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ILM teams with Ben Stiller and Apple TV+ to bring thousands of seamless visual effects shots to the hit drama’s second season. By Clayton Sandell There are mysterious and important secrets to be uncovered in the second season of the wildly popular Apple TV+ series Severance (2022-present). About 3,500 of them are hiding in plain sight. That’s roughly the number of visual effects shots helping tell the Severance story over 10 gripping episodes in the latest season, a collaborative effort led by Industrial Light & Magic. ILM’s Eric Leven served as the Severance season two production visual effects supervisor. We asked him to help pull back the curtain on some of the show’s impressive digital artistry that most viewers will probably never notice. “This is the first show I’ve ever done where it’s nothing but invisible effects,” Leven tells ILM.com. “It’s a really different calculus because nobody talks about them. And if you’ve done them well, they are invisible to the naked eye.” With so many season two shots to choose from, Leven helped us narrow down a list of his favorite visual effects sequences to five. (As a bonus, we’ll also dive into an iconic season finale shot featuring the Mr. Milchick-led marching band.) Before we dig in, a word of caution. This article contains plot spoilers for Severance. (And in case you’re already wondering: No, the goats are not computer-graphics.) Severance tells the story of Mark Scout (Adam Scott), department chief of the secretive Severed Floor located in the basement level of Lumon Industries, a multinational biotech corporation. Mark S., as he’s known to his co-workers, heads up Macrodata Refinement (MDR), a department where employees help categorize numbers without knowing the true purpose of their work.  Mark and his team – Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and Irving B. (John Turturro), have all undergone a surgical procedure to “sever” their personal lives from their work lives. The chip embedded in their brains effectively creates two personalities that are sometimes at odds: an “Innie” during Lumon office hours and an “Outie” at home. “This is the first show I’ve ever done where it’s nothing but invisible effects. It’s a really different calculus because nobody talks about them. And if you’ve done them well, they are invisible to the naked eye.”Eric Leven 1. The Running Man (Episode 201: “Hello, Ms. Cobel”) The season one finale ends on a major cliffhanger. Mark S. learns that his Outie’s wife, Gemma – believed killed in a car crash years ago – is actually alive somewhere inside the Lumon complex. Season two opens with Mark S. arriving at the Severed Floor in a desperate search for Gemma, who he only knows as her Innie persona, Ms. Casey. The fast-paced sequence is designed to look like a single, two-minute shot. It begins with the camera making a series of rapid and elaborate moves around a frantic Mark S. as he steps out of the elevator, into the Severed Floor lobby, and begins running through the hallways. “The nice thing about that sequence was that everyone knew it was going to be difficult and challenging,” Leven says, adding that executive producer and Episode 201 director, Ben Stiller, began by mapping out the hallway run with his team. Leven recommended that a previsualization sequence – provided by The Third Floor – would help the filmmakers refine their plan before cameras rolled. “While prevising it, we didn’t worry about how we would actually photograph anything. It was just, ‘These are the visuals we want to capture,’” Leven says. “‘What does it look like for this guy to run down this hallway for two minutes? We’ll figure out how to shoot it later.’” The previs process helped determine how best to shoot the sequence, and also informed which parts of the soundstage set would have to be digitally replaced. The first shot was captured by a camera mounted on a Bolt X Cinebot motion-control arm provided by The Garage production company. The size of the motion-control setup, however, meant it could not fit in the confined space of an elevator or the existing hallways. “We couldn’t actually shoot in the elevator,” Leven says. “The whole elevator section of the set was removed and was replaced with computer graphics [CG].” In addition to the elevator, ILM artists replaced portions of the floor, furniture, and an entire lobby wall, even adding a reflection of Adam Scott into the elevator doors. As Scott begins running, he’s picked up by a second camera mounted on a more compact, stabilized gimbal that allows the operator to quickly run behind and sometimes in front of the actor as he darts down different hallways. ILM seamlessly combined the first two Mark S. plates in a 2D composite. “Part of that is the magic of the artists at ILM who are doing that blend. But I have to give credit to Adam Scott because he ran the same way in both cameras without really being instructed,” says Leven. “Lucky for us, he led with the same foot. He used the same arm. I remember seeing it on the set, and I did a quick-and-dirty blend right there and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to work.’ So it was really nice.” The action continues at a frenetic pace, ultimately combining ten different shots to complete the sequence. “We didn’t want the very standard sleight of hand that you’ve seen a lot where you do a wipe across the white hallway,” Leven explains. “We tried to vary that as much as possible because we didn’t want to give away the gag. So, there are times when the camera will wipe across a hallway, and it’s not a computer graphics wipe. We’d hide the wipe somewhere else.” A slightly more complicated illusion comes as the camera sweeps around Mark S. from back to front as he barrels down another long hallway. “There was no way to get the camera to spin around Mark while he is running because there’s physically not enough room for the camera there,” says Leven. To capture the shot, Adam Scott ran on a treadmill placed on a green screen stage as the camera maneuvered around him. At that point, the entire hallway environment is made with computer graphics. Artists even added a few extra frames of the actor to help connect one shot to the next, selling the illusion of a single continuous take. “We painted in a bit of Adam Scott running around the corner. So if you freeze and look through it, you’ll see a bit of his heel. He never completely clears the frame,” Leven points out. Leven says ILM also provided Ben Stiller with options when it came to digitally changing up the look of Lumon’s sterile hallways: sometimes adding extra doors, vents, or even switching door handles. “I think Ben was very excited about having this opportunity,” says Leven. “He had never had a complete, fully computer graphics version of these hallways before. And now he was able to do things that he was never able to do in season one.” (Credit: Apple TV+). 2. Let it Snow (Episode 204: “Woe’s Hollow”) The MDR team – Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving – unexpectedly find themselves in the snowy wilderness as part of a two-day Lumon Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence, or ORTBO.  Exterior scenes were shot on location at Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New York. Throughout the ORTBO sequence, ILM performed substantial environment enhancements, making trees and landscapes appear far snowier than they were during the shoot. “It’s really nice to get the actors out there in the cold and see their breath,” Leven says. “It just wasn’t snowy during the shoot. Nearly every exterior shot was either replaced or enhanced with snow.” For a shot of Irving standing on a vast frozen lake, for example, virtually every element in the location plate – including an unfrozen lake, mountains, and trees behind actor John Turturro – was swapped out for a CG environment. Wide shots of a steep, rocky wall Irving must scale to reach his co-workers were also completely digital. Eventually, the MDR team discovers a waterfall that marks their arrival at a place called Woe’s Hollow. The location – the state park’s real-life Awosting Falls – also got extensive winter upgrades from ILM, including much more snow covering the ground and trees, an ice-covered pond, and hundreds of icicles clinging to the rocky walls. “To make it fit in the world of Severance, there’s a ton of work that has to happen,” Leven tells ILM.com. (Credit: Apple TV+). 