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VFXfor TV Series The quality of imagery for television often rivals what’s seen in the theater. By Christine Bunish Entity FX created this entirely CG Darkseid character for Smallville, which ends its run this spring. For the series’ final episode, the studio provided several hundred effects shots. Primetime television is full of visual effects these days — used to bring imaginations to life in the form of over-the-top aliens and superheroes with all sorts of super powers. But VFX also play a more subtle role… V Culver City’s Zoic Studios (www.zoicstudios.com) maintains a busy television VFX roster with HBO’s True Blood, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (for which it won an Emmy Award last year), Fringe, Mad Men,The Defenders and TNT’s upcoming Falling Skies among its shows. Also on the list is the effects-intensive V, whose sea- son finale featured a long-awaited, suspenseful alien- hatching scene. 20 Post • April 2011 “V is a virtual-set show: Everyone on the mother- ship is in a greenscreen environment,” notes Zoic VFX supervisor Andrew Orloff, who is also the creative di- rector for all episodic TV work.“That adds to the com- plexity of each shot. People have to be tracked and put into the virtual environment in up to 500 shots per show.”The hatching shot was no exception. Zoic developed ZEUS (Zoic Environmental Unifica- tion System) for all the V set shots. A prepro-to-post system, ZEUS takes the set from production design, builds it as an asset and loads it into a realtime render onstage so everyone on set can see a pre-composite of the environment. It works with a series of tracking markers mounted to the ceiling; a lipstick camera at- www.postmagazine.com Zoic creates a variety of alien effects for ABC’s V, which is a greenscreen-heavy shoot featuring up to 500 VFX shots per episode. Maya was their primary tool for the hatching scene.