for some characters compared to others. There is a spider demon and he has four arms, so when youre having someone cross their arms, what are his bottom arms doing? Henwood comments. You have to come up with that. If he is angry or sassy, maybe on his hips. You have to make sure that looks appealing. We dont want to hide his arms behind him. Its thought out. My favorite trivia is Vox. We have a rule that he cant be seen sideways because hes a flat-screen TV. Youll notice that even if Vox should turn around to leave a shot, his head will stay forward. The one who has changed the most and for the better is Angel Dust. In older iterations, he was more monstrous and had a poison skull on his chest. But as Viv was realizing this character, Angel Dust became this cutesy guy. My favorite part of all of the design changes is, right before we started animating it, Viv let me have my opinion on how to simplify them. Jeremy Jordan has made clever vocal choices for Lucifer Morningstar. Jeremy gets into that booth and does the silliest little takes we have ever heard. My favorite thing he does is what we call the Lucifer wheeze. In Episode 105, Jeremy is coughing the name Charlie. Its really fun because that wasnt in the script, Henwood reveals.A lot of detail went into not only characters but also the background elements.A significant visual challenge was having red characters placed against red backgrounds.The strength of the boards is the strength of the series. Im excited because for the second season we have some incredible artists joining and have more action, so theres more of a uniqueness to the technique of the boards.Vivienne Medrano, Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner and Writer, Hazbin HotelThe world-building for Hazbin Hotel has been a natural evolution. Something that Ive started working on is a bible of all the information that has been established about this world and rules that need to be maintained, Medrano says. Its challenging because I have my other series, Helluva Boss, which is a different side of this expansive world. We have to make sure that there is a consistency because our audience will notice and care. Adding life to the world is the background action. Its easier for the animators and less distracting to have a silhouetted character in the background; that is something stylistically I do a lot, Medrano adds. One of the changes from the original pilot is having an entirely different voice cast. I have the characters figured out and need to find the right voice. I have specific voices in mind. With Hazbin Hotel, we had the pilot where we established some voices that the audience was attached to. It was important to maintain a sense of cohesion between the two casts. When it came to casting for the new series, it was a re-audition for the original cast and new people. The actors we ended up going with were good at maintaining that original sound and vibe of the characters that I wanted and was attached to, but also bringing with it the musicality and singing talent that was needed for the show. Once we had the final cast, everything locked together, and it was exactly what I had envisioned but I am picky about casting.A pastel color palette was devised for Heaven.A number of characters are exaggerated representations of Medrano. Angel Dust is nothing like me, but I put a lot personal trauma and experiences in him, Medrano states. Charlie is a lot like me in the sense that she is a driven and determined person in a world that can be hard and naysaying. There is part of me in Vaggie when it comes to being more practical and reserved; shes more of a worrier and feisty. Like a lot of creators, I try to put in a little piece of real me, but it also came from things that I feel add to the story or character tropes that I enjoy. Niffty and Lucifer are catered to my sensibilities because I like the zanier, sillier characters as well. Showcasing the most action and characters was Episode 108.It was important to seamlessly integrate the musical numbers into the narrative.There is no shortage of characters and action in the battle sequence that takes place in Episode 108.Jeremy Jordan makes clever vocal choices for Lucifer Morningstar, such as having him wheeze.The character designs were influenced by Bruce Timms portrayal of women and the exaggerated shapes of Tim Burton.A film that greatly influenced the animation of Hazbin Hotel was Cats Cant Dance.A character that needed to be constantly checked by Animation Director Skye Henwood was Vox.Niffty stars in A24s first venture into adult animation with Hazbin Hotel, which started off as a proof of concept on YouTube.There is a shot where the camera is following characters through the battle, and it was comprised of two different shots that seamlessly come together as one, Medrano remarks. We start with Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb, who jumps up and throws a bomb. Then the bomb explosion transitions to another character. It was a challenge in the sense that the hookup had to be specific. Theres a lot of characters. There is a giant shield that had effects on it, so we had to make sure that the background was tracking and the camera was working with it while the effect was going on. That was a technical shot, but it turned out fantastic.