3. Welcome to Lumon (Episode 202: “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig” & Episode 203: “Who is Alive?”) The historic Bell Labs office complex, now known as Bell Works in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, stands in as the fictional Lumon Industries headquarters building. Exterior shots often underwent a significant digital metamorphosis, with artists transforming areas of green grass into snow-covered terrain, inserting a CG water tower, and rendering hundreds of 1980s-era cars to fill the parking lot. “We’re always adding cars, we’re always adding snow. We’re changing, subtly, the shape and the layout of the design,” says Leven. “We’re seeing new angles that we’ve never seen before. On the roof of Lumon, for example, the air conditioning units are specifically designed and created with computer graphics.” In real life, the complex is surrounded by dozens of houses, requiring the digital erasure of entire neighborhoods. “All of that is taken out,” Leven explains. “CG trees are put in, and new mountains are put in the background.” Episodes 202 and 203 feature several night scenes shot from outside the building looking in. In one sequence, a camera drone flying outside captured a long tracking shot of Helena Eagan (Helly R.’s Outie) making her way down a glass-enclosed walkway. The building’s atrium can be seen behind her, complete with a massive wall sculpture depicting company founder Kier Eagan. “We had to put the Kier sculpture in with the special lighting,” Leven reveals. “The entire atrium was computer graphics.” Artists completed the shot by adding CG reflections of the snowy parking lot to the side of the highly reflective building. “We have to replace what’s in the reflections because the real reflection is a parking lot with no snow or a parking lot with no cars,” explains Leven. “We’re often replacing all kinds of stuff that you wouldn’t think would need to be replaced.” Another nighttime scene shot from outside the building features Helena in a conference room overlooking the Lumon parking lot, which sits empty except for Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) riding in on his motorcycle. “The top story, where she is standing, was practical,” says Leven, noting the shot was also captured using a drone hovering outside the window. “The second story below her was all computer graphics. Everything other than the building is computer graphics. They did shoot a motorcycle on location, getting as much practical reference as possible, but then it had to be digitally replaced after the fact to make it work with the rest of the shot.” (Credit: Apple TV+). 4. Time in Motion (Episode 207: “Chikhai Bardo”) Episode seven reveals that MDR’s progress is being monitored by four dopplegang-ish observers in a control room one floor below, revealed via a complex move that has the camera traveling downward through a mass of data cables. “They built an oversize cable run, and they shot with small probe lenses. Visual effects helped by blending several plates together,” explains Leven. “It was a collaboration between many different departments, which was really nice. Visual effects helped with stuff that just couldn’t be shot for real. For example, when the camera exits the thin holes of the metal grate at the bottom of the floor, that grate is computer graphics.” The sequence continues with a sweeping motion-control time-lapse shot that travels around the control-room observers in a spiral pattern, a feat pulled off with an ingenious mix of technical innovation and old-school sleight of hand. A previs sequence from The Third Floor laid out the camera move, but because the Bolt arm motion-control rig could only travel on a straight track and cover roughly one-quarter of the required distance, The Garage came up with a way to break the shot into multiple passes. The passes would later be stitched together into one seemingly uninterrupted movement. The symmetrical set design – including the four identical workstations – helped complete the illusion, along with a clever solution that kept the four actors in the correct position relative to the camera. “The camera would basically get to the end of the track,” Leven explains. “Then everybody would switch positions 90 degrees. Everyone would get out of their chairs and move. The camera would go back to one, and it would look like one continuous move around in a circle because the room is perfectly symmetrical, and everything in it is perfectly symmetrical. We were able to move the actors, and it looks like the camera was going all the way around the room.” The final motion-control move switches from time-lapse back to real time as the camera passes by a workstation and reveals Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) standing behind it. Leven notes that each pass was completed with just one take. 5. Mark vs. Mark (Episode 210: “Cold Harbor”) The Severance season two finale begins with an increasingly tense conversation between Innie Mark and Outie Mark, as the two personas use a handheld video camera to send recorded messages back and forth. Their encounter takes place at night in a Lumon birthing cabin equipped with a severance threshold that allows Mark S. to become Mark Scout each time he steps outside and onto the balcony. The cabin set was built on a soundstage at York Studios in the Bronx, New York. The balcony section consisted of the snowy floor, two chairs, and a railing, all surrounded by a blue screen background. Everything else was up to ILM to create. “It was nice to have Ben’s trust that we could just do it,” Leven remembers. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re just going to make this look great, right?’ We said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’” Artists filled in the scene with CG water, mountains, and moonlight to match the on-set lighting and of course, more snow. As Mark Scout steps onto the balcony, the camera pulls back to a wide shot, revealing the cabin’s full exterior. “They built a part of the exterior of the set. But everything other than the windows, even the railing, was digitally replaced,” Leven says. “It was nice to have Ben [Stiller’s] trust that we could just do it. He said, ‘Hey, you’re just going to make this look great, right?’ We said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’”Eric Leven Bonus: Marching Band Magic (Episode 210: “Cold Harbor”) Finally, our bonus visual effects shot appears roughly halfway through the season finale. To celebrate Mark S. completing the Cold Harbor file, Mr. Milchick orders up a marching band from Lumon’s Choreography and Merriment department. Band members pour into MDR, but Leven says roughly 15 to 20 shots required adding a few more digital duplicates. “They wanted it to look like MDR was filled with band members. And for several of the shots there were holes in there. It just didn’t feel full enough,” he says. In a shot featuring a God’s-eye view of MDR, band members hold dozens of white cards above their heads, forming a giant illustration of a smiling Mark S. with text that reads “100%.” “For the top shot, we had to find a different stage because the MDR ceiling is only about eight feet tall,” recalls Leven. “And Ben really pushed to have it done practically, which I think was the right call because you’ve already got the band members, you’ve made the costumes, you’ve got the instruments. Let’s find a place to shoot it.” To get the high shot, the production team set up on an empty soundstage, placing signature MDR-green carpet on the floor. A simple foam core mock-up of the team’s desks occupied the center of the frame, with the finished CG versions added later. Even without the restraints of the practical MDR walls and ceiling, the camera could only get enough height to capture about 30 band members in the shot. So the scene was digitally expanded, with artists adding more green carpet, CG walls, and about 50 more band members. “We painted in new band members, extracting what we could from the practical plate,” Leven says. “We moved them around; we added more, just to make it look as full as Ben wanted.” Every single white card in the shot, Leven points out, is completely digital. (Credit: Apple TV+). A Mysterious and Important Collaboration With fans now fiercely debating the many twists and turns of Severance season two, Leven is quick to credit ILM’s two main visual effects collaborators: east side effects and Mango FX INC, as well as ILM studios and artists around the globe, including San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, Sydney, and Mumbai. Leven also believes Severance ultimately benefited from a successful creative partnership between ILM and Ben Stiller. “This one clicked so well, and it really made a difference on the show,” Leven says. “I think we both had the same sort of visual shorthand in terms of what we wanted things to look like. One of the things I love about working with Ben is that he’s obviously grounded in reality. He wants to shoot as much stuff real as possible, but then sometimes there’s a shot that will either come to him late or he just knows is impractical to shoot. And he knows that ILM can deliver it.” — Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, TV storyteller, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell) Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com) or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

By TREVOR HOGG Denis Villeneuve (Dune: Part Two) finds the difficulty of working with visual effects are sometimes the intermediaries between him and the artists and therefore the need to be precise with directions to keep things on track. (Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures) If post-production has any chance of going smoothly, there must be a solid on-set relationship between the director, cinematographer and visual effects supervisor. “It’s my job to have a vision and to bring it to the screen,” notes Denis Villeneuve, director of Dune: Part Two. “That’s why working with visual effects requires a lot of discipline. It’s not like you work with a keyboard and can change your mind all the time. When I work with a camera, I commit to a mise-en-scène. I’m trying to take the risk, move forward in one direction and enhance it with visual effects. I push it until it looks perfect. It takes a tremendous amount of time and preparation. [VFX Supervisor] Paul Lambert is a perfectionist, and I love that about him. We will never put a shot on the screen that we don’t feel has a certain level of quality. It needs to look as real as the face of my actor.” A legendary cinematographer had a significant influence on how Villeneuve approaches digital augmentation. “Someone I have learned a lot from about visual effects is [Cinematographer] Roger Deakins. I remember that at the beginning, when I was doing Blade Runner 2049, some artwork was not defined enough, and I was like, ‘I will correct that later.’ Roger said, ‘No. Don’t do that. You have to make sure right at the start.’ I’ve learned the hard way that you need to be as precise as you can, otherwise it goes in a lot of directions.” Motion capture is visually jarring because your eye is always drawn to the performer in the mocap suit, but it worked out well on Better Man because the same thing happens when he gets replaced by a CG monkey. (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures) Visual effects enabled the atmospherics on Wolfs to be art directed, which is not always possible with practical snow. (Image courtesy of Apple Studios) One of the most complex musical numbers in Better Man is “Rock DJ,” which required LiDAR scans of Regent Street and doing full 3D motion capture with the dancers dancing down the whole length of the street to work out how best to shoot it. (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures) Cinematographer Dan Mindel favors on-set practical effects because the reactions from the cast come across as being more genuine, which was the case for Twisters. (Image courtesy of Universal Pictures) Storyboards are an essential part of the planning process. “When I finish a screenplay, the first thing I do is to storyboard, not just to define the visual element of the movie, but also to rewrite the movie through images,” Villeneuve explains. “Those storyboards inform my crew about the design, costumes, accessories and vehicles, and [they] create a visual inner rhythm of the film. This is the first step towards visual effects where there will be a conversation that will start from the boards. That will be translated into previs to help the animators know where we are going because the movie has to be made in a certain timeframe and needs choreography to make sure everybody is moving in the same direction.” The approach towards filmmaking has not changed over the years. “You have a camera and a couple of actors in front of you, and it’s about finding the right angle; the rest is noise. I try to protect the intimacy around the camera as much as possible and focus on that because if you don’t believe the actor, then you won’t believe anything.” Before transforming singer Robbie Williams into a CG primate, Michael Gracey started as a visual effects artist. “I feel so fortu- nate to have come from a visual effects background early on in my career,” recalls Michael Gracey, director of Better Man. “I would sit down and do all the post myself because I didn’t trust anyone to care as much as I did. Fortunately, over the years I’ve met people who do. It’s a huge part of how I even scrapbook ideas together. Early on, I was constantly throwing stuff up in Flame, doing a video test and asking, ‘Is this going to work?’ Jumping into 3D was something I felt comfortable doing. I’ve been able to plan out or previs ideas. It’s an amazing tool to be armed with if you are a director and have big ideas and you’re trying to convey them to a lot of people.” Previs was pivotal in getting Better Man financed. “Off the page, people were like, ‘Is this monkey even going to work?’ Then they were worried that it wouldn’t work in a musical number. We showed them the previs for Feel, the first musical number, and My Way at the end of the film. I would say, ‘If you get any kind of emotion watching these musical numbers, just imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s filmed and is photoreal.” Several shots had to be stitched together to create a ‘oner’ that features numerous costume changes and 500 dancers. “For Rock DJ, we were doing LiDAR scans of Regent Street and full 3D motion capture with the dancers dancing down the whole length of the street to work out all of the transition points and how best to shoot it,” Gracey states. “That process involved Erik Wilson, the Cinematographer; Luke Millar, the Visual Effects Supervisor; Ashley Wallen, the Choreographer; and Patrick Correll, Co-Producer. Patrick would sit on set and, in DaVinci Resolve, take the feed from the camera and check every take against the blueprint that we had already previs.” Motion capture is visually jarring to shoot. “Everything that is in-camera looks perfect, then a guy walks in wearing a mocap suit and your eye zooms onto him. But the truth is, your eye does that the moment you replace him with a monkey as well. It worked out quite well because that idea is true to what it is to be famous. A famous person walks into the room and your eye immediately goes to them.” Digital effects have had a significant impact on a particular area of filmmaking. “Physical effects were a much higher art form than it is now, or it was allowed to be then than it is now,” notes Dan Mindel, Cinematographer on Twisters. “People will decline a real pyrotechnic explosion and do a digital one. But you get a much bigger reaction when there’s actual noise and flash.” It is all about collaboration. Mindel explains, “The principle that I work with is that the visual effects department will make us look great, and we have to give them the raw materials in the best possible form so they can work with it instinctually. Sometimes, as a DP, you might want to do something different, but the bottom line is, you’ve got to listen to these guys, because they know what they want. It gets a bit dogmatic, but most of the time, my relationship with visual effects is good, and especially the guys who have had a foot in the analog world at one point or another and have transitioned into the digital world. When we made Twister, it was an analog movie with digital effects, and it worked great. That’s because everyone on set doing the technical work understood both formats, and we were able to use them well.” Digital filmmaking has caused a generational gap. “The younger directors don’t think holistically,” Mindel notes. “It’s much more post-driven because they want to manipulate on the Avid or whatever platform it is going to be. What has happened is that the overreaching nature of these tools has left very little to the imagination. A movie that is heavy visual effects is mostly conceptualized on paper using computer-generated graphics and color; that insidiously sneaks into the look and feel of the movie before you know it. You see concept art blasted all over production offices. People could get used to looking at those images, and before you know it, that’s how the movie looks. That’s a very dangerous place to be, not to have the imagination to work around an issue that perhaps doesn’t manifest itself until you’re shooting.” There has to be a sense of purpose. Mindel remarks, “The ability to shoot in a way that doesn’t allow any manipulation in post is the only way to guarantee that there’s just one direction the look can go in. But that could be a little dangerous for some people. Generally, the crowd I’m working with is part of a team, and there’s little thought of taking the movie to a different place than what was shot. I work in the DI with the visual effects supervisor, and we look at our work together so we’re all in agreement that it fits into the movie.” “All of the advances in technology are a push for greater control,” notes Larkin Seiple, Cinematographer on Everything Everywhere All at Once. “There are still a lot of things that we do with visual effects that we could do practically, but a lot of times it’s more efficient, or we have more attempts at it later in post, than if we had tried to do it practically. I find today, there’s still a debate about what we do on set and what we do later digitally. Many directors have been trying to do more on set, and the best visual effects supervisors I work with push to do everything in-camera as much as possible to make it as realistic as possible.” Storytelling is about figuring out where to invest your time and effort. Seiple states, “I like the adventure of filmmaking. I prefer to go to a mountain top and shoot some of the scenes, get there and be inspired, as opposed to recreate it. Now, if it’s a five-second cutaway, I don’t want production to go to a mountain top and do that. For car work, we’ll shoot the real streets, figure out the time of day and even light the plates for it. Then, I’ll project those on LED walls with actors in a car on a stage. I love doing that because then I get to control how that looks.” Visual effects have freed Fallout Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh to shoot quicker and in places that in the past would have been deemed imperfect because of power lines, out-of-period buildings or the sky. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) Visual effects assist in achieving the desired atmospherics. Seiple says, “On Wolfs, we tried to bring in our own snow for every scene. We would shoot one take, the snow would blow left, and the next take would blow right. Janek Sirrs is probably the best visual effects supervisor I’ve worked with, and he was like, ‘Please turn off the snow. It’ll be a nightmare trying to remove the snow from all these shots then add our own snow back for continuity because you can’t have the snow changing direction every other cut.’ Or we’d have to ‘snow’ a street, which would take ages. Janek would say, ‘Let’s put enough snow on the ground to see the lighting on it and where the actors walk. We’ll do the rest of the street later because we have a perfect reference of what it should look like.” Certain photographic principles have to be carried over into post-production to make shots believable to the eye. Seiple explains, “When you make all these amazing details that should be out of focus sharper, then the image feels like a visual effect because it doesn’t work the way a lens would work.” Familiarity with the visual effects process is an asset in being able to achieve the best result. “I inadvertently come from a lot of visual effect-heavy shoots and shows, so I’m quick to have an opinion about it. Many directors love to reference the way David Fincher uses visual effects because there is such great behind-the-scenes imagery that showcases how they were able to do simple things. Also, I like to shoot tests even on an iPhone to see if this comp will work or if this idea is a good one.” Cinematographer Fabian Wagner and VFX Supervisor John Moffatt spent a lot of time in pre-production for Venom: The Last Dance discussing how to bring out the texture of the symbiote through lighting and camera angles. (Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures) Game of Thrones Director of Photography Fabian Wagner had to make key decisions while prepping and breaking down the script so visual effects had enough time to meet deadline. (Image courtesy of HBO) Twisters was an analog movie with digital effects that worked well because everyone on set doing the technical work understood both formats. (Image courtesy of Universal Pictures) For Cinematographer Larkin Seiple, storytelling is about figuring out where to invest your time and effort. Scene from the Netflix series Beef. (Image courtesy of Netflix) Cinematographer Larkin Seiple believes that all of the advances in technology are a push for greater control, which occurred on Everything Everywhere All at Once. (Image courtesy of A24) Nothing beats reality when it comes to realism. “Every project I do I talk more about the real elements to bring into the shoot than the visual effect element because the more practical stuff that you can do on set, the more it will embed the visual effects into the image, and, therefore, they’re more real,” observes Fabian Wagner, Cinematographer on Venom: The Last Dance. “It also depends on the job you’re doing in terms of how real or unreal you want it to be. Game of Thrones was a good example because it was a visual effects-heavy show, but they were keen on pushing the reality of things as much as possible. We were doing interactive lighting and practical on-set things to embed the visual effects. It was successful.” Television has a significantly compressed schedule compared to feature films. “There are fewer times to iterate. You have to be much more precise. On Game of Thrones, we knew that certain decisions had to be made early on while we were still prepping and breaking down the script. Because of their due dates, to be ready in time, they had to start the visual effects process for certain dragon scenes months before we even started shooting.” “Like everything else, it’s always about communication,” Wagner notes. “I’ve been fortunate to work with extremely talented and collaborative visual effects supervisors, visual effects producers and directors. I have become friends with most of those visual effects departments throughout the shoot, so it’s easy to stay in touch. Even when Venom: The Last Dance was posting, I would be talking to John Moffatt, who was our talented visual effects supervisor. We would exchange emails, text messages or phone calls once a week, and he would send me updates, which we would talk about it. If I gave any notes or thoughts, John would listen, and if it were possible to do anything about, he would. In the end, it’s about those personal relationships, and if you have those, that can go a long way.” Wagner has had to deal with dragons, superheroes and symbiotes. “They’re all the same to me! For the symbiote, we had two previous films to see what they had done, where they had succeeded and where we could improve it slightly. While prepping, John and I spent a lot of time talking about how to bring out the texture of the symbiote and help it with the lighting and camera angles. One of the earliest tests was to see what would happen if we backlit or side lit it as well as trying different textures for reflections. We came up with something we all were happy with, and that’s what we did on set. It was down to trying to speak the same language and aiming for the same thing, which in this case was, ‘How could we make the symbiote look the coolest?’” Visual effects has become a crucial department throughout the filmmaking process. “The relationship with the visual effects supervisor is new,” states Stuart Dryburgh, Cinematographer on Fallout. “We didn’t really have that. On The Piano, the extent of the visual effects was having somebody scribbling in a lightning strike over a stormy sky and a little flash of an animated puppet. Runaway Bride had a two-camera setup where one of the cameras pushed into the frame, and that was digitally removed, but we weren’t using it the way we’re using it now. For [the 2026 Netflix limited series] East of Eden, we’re recreating 19th and early 20th century Connecticut, Boston and Salinas, California in New Zealand. While we have some great sets built and historical buildings that we can use, there is a lot of set extension and modification, and some complete bluescreen scenes, which allow us to more realistically portray a historical environment than we could have done back in the day.” The presence of a visual effects supervisor simplified principal photography. Dryburgh adds, “In many ways, using visual effects frees you to shoot quicker and in places that might otherwise be deemed imperfect because of one little thing, whether it’s power lines or out-of-period buildings or sky. All of those can be easily fixed. Most of us have been doing it for long enough that we have a good idea of what can and can’t be done and how it’s done so that the visual effects supervisor isn’t the arbiter.” Lighting cannot be arbitrarily altered in post as it never looks right. “Whether you set the lighting on the set and the background artist has to match that, or you have an existing background and you, as a DP, have to match that – that is the lighting trick to the whole thing,” Dryburgh observes. “Everything has to be the same, a soft or hard light, the direction and color. Those things all need to line up in a composited shot; that is crucial.” Every director has his or her own approach to filmmaking. “Harold Ramis told me, ‘I’ll deal with the acting and the words. You just make it look nice, alright?’ That’s the conversation we had about shots, and it worked out well. [Director] Garth Davis, who I’m working with now, is a terrific photographer in his own right and has a great visual sense, so he’s much more involved in anything visual, whether it be the designs of the sets, creation of the visual effects, my lighting or choice of lenses. It becomes much more collaborative. And that applies to the visual effects department as well.” Recreating vintage lenses digitally is an important part of the visual aesthetic. “As digital photography has become crisper, better and sharper, people have chosen to use fewer perfect optics, such as lenses that are softer on the edges or give a flare characteristic. Before production, we have the camera department shoot all of these lens grids of different packages and ranges, and visual effects takes that information so they can model every lens. If they’re doing a fully CG background, they can apply that lens characteristic,” remarks Dryburgh. Television schedules for productions like House of the Dragon do not allow a lot of time to iterate, so decisions have to be precise. (Image courtesy of HBO) Bluescreen and stunt doubles on Twisters. (Image courtesy of Universal Pictures) “The principle that I work with is that the visual effects department will make us look great, and we have to give them the raw materials in the best possible form so they can work with it instinctually. Sometimes, as a DP, you might want to do something different, but the bottom line is, you’ve got to listen to these guys because they know what they want. It gets a bit dogmatic, but most of the time, my relationship with visual effects is good, and especially the guys who have had a foot in the analog world at one point or another and have transitioned into the digital world.” —Dan Mindel, Cinematographer, Twisters Cinematographers like Greig Fraser have adopted Unreal Engine. “Greig has an incredible curiosity about new technology, and that helped us specifically with Dune: Part Two,” Villeneuve explains. “Greig was using Unreal Engine to capture natural environments. For example, if we decide to shoot in that specific rocky area, we’ll capture the whole area with drones to recreate the terrain in the computer. If I said, ‘I want to shoot in that valley on November 3rd and have the sun behind the actors. At what time is it? You have to be there at 9:45 am.’ We built the whole schedule like a puzzle to maximize the power of natural light, but that came through those studies, which were made with the software usually used for video games.” Technology is essentially a tool that keeps evolving. Villeneuve adds, “Sometimes, I don’t know if I feel like a dinosaur or if my last movie will be done in this house behind the computer alone. It would be much less tiring to do that, but seriously, the beauty of cinema is the idea of bringing many artists together to create poetry.”