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Paramount+There is an influx of video game adaptations, with Paramount+ entering into the fray with the second season of Halo, where the United Nations Space Command battles an alliance of alien races determined to eliminate the human race known as the Covenant. Joining the military sci-fi series, based on the first-person shooter developed by Bungie Studios and 343 Industries, is Showrunner David Wiener, who provided a different narrative focus for the eight episodes.Concept art of Aleria, which is an impoverished Outer Colony located in the Elduros System.You would not believe how much attention was paid to the color of the visors. It poses many challenges. For starters, visors are reflective, so every close-up for us means painting out the camera crew. But at the same time, with the tint and coating that the visors got, quite often the actors couldnt wear the helmets with the visors on. later on in post we had to add them.Wojciech Zielinski, Visual Effects SupervisorAn iconic visual element is the gold-colored visor worn by the UNSC Marine Corps led by the Master Chief. You would not believe how much attention was paid to the color of the visors, states Visual Effects Supervisor Wojciech Zielinski. It poses many challenges. For starters, visors are reflective, so every close-up for us means painting out the camera crew. At the same time, with the tint and coating that the visors got, quite often the actors couldnt wear the helmets with the visors on. They are performing in different environments and lighting conditions, and quite often for safety the visors had to be removed; later on in post we had to add them.Concept art of the landing bay at Camp Currahee, which became an entirely CG build.A side view of a Corvette.The Flood Seed is teased at the end of Season 2.The Light Bridge located at Forerunner City.Atmospherics such as smoke and mist play a heavy role in battle sequences, which means that there has to be tight relationship between stunts, special effects and visual effects. A big proponent of the show is having practical elements as much as possible; however, there is a fine line, Zielinski notes. We always have to figure out what is the right level for the visual effects. We prefer to add more atmosphere or smoke in post. I like to have a base level that we match into; it was quite an organic process. It is tricky to maintain the same level throughout the shots, so later on we had to make sure that the level was consistent in post. The density of smoke heightened the dramatic tension. Quite often, our goal was to have the Jackals [a grouping of the Kig-Yar race] covered in smoke to add more character and something lurking in the smoke. Sometimes, the story literally calls for just a silhouette, but still we believe that the audience will understand, see and read the intention from the storyline. The Jackals make use of lethal energy shields. The shields almost look the same as the ones from Season 1. This is something that we didnt want to play with in Season 2. The look of the shields is close to what they look like in the game. We want to make sure that the gamers appreciate how much has been retained from the game, Zielinski remarks.Conceptualizing the look of a Sanctuary village.A big proponent of show is having practical elements as much as possible; however, there is a fine line. We always have to figure out what is the right level for the visual effects. We prefer to add more atmosphere or smoke in post. I like to have a base level that we match into; it was quite an organic process. It is tricky to maintain the same level throughout the shots, so later on we had to make sure that the level was consistent in post.Wojciech Zielinski, Visual Effects SupervisorSeason 2 commences six months after the narrative of Season 1. You wouldnt see that much of a technological change; however, because of the approach of new Showrunner David Wiener, Season 2 had a slight tonal shift, Zielinski notes. The story is more grounded and centered around the characters. You want to make sure that all of the assets that we inherited from Season 1 will work with what David wanted to achieve. Therefore, we did play with the look development of the creatures. Along with the Jackals are the parasitic alien lifeforms known as the Flood. It is a tease because this is a big character in the game, but literally towards the end of Season 2 we are introducing the Flood, which will hopefully be further developed in Season 3. Its like a fungus that takes over your body and transforms into a combat form. We sourced the design of the Flood from the game, then modified it a little bit to make it feel more alien and organic, Zielinski describes.A key visual element are the virtual companions.The undercity of Reach City, which becomes the target of a Covenant attack.Significantly involved with the production of Halo is Microsoft under the leadership of Kiki Wolfkill, who serves as an Executive Producer, and 343 Industries, which provided game references. In general, all of the environments and creatures were either conceptualized by the Production Designer [James Foster] or the visual effects team, Zielinski states. Because of the new tonal style of the show, were trying to employ a more cinematic look. It is important that every time were with the actors, certain modern and dynamic camera moves that are in the games never end up being utilized because they dont fit the aesthetic of the show. A look book was created by the art department. For every visual effect, we created our own concept art as well. In addition, all of those dynamic sequences were previs, and creature battles were rehearsed by the stunt team and directors before we got even to the camera. Fight choreography was assisted by stuntvis. Its a collaboration between the director, stunt coordinator, whoever at the same time was the second unit director, and visual effects department. There are so many moving pieces, but it all starts with the story. Its a heavy collaboration within a limited time, Zielinski states.A different approach was utilized for Cortana, which relied upon plate photography to get the desired interaction and effect.The [Jackals lethal energy] shields almost look the same as the ones from Season 1. This is something that we didnt want to play with in Season 2. The look of the shields is close to what they look like in the game. We want to make sure that the gamers appreciate how much has been retained from the game.Wojciech Zielinski, Visual Effects SupervisorMore than 2,600 visual effects shots were created over a period of 14 months for the eight episodes. We used some of the vendors working on Season 1, but at the same time we had to find a few others with a skillset that works well for the requirements of the sequence, Zielinski observes. Ultimately, we had 18 vendors, and that kept us busy! The heavy lifters were Luma Pictures, El Ranchito, Monkey Rave, Image Engine, Cbica VFX and Rocket Science VFX. We had a few sequences where we had shared shots, which required a big coordination between the different vendors. Episode 204, which has the Battle of the Reach, is the most action-packed. We follow our heroes battling the Covenant forces attacking Reach City and trying to join the UNSC troops. What is interesting about the sequence are the so-called oners. We had multiple shots that are seamlessly stitched. Those had to be well-rehearsed and prepared to make sure that all of the stitches are working well. Sometimes, the story requires a complex stitch, meaning that we have to make sure that the end of one take is matching as close as possible to the beginning of the other take. It literally took us multiple takes to find the right stitch points.An iconic element are the golden visors that at times had to be replaced digitally.Atmospherics had an important role in making the Jackals even more menacing adversaries during the fight sequences.An effort was made to have partial sets built so that the actors could get the proper environmental interaction.Part of the responsibility of the visual effects team was designing and executing the holographic UI for the spacecrafts.World-building consisted of hybrid and entirely CG environments with 75% of Aleria being a practical set while Camp Currahee was fully digital. The Sanctuary sequence was shot in Iceland on a bluescreen stage, Zielinski explains. Were trying to source as much from the Iceland location and capture as much data as well, knowing later on in post we will be building or augmenting that environment. As far as the Reach City goes, we created CG assets for all of the establishing shots. The asset had to be rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate the destruction of the city in Season 2. It all comes down to overplanning the design of the sequences so we actually know which part of the city will be destroyed and by what means; that makes our life much easier in post and ensures that we focus on the right parts of the asset.A significant number of digital doubles had to be produced. It was quite heavy for digital doubles, especially in the action moments in which we see the Spartans [mechanically and biologically-enhanced elite soldiers] moving fast, Zielinski reveals. It was quite difficult for the actors and stunt team to perform those actions in those heavy suits. Quite often, when you see Spartans running, jumping and climbing mountains, those are digital doubles. With the crowd duplication, we cant always afford having 3,000 extras, so you design the scene or shot with a limited number of extras. You place them close to the camera then populate either the midground or background to set the right number for the shot.More than 2,600 visual effects shots were created by 18 vendors over a period of 14 months for the eight episodes of Season 2.[The Flood] is a big character in the game, but literally towards the end of Season 2 we are introducing the Flood, which will hopefully be further developed in Season 3. Its like a fungus that takes over your body and transforms into a combat form. We sourced the design of the Flood from the game, then modified it a little bit to make it feel more alien and organic.Wojciech Zielinski, Visual Effects SupervisorThen there were the virtual companions. The virtual companion employed the same technology as we did this season for Cortana, Zielinski states. We decided to change the approach from Season 1. In Season 1 Cortana was a full CG character. This time, we applied a hybrid approach; in our case, the character was based on plate photography. We shot an actress interacting or performing with other actors. From the plate, we used the face of the actress, then augmented that with a digital body and CG hair. For Cortana shots, we also built a special LED rig, which was integrated into her practical costume that gave us reactive light on the actor, other actors and the sets.Given the limited number of extras, digital crowd replication was critical in getting the necessary size and scope for shots.The mandate was to go for a more grounded tone for the series.Skies play a pivotal role in establishing the proper visual aesthetic for shots.Bluescreen stages were mixed with real locations to create the various environments required for Season 2 of Halo.There were times when full CG shots were required.A staple of sci-fi are space battles. It was quite exciting for all of us, Zielinski acknowledges. We were happy to finally see some space action. As you can imagine, space battles and space jumps are 99% a full CG creation. For the space battles, we had to redesign all of the fleets of the UNSC and Covenant forces. It has been quite a long process to figure out the choreography and geography of the space battles. On the screen it may seem straightforward, but actually its quite complex. I wanted to make sure that the audience is not disorientated and understands the flow of the story in those shots.