“Is that concrete all around, or is it in my head?” asked Ian Hunter in “All the Young Dudes,” the song David Bowie wrote for Mott the Hoople in 1972. Concrete is all around us, and we haven’t quite wrapped our heads around it. It’s one of the indispensable materials of modernity; as we try to decarbonize the built environment, it’s part of the problem, and innovations in its composition may become part of the solution. Understanding its history more clearly, the Skyscraper Museum’s new exhibition in Manhattan implies, just might help us employ it better. Concrete is “the second most used substance in the world, after water,” the museum’s founder/director/curator Carol Willis told AN during a recent visit. For plasticity, versatility, and compressive strength, reinforced concrete is hard to beat, though its performance is more problematic when assessed by the metric of embodied and operational carbon, a consideration the exhibition acknowledges up front. In tall construction, concrete has become nearly hegemonic, yet its central role, contend Willis and co-curator Thomas Leslie, formerly of Foster + Partners and now a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is underrecognized by the public and by mainstream architectural history. The current exhibition aims to change that perception. The Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan features an exhibition, The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, which examines the history of material choices in building tall towers. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) The Modern Concrete Skyscraper examines the history of tall towers’ structural material choices, describing a transition from the early dominance of steel frames to the contemporary condition, in which most large buildings rely on concrete. This change did not happen instantly or for any single reason but through a combination of technical and economic factors, including innovations by various specialists, well-recognized and otherwise; the availability of high-quality limestone deposits near Chicago; and the differential development of materials industries in nations whose architecture grew prominent in recent decades. As supertalls reach ever higher—in the global race for official height rankings by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) and national, corporate, or professional bragging rights—concrete’s dominance may not be permanent in that sector, given the challenge of pumping the material beyond a certain height. (The 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, formerly Burj Dubai, uses concrete up to 1,987 and steel above that point; Willis quotes SOM’s William Baker describing it as “the tallest steel building with a concrete foundation of 156 stories.”) For the moment, however, concrete is ahead of its chief competitors, steel and (on a smaller scale) timber. Regardless of possible promotional inferences, Willis said, “we did not work with the industry in any way for this exhibition.” “The invention of steel and the grid of steel and the skeleton frame is only the first chapter of the history of the skyscraper,” Willis explained. “The second chapter, and the one that we’re in now, is concrete. Surprisingly, no one had ever told that story of the skyscraper today with a continuous narrative.” The exhibition traces the use of concrete back to the ancient Roman combination of aggregate and pozzolana—the chemical formula for which was “largely lost with the fall of the Roman Empire,” though some Byzantine and medieval structures approximated it. From there, the show explores comparable materials’ revival in 18th-century England, the patenting of Portland cement by Leeds builder Joseph Aspdin in 1824, the proof-of-concept concrete house by François Coignet in 1856, and the pivotal development of rebar in the mid-19th century, with overdue attention to Ernest Ransome’s 1903 Ingalls Building in Cincinnati, then the world’s tallest concrete building at 15 stories and arguably the first concrete skyscraper. The exhibition includes a timeline that depicts concrete’s origins in Rome to its contemporary use in skyscraper construction. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) Baker’s lectures, Willis reported, sometimes pose a deceptively simple question: “‘What is a skyscraper?’ In 1974, when the World Trade Center and Sears Tower are just finished, you would say it’s a very tall building that is built of steel, an office building in North America. But if you ask that same question today, the answer is: It’s a building that is mixed-use, constructed of concrete, and [located] in Asia or the Middle East.” The exhibition organizes the history of concrete towers by eras of engineering innovation, devoting special attention to the 19th- and early-20th-century “patent era” of Claude Allen Porter Turner (pioneer in flat-slab flooring and mushroom columns) and Henry Chandlee Turner (founder of Turner Construction), Ransome (who patented twisted-iron rebar), and François Hennebique (known for the re-inforced concrete system exemplified by Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building, the world’s tallest concrete office building when completed in 1911). In the postwar era, “concrete comes out onto the surface [as] both a structural material and aesthetic.” Brutalism, perhaps to some observers’ surprise, “does not figure very large in high-rise design,” Willis said, except for Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers in the Bronx. The exhibition, however, devotes considerable attention to the work of Pier Luigi Nervi, Bertrand Goldberg (particularly Marina City), and SOM’s Fazlur Khan, pioneer of the structural tube system in the 1960s and 1970s—followed by the postmodernist 1980s, when concrete could express either engineering values or ornamentation. The exhibition highlights a number of concrete towers, including Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers in the Bronx. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) “In the ’90s, there were material advances in engineering analysis and computerization that helped to predict performance, and so buildings can get taller and taller,” Willis said. The current era, if one looks to CTBUH rankings, is dominated by the supertalls seen in Dubai, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur, after the Petronas Towers (1998) “took the title of world’s tallest building from North America for the first time and traumatized everybody about that.” The previous record holder, Chicago’s Sears (now Willis) Tower, comprised steel structural tubes on concrete caissons; with Petronas, headquarters of Malaysia’s national petroleum company of that name, a strong concrete industry was represented but a strong national steel industry was lacking, and as Willis frequently says, form follows finances. In any event, by the ’90s concrete was already becoming the standard material for supertalls, particularly on soft-soiled sites like Shanghai, where its water resistance and compressive strength are well suited to foundation construction. Its plasticity is also well suited to complex forms like the triangular Burj, Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, and (if eventually completed) the even taller Jeddah Tower, designed to “confuse the wind,” shed vortices, and manage wind forces. Posing the same question Louis Kahn asked about the intentions of a brick, Willis said, with concrete “the answer is: anything you want.” The exhibition is front-loaded with scholarly material, presenting eight succinct yet informative wall texts on the timeline of concrete construction. The explanatory material is accompanied by ample photographs as well as structural models on loan from SOM, Pelli Clarke & Partners, and other firms. Some materials are repurposed from the museum’s previous shows, particularly Supertall! (2011–12) and Sky High and the Logic of Luxury (2013–14). The models allow close examination of the Burj Khalifa, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Tower, Merdeka 118, and others, including two unbuilt Chicago projects that would have exceeded 2,000 feet: the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle (Cesar Pelli/Thornton Tomasetti) and 7 South Dearborn (SOM). The Burj, Willis noted, was all structure and no facade for a time: When its curtain-wall manufacturer, Schmidlin, went bankrupt in 2006, it “ended up going to 100 stories without having a stitch of glass on it,” temporarily becoming a “1:1 scale model of the structural system up to 100 stories.” Its prominence justifies its appearance here in two models, including one from RWDI’s wind-tunnel studies. Eero Saarinen’s only skyscraper, built for CBS in 1965 and also known as “Black Rock,” under construction in New York City. (Courtesy Eero Saarinen Collection, Manuscripts, and Archives, Yale University Library) The exhibition opened in March, with plans to stay up at least through October (Willis prefers to keep the date flexible), with accompanying lectures and panels to be announced on the museum’s website (skyscraper.org). Though the exhibition’s full textual and graphic content is available online, the physical models alone are worth a trip to the Battery Park City headquarters. Intriguing questions arise from the exhibition without easy answers, setting the table for lively discussion and debate. One is whether the patenting of innovations like Ransome bar and the Système Hennebique incentivized technological progress or hindered useful technology transfer. Willis speculated, “Did the fact that there were inventions and patents mean that competition was discouraged, that the competition was only in the realm of business, rather than advancing the material?” A critical question is whether research into the chemistry of concrete, including MIT’s 2023 report on the self-healing properties of Roman pozzolana and proliferating claims about “green concrete” using alternatives to Portland cement, can lead to new types of the material with improved durability and lower emissions footprints. This exhibition provides a firm foundation in concrete’s fascinating history, opening space for informed speculation about its future. Bill Millard is a regular contributor to AN.

Remember that time when good ol’ Peter Parker called a drone strike on his classmates because another guy was flirting with MJ? Well, the artificial intelligence that made it happen is back, this time in snarky Canadian form! Deadline is reporting that Schitt’s Creek alum Emily Hampshire has been cast as E.D.I.T.H. in Vision Quest, the upcoming Disney+ series starring Paul Bettany as the synthezoid Avenger. E.D.I.T.H., of course, made her debut as a pair of ugly, gaudy sunglasses the late Tony Stark bequeathed to Peter in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Through E.D.I.T.H., Peter had access to vast technological resources, resources that Mysterio wanted to use for himself. At the end of Far From Home, Peter reclaimed the E.D.I.T.H. glasses and in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a screen readout assured us that they were inactive. Moreover, No Way Home ends with Peter having his secret identity wiped from everyone’s memory and a closing shot of him hand-stitching his own costume in a dingy New York apartment, suggeting that the MCU experiment of making working-class Peter Parker into the scion of a tech bro was done. That may still be true, in which case Vision Quest is a much better place for E.D.I.T.H. to exist. Created by Terry Matalas, showrunner of the Twelve Monkeys TV series and the third season of Star Trek: Picard, Vision Quest will follow the next phase in the life of the synthezoid Vision, who was killed in Avengers: Infinity War and resurrected as an initially evil clone in WandaVision. The title Vision Quest comes from a 1989-1990 arc of West Coast Avengers, written and penciled by John Byrne, in which the U.S. government dismantles Vision and recreates him into a mindless and easily controllable form, signified by his new bleach white look. Fans of the MCU will recognize that storyline from the last episodes of WandaVision, in which S.A.B.E.R. did the same thing to Bettany’s character. However, the Vision Quest comics continued to tell the story of Vision attempting to recover the humanity and personality he’d previously gained over the years, which will presumably be the plot of Vision Quest. However, E.D.I.T.H.’s casting is just the latest in a host of synthetic characters who will appear in the show. James Spader will return as Vision’s creator Ultron, and T’Nia Miller has joined the show as Jocasta, a female synthezoid originally created as Ultron’s bride. A few humans will show up as well, including the return of Faran Tahir as Raza, the leader of the Ten Rings terrorist cell, last seen in Iron Man, and frequent Matalas collaborator Todd Stashwick as a mystery man hunting Vision. That’s a packed cast, but as anyone who recalls the Picard season 3 episode in which androids Data and Lore merged, Matalas knows how to tell an interesting story about artificial intelligence. That episode also showed that Matalas knows how to add levity to heavy conversations about existence, making Hampshire’s casting as E.D.I.T.H. a wise choice. Just don’t let her anywhere near another school bus full of teenagers. Vision Quest is slated to appear on Disney+ in 2026.

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From lifelike avatars to automated fan interactions, AI is remaking digital modeling. But can tech ... More scale intimacy — or will it erode the human spark behind the screen?getty The AI boom has been defined by unprecedented innovation across nearly every sector. From improving flight punctuality through AI-powered scheduling to detecting early markers of Alzheimer’s disease, AI is modifying how we live and work. And the advertising world isn’t left out. In March of this year, OpenAI’s GPT-4o sent the internet into a frenzy with its ability to generate Studio Ghibli-style images. The model produces realistic, emotionally nuanced visuals from a series of prompts — a feat that has led some to predict the demise of visual arts as we know them. While such conclusions may be premature, there’s growing belief among industry players that AI could transform how digital model agencies operate. That belief isn’t limited to one startup. A new class of AI-powered agencies — including FanPro, Lalaland.ai, Deep Agency andThe Diigitals — is testing whether modeling can be automated without losing its creative edge. Some use AI to generate lifelike avatars. Others offer virtual photo studios, CRM — customer relationship management — integrations, or creator monetization tools. Together, they reflect a big shift in how digital modeling agencies think about labor, revenue and scale. FanPro — founded by Tyron Humphris in 2023 to help digital model agencies scale efficiently — offers a striking case study. Fully self-funded, Humphris said in an interview that the company reached $1 million in revenue within its first 90 days and crossed eight figures by 2024, all while maintaining a lean team by automating nearly every process. As Humphris noted, “the companies that will lead this next decade won’t just be the ones with the best marketing or biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones who use AI, automation and systems thinking to scale with precision, all while staying lean and agile.” That explains the big bet that startups like FanPro are making — but how far can it really go? And why should digital model agencies care in the first place? Automation In Digital Model Agencies To understand how automation works in the digital modeling industry — a fast-rising corner of the creator economy — it helps to understand what it’s replacing. A typical digital model agency juggles five or more monetization platforms per creator — from OnlyFans and Fansly to TikTok and Instagram. But behind every viral post is a grind of scheduling, analytics, upselling, customer support and retention. The average agency may need 10 to 15 contractors to manage a roster of just a few high-performing creators. These agencies oversee a complex cycle: content creation, onboarding, audience engagement and sales funnel optimization, usually across several monetization platforms. According to Humphris, there’s often a misconception that running a digital model agency is just about posting pretty pictures. But in reality, he noted, it’s more. “It’s CRM, data science and psychology all wrapped in one. If AI can streamline even half of that, it’s a game-changer.” That claim reflects a growing pain point in the creator economy, where agencies swim in an ocean of tools in an attempt to monetize attention for creators while simultaneously managing marketing, sales and customer support. For context, a 2024 Clevertouch Consulting study revealed that 54% of marketers use more than 50 tools to manage operations — many stitched together with Zapier or manual workarounds. Tyron Humphris, founder of FanProFanPro But, according to Humphris, “no matter how strong your offer is, if you don’t have systems, processes and accountability built into the business, it’s going to collapse under pressure.” And that’s where AI steps in. Beyond handling routine tasks, large language models and automation stacks now allow agencies to scale operations while staying lean. With minimal human input, agencies can schedule posts, auto-respond to DMs, upsell subscriptions, track social analytics and manage retention flows. What once required a full team of marketers, virtual assistants and sales reps can now be executed by a few well-trained AI agents. FanPro claims that over 90% of its operations — from dynamic pricing to fan interactions — are now handled by automation. Likewise, Deep Agency allows creators to generate professional-grade photo shoots without booking a studio or hiring staff and Lalaland.ai helps fashion brands generate AI avatars to reduce production costs and increase diversity in representation. A Necessary Human Touch Still, not everyone is convinced that AI can capture the nuance of digital intimacy. Some experts have raised concerns that hyper automation in creator-driven industries could flatten human expression into predictable engagement patterns, risking long-term user loyalty. A 2024 ContentGrip study of 1,000 consumers found 80% of respondents would likely switch brands that rely heavily on AI-generated emails, citing a loss of authenticity. Nearly half said such messages made them feel “less connected” to the brand. Humphris doesn’t disagree. “AI can do a lot, but it needs to be paired with someone who understands psychology,” he said. “We didn’t scale because we had the best tech. We scaled because we understood human behavior and built systems that respected it.” Humphris’ sentiment isn’t a mere anecdote but one rooted in research. For example, a recent study by Northeastern University showed that AI influencers often reduce brand trust — especially when users aren’t aware the content is AI-generated. The implication is clear: over-automating the wrong parts of human interaction can backfire. Automation doesn’t — and shouldn’t — mean that human input becomes obsolete. Rather, as many industry experts have noted, it will enhance efficiency but not replace empathy. While AI can process data at speed and generate alluring visuals, it cannot replicate human creativity or emotional intelligence. Neither does AI know the psychology of human behavior like humans do, a trait Humphris credits for their almost-instant success. What’s Working — And What’s Not Lalaland.ai and The Diigitals have earned praise for enhancing inclusivity, enabling brands to feature underrepresented body types, skin tones and styles. Meanwhile, FanPro focuses on building AI “growth engines” for agencies — full-stack systems that combine monetization tools, CRM and content flows. But not all reactions have been positive. In November 2024, fashion brand Mango faced backlash for its use of AI-generated models, which critics called “false advertising” and “a threat to real jobs.” The New York Post covered the fallout in detail, highlighting how ethical lines are still being drawn. As brands look to balance cost savings with authenticity, some have begun labeling AI-generated content more clearly — or embedding human oversight into workflows, rather than removing it. Despite offering an automation stack, FanPro itself wasn’t an immediate adopter of automation in its processes. But, as Humphris noted, embracing AI made all the difference for the company. “If we had adopted AI and automation earlier, we would’ve hit 8 figures much faster and with far less stress,” he noted. Automation In The New Era FanPro is a great example of how AI integration, when done the right way, could be a profitable venture for digital model agencies. Whether or not the company’s model becomes the blueprint for AI-first digital agencies, it’s clear that there’s a big shift in the creator economy, where automation isn’t only viewed as a time-saver, but also as a foundational pillar for businesses. As digital model agencies lean further into an AI-centric future, the bigger task is remembering what not to automate — the spark of human connection that built the industry in the first place. “In this new era of automation,” Humphris said, “the smartest agencies won’t just ask what AI can do. They’ll ask what it shouldn’t.”

By JENNIFER CHAMPAGNE House of the Dragon expands its dragon-filled world in its second season, offering more large-scale battles and heightened aerial warfare. (Image courtesy of HBO) The 2025 Emmy race for outstanding visual effects is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in years with major genre heavyweights breaking new ground on what’s possible on television. As prestige fantasy and sci-fi continue to dominate, the battle for the category will likely come down to sheer scale, technical innovation and how seamlessly effects are integrated into storytelling. Returning titans like House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have proven their ability to deliver breathtaking visuals. At the same time, Dune: Prophecy enters the conversation as a visually stunning newcomer. The Boys remains the category’s wildcard, bringing its own brand of hyper-realistic, shock-value effects to the race. With its subtle yet immersive world-building, The Penguin stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. Each series offers a distinct approach to digital effects, making for an intriguing showdown between blockbuster-scale world-building and more nuanced, atmospheric craftsmanship. Sharing the arena with marquee pacesetters HBO’s The Last of Us, Disney+’s Andor and Netflix’s Squid Game, these series lead the charge in ensuring that the 2025 Emmy race isn’t just about visual spectacle; it’s about which shows will set the next benchmark for visual effects on television. The following insights and highlights from VFX supervisors of likely Emmy contenders illustrate why their award-worthy shows have caught the attention of TV watchers and VFX Emmy voters. The Penguin, with its subtle yet immersive world-building, stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis.  (Image courtesy of HBO) For The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power VFX Supervisor Jason Smith, the second season presented some of the Amazon series’ most ambitious visual effects challenges. From the epic Battle of Eregion to the painstaking design of the Entwives, Smith and his team at Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision. “The Battle of Eregion was amazing to work on – and challenging too, because it’s a pivotal moment in Tolkien’s story,” Smith states. Unlike typical large-scale clashes, this battle begins as a siege culminating in an explosive cavalry charge. “We looked for every way we could to heighten the action during the siege by keeping the armies interacting, even at a distance,” Smith explains. His team introduced projectiles and siege weaponry to create dynamic action, ensuring the prolonged standoff felt kinetic. The environment work for Eregion posed another challenge. The city was initially constructed as a massive digital asset in Season 1, showcasing the collaborative brilliance of the Elves and Dwarves. In Season 2, that grandeur had to be systematically razed to the ground. “The progression of destruction had to be planned extremely carefully,” Smith notes. His team devised seven distinct levels of damage, mapping out in granular detail which areas would be smoldering, reduced to rubble or utterly consumed by fire. “Our goal was to have the audience feel the loss that the Elves feel as this beautiful symbol of the height of Elvendom is utterly razed.” The SSVFX team helped shape a world for Lady in the Lake that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise. (Image courtesy of Apple TV+) One of most ambitious effects for Season 4 of The Boys was Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself. The sequence required eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming, for one shot. The final effect was a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) The Penguin, HBO Max’s spinoff series of The Batman, centers on Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb’s ruthless rise to power, and relies on meticulous environmental effects, smoothly integrating CG elements to enhance Gotham’s noir aesthetic without ever calling attention to the work itself. “The most rewarding part of our work was crafting VFX that don’t feel like VFX,” says VFX Supervisor Johnny Han. Across the series’ 3,100 VFX shots, every collapsing freeway, skyline extension and flicker of light from a muzzle flash had to feel utterly real – woven so naturally into the world of Gotham that viewers never stopped to question its authenticity. Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce in Dune: Prophecy. The production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation, but its full grandeur came to life in post by extending this environment with CG.(Images courtesy of HBO) The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power refined its environments, which elevate Middle-earth’s realism. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) Some of the series’ most striking visual moments were also its most understated. The shift of Gotham’s seasons – transforming sunlit summer shoots into autumn’s muted chill – helped shape the show’s somber tone, reinforcing the bleak, crime-ridden undercurrent. The city’s bridges and skyscrapers were meticulously augmented, stretching Gotham beyond the limits of practical sets while preserving its grounded, brutalist aesthetic. Even the scars and wounds on Sofia Falcone were enhanced through digital artistry, ensuring that her past traumas remained ever-present, etched into her skin. The series wasn’t without its large-scale effects – far from it. Han and his team orchestrated massive sequences of urban devastation. “The floodwaters were one of our biggest challenges,” Han notes, referring to the ongoing impact of the catastrophic deluge that left Gotham in ruins. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets – not as an action set piece, but as a deeply personal moment of loss. “Telling Victor’s story of how he lost his entire family in the bombing and floods of Gotham was heartbreaking,” Han says. “Normally, you create an event like that for excitement, for tension. But for us, it was about capturing emotional devastation.” Perhaps the most technically intricate sequences were the shootouts, hallmarks of Gotham’s criminal underbelly. “We programmed millisecond-accurate synced flash guns to mimic dramatic gunfire light,” Han explains, ensuring that the interplay of practical and digital elements remained imperceptible. Every muzzle flash, every ricochet was meticulously planned and rendered. The ultimate achievement for Han and his team wasn’t crafting the biggest explosion or the most elaborate digital sequence – it was making Gotham itself feel inescapably real. He says, “Nothing was more important to us than for you to forget that there are 3,100 VFX shots in this series.” The challenge for The Residence was making one of the most recognizable buildings in the world feel both immersive and narratively engaging. (Photo: Erin Simkin. Courtesy of Netflix) Bringing the universe of Dune to life on TV for HBO’s Dune: Prophecy requires a delicate balance of realism and imagination, grounded in natural physics, yet awe-inspiring in scale. Dune: Prophecy looks to challenge traditional fantasy dominance with its stunning, desert-bound landscapes and intricate space-faring visuals, uniting the grandeur of Denis Villeneuve’s films with the demands of episodic storytelling. Set thousands of years before the events of the films, the series explores the early days of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive order wielding extraordinary abilities. Translating that power into a visual language required technical innovation. “Kudos to Important Looking Pirates for the space folding and [Lila’s] Agony work,” says VFX Supervisor Mike Enriquez. No Dune project would be complete without its most iconic inhabitant, the sandworm. VFX Producer Terron Pratt says. “We’re incredibly proud of what the team at Image Engine created. Precise animation conveyed this creature’s weight and massive scale, while incredibly detailed sand simulations integrated it into the environment.” Every grain of sand had to move believably in response to the worm’s colossal presence to ensure the physics of Arrakis remained authentic. Floodwaters play a significant part in the destruction of Gotham in The Penguin. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets. (Image courtesy of HBO) American Primeval integrated visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways. The massacre sequence showcases technical mastery and pulls the audience into the brutal reality of the American frontier. (Photo: Justin Lubin. Courtesy of Netflix) For the Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce, the Dune: Prophecy production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation. However, its full grandeur came to life in post. “By extending this environment with CG, we amplified the scope of our world, making it feel expansive and deeply impactful,” Pratt explains. The result was a sprawling, futuristic cityscape that retained a tangible weight with impeccably amalgamated practical and digital elements. Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building for Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) Visual effects extended beyond character work for Lady in the Lake, playing a key role in the show’s immersive world-building. (Image courtesy of Apple TV+) For House of the Dragon VFX Supervisor Daði Einarsson, Season 2 presented some of the HBO show’s most complex and ambitious visual effects work. The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 was a milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle. “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege,” Einarsson says. Capturing the actors’ performances mid-flight required a combination of motion-controlled cameras, preprogrammed motion bases with saddles and LED volume lighting – all mapped directly from fully animated previsualized sequences approved by director Alan Taylor and Showrunner Ryan J. Condal. On the ground, the battlefield required digital crowd replication, extensive environment extensions, and pyrotechnic enhancements to create a war zone that felt both vast and intimately chaotic. “In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work,” Einarsson explains. Under the supervision of Sven Martin, the Pixomondo team stitched together breathtaking aerial combat, ensuring the dragons moved with the weight and raw power befitting their legendary status. Blood, weapon effects and period-accurate muzzle flashes heightened the intensity of the brutal fight sequences in American Primeval. The natural elements and violence reflected the harsh realities of the American west in 1857. (Image courtesy of Netflix) The Residence brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through the White House in this political murder mystery. (Photo: Jessica Brooks. Courtesy of Netflix) Episode 7 introduced Hugh Hammer’s claim of Vermithor, Westeros’ second-largest dragon. Rather than breaking the sequence into multiple shots, Einarsson and director Loni Peristere saw an opportunity to craft something exceptional: a single, uninterrupted long take reminiscent of Children of Men and Gravity. “It took a lot of planning to design a series of beats that cohesively flowed from one into the next, with Hugh leading the camera by action and reaction,” Einarsson says. The sequence, which involved Hugh dodging Vermithor’s flames and ultimately claiming the beast through sheer bravery, was technically demanding. To achieve this, the team stitched together five separate takes of Hugh’s performance, shot over two separate days weeks apart, due to the set needing to be struck and rebuilt in different configurations. VFX Supervisor Wayne Stables and the team at Wētā ensured the transitions were imperceptible, uniting practical and digital elements into a continuous, immersive moment. “The Dragonmont Cavern environment was a beautiful, raised gantry and cave designed by [Production Designer] Jim Clay and expanded by Wētā,” Einarsson says. Then Rowley Imran’s stunt team and Mike Dawson’s SFX team engulfed the set in practical flames so every element, from fire to dust to movement, contributed to the illusion of real-time danger. For Einarsson, the most significant challenge wasn’t just in making these sequences visually spectacular – it was ensuring they belonged within the same world as the quiet, dialogue-driven moments in King’s Landing. “The aim is for incredibly complex and spectacular visual effects scenes to feel like they belong in the same world as two people talking in a council chamber,” he states. Every dragon, flame and gust of wind had to feel as lived-in as the politics playing out beneath them. Season 4 of The Boys delivered the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. A challenge was crafting a believable yet expressive sea creature and keeping it grounded while still embracing the show’s signature absurdity. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) In The Penguin, Gotham isn’t just a city; it’s a living, breathing entity shaped by destruction, decay and the quiet menace lurking beneath its streets. (Images courtesy of HBO) The Boys continues to defy genre norms, delivering audacious, technically complex effects that lean into its hyperviolent, satirical take on superheroes. For The Boys VFX Supervisor Stephan Fleet, Season 4 delivered some of the Amazon Prime show’s most dramatic effects yet, from the self-replicating Splinter to the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself, presented a unique challenge. Fleet says, “His introduction on the podium was a complex motion control sequence. Eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming – for one shot.” Splinter’s design came with an added layer of difficulty. “We had to figure out how to make a nude male clone,” Fleet says. “Normally, you can hide doubles’ bodies in clothes – not this time!” The final effect required a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement, requiring multiple iterations to make it work. Ambrosius became one of The Boys’ most unexpected breakout characters. “It’s fun making a full-on character in the show that’s an octopus,” Fleet reveals in a nod to the show’s absurd side. “As much as possible, we aim for a grounded approach and try to attain a level of thought and detail you don’t often find on TV.” While the battle for outstanding visual effects will likely be dominated by large-scale fantasy and sci-fi productions, several standout series are also making waves with their innovative and immersive visual storytelling. Netflix’s The Residence, led by VFX Supervisor Seth Hill, brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, enhancing the grandeur of the White House setting in this political murder mystery. “Using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through an iconic location like the White House was really fun,” Hill says. “It’s a cool and unique use of visual effects.” One of the most ambitious sequences involved what the team called the Doll House, a digital rendering of the White House with its south façade removed, exposing the interior like a cross-section of a dollhouse. Hill explains. “Going back and forth from filmed footage to full CGI – that jump from grounded realism to abstract yet still real – was quite tricky,” he says, adding, “VFX is best when it is in service of the storytelling, and The Residence presented a unique opportunity to do just that. It was a big challenge and a tough nut to crack, but those creative and technical hurdles are a good part of what makes it so rewarding.” “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege. In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work.”—Daði Einarsson, VFX Supervisor, House of the Dragon The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 of House of the Dragon Season 2 was a major milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle. (Image courtesy of HBO) Season 2 of House of the Dragon presented some of the most complex and ambitious visual effects work for the show to date. (Photo: Theo Whiteman. Courtesy of HBO) For Jay Worth, VFX Supervisor on Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake, the challenge was two-fold: create seamless effects and preserve the raw emotional truth of a performance. One of the most significant technical achievements was de-aging Natalie Portman. “It seems so easy on paper, but the reality was far more challenging,” Worth admits. Worth had tackled de-aging before, but never with the same level of success. “For me, it is simply because of her performance.” Portman delivered a nuanced, youthful portrayal that felt entirely authentic to the time period. “It made our job both so much easier and set the bar so high for us. Sometimes, you can hide in a scene like this – you pull the camera back, cut away before the most expressive parts of the dialogue, or the illusion breaks,” Worth explains. In Lady in the Lake, there was nowhere to hide. “I think that is what I am most proud of with these shots. It felt like the longer you stayed on them, the more you believed them. That is a real feat with this sort of work.” Skully VFX handled the de-aging. “They nailed the look early on and delivered throughout the project on this difficult task.” Working alongside Production Designer Jc Molina, the VFX team helped shape a world that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise. “We were entrusted with the most important part of this show – do we believe this performance from this character in this part of her journey? – and we feel like we were able to deliver on this challenge.” On the other end of the spectrum, Netflix’s American Primeval, under the guidance of VFX Supervisor Andrew Ceperley, delivers rugged, visceral realism in its portrayal of the untamed American frontier. With brutal battle sequences, sprawling landscapes and historical re-creations that interweave practical and digital effects, the series stands as a testament to how VFX can enhance grounded, historical storytelling. Ceperley says, “The standout is definitely the nearly three-minute single-shot massacre sequence in the forest episode.” Designed to immerse the audience in the raw, chaotic violence of the frontier, the scene captures every brutal detail with unrelenting intensity. The challenge was crafting invisible visual effects, enhancing practical stunts and destruction without breaking the immersive, handheld camera style. “The sequence was designed to be one shot made up of 10 individual takes, shot over seven days, seamlessly stitched together, all while using a handheld camera on an extremely wide-angle lens.” One of the most complex moments involved a bull smashing through a wagon while the characters hid underneath. Rather than relying on CGI, the team took a practical approach, placing a 360-degree camera under the wagon while the special effects team rigged it to explode in a way that simulated an impact. “A real bull was then guided to run toward the 360 camera and leap over it,” Ceperley says. The footage was blended with live-action shots of the actors with minimal CGI enhancements – just dust and debris – to complete the effect. Adding to the difficulty, the scene was set at sunset, giving the team an extremely limited window to capture each day’s footage. The massacre sequence was a prime example of integrating visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways, blending old-school in-camera effects with modern stitching techniques to create a visceral cinematic moment that stayed true to the show’s raw, historical aesthetic. “Using old techniques in new, even strange ways and seeing it pay off and deliver on the original vision was the most rewarding part.”

This week we're fielding your burning tech questions, as well as diving into a bunch of AI web browser news. Opera has started testing its fully agentic AI browser, the Browser Company is dumping the Arc browser in favor of something AI related and Mozilla is getting in a bit of hot water with experimental AI preview summaries. Try as we might, we just can't escape AI. Subscribe! iTunes Spotify Pocket Casts Stitcher Google Podcasts Topics Listener Mailbag: How to set up an Xbox account for your kids, will screens be obsolete, and more – 1:34 Web browsers go AI ‘agentic’: The Browser Company leaves Arc behind. Opera and Firefox debut new features – 25:37 xAI is paying Telegram $300m this year to use Grok – 54:04 Apple’s self repair program extends to iPads – 56:30 Apple might switch its OS numbering next year, iOS26 could be on the way – 58:57 Working on – 1:02:41 Pop culture picks – 1:09:26 Credits  Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Ben EllmanProducer: Ben EllmanMusic: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/engadget-podcast-who-needs-an-ai-web-browser-124547429.html?src=rss