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Stargate put Kiefer Sutherland into NYC's Grand Central Station for a scene in Touch. Artists working on visual effects Stargate worked on the pilot episode and is on board for another for television series take pride in both the quality of their work and the efficiencies they've achieved to get results in such a short time- frame. Jim Clark of Hive FX says VFX for a television series often have to be produced at one third the budget and one third the time of a feature film. He credits his studio's pipeline with making that kind of turnaround possible. Cinematographer/VFX supervisor Sam Nicholson of Stargate Studios agrees, noting that every year his studio's shot count increas- es while budgets decrease. It's the nature of the television business, he notes. Nicholson feels that feature film productions are going to have to look to television workflows for efficiencies in the future to be competitive. The experience Stargate has gained through demanding workloads and intense deadlines is readying them for work on Internet series, which Nicholson sees as having unlimited potential as a new form of business. The pros we spoke to this month are creating effects for televi- sion, some are obvious, others are invisible. Here's their take on the business and how they are achieving the results many of us see in our living rooms. TOUCH Stargate Studios (www.stargatestudios.net), which was founded in 1989 by Sam Nicholson, ASC, has locations in Los Angeles, Toronto and Vancouver, as well as partners in Mumbai and Malta. Its propri- etary Visual Operating System enables artists, supervisors and clients to interact with each other from any location in the world as well as operate a 24-hour-a-day production cycle for maximizing efficiency. Stargate's credits include visual effects for The Walking Dead, Revenge, The Event, Grey's Anatomy, 24, ER, Heroes and CSI. Nicholson says the company can be working on more than 20 shows at any given time, and a new program that's dependent on the studio's VFX exper- tise is Touch, the new Fox series starring Keifer Sutherland. The show continues a long-time collaborative relationship with creator/writer Tim Kring, who's used Stargate's VFX skills on Crossing Jordan and Heroes. Touch looks at the interconnection of people's lives throughout the world and a young autistic boy who recognizes the affect a person's action can have on someone they've never met and in another part of the world. Mark Spatny is a visual effects supervisor on the show, which is heavily dependent on virtual sets and mattes to create locations such as Moscow, Mumbai, Bagdad and Dubai. The show is in its first season, but already the storyline is calling for challenging locations such as the site of a plane crash and even the International Space Station. 13. At press time, the show was getting ready to shoot episode 10. Each episode can incorporate three or four storylines, and the studio can be responsible for anywhere between 50 and 100 shots. Nicholson says Stargate's virtual backlot allows the studio to pull off the different locations. Stargate has an extensive library of high resolution location imagery, and they specialize in re-dimensionalizing it, mapping imagery to animated elements to create 2.5/3D sets. The studio uses Adobe After Effects for compositing. "It's the best program for allowing us to do custom programming to tie into our network," Spatny explains. Maya is primarily used for 3D, though art- ists do call on NewTek LightWave when appropriate. Digital extras are animated in Massive and landscapes are executed using Planet- side's Terragen. Stargate produces as many as 10,000 effects each year and Nich- olson sees the business following what he describes as a "reverse" Moore's Law. "Each year we turn out twice as many shots for half the amount of money," he notes. The feature film business, Nicholson feels, will ultimately have to study the efficiencies that television effects houses have found to work within future budgets. And those working on television effects will continue to refine their workflows to allow them to work on Web series, which Nicholson says, could represent a limitless business opportunity. Stargate is also working on Beauty and the Beast for television, which will make extensive use of virtual sets, and a series of six Sony Crackle Webisodes featuring high-quality visual effects. GRIMM Portland, OR's Hive FX (ww.hive-fx.com) has been providing visual effects services for the NBC series Grimm since the pilot episode. The drama — in its first season — is inspired by the classic Grimm's Fairy Tales and centers around a Portland homicide detective, played by David Giuntoli, who discovers that he is a descendant of an elite line of criminal profilers. He's charged with keeping a balance between humanity and the mythological creatures of the world. According to Hive FX founder Jim Clark, the studio typically has two to three episodes in-house at any given time. Their work includes creating the different creatures that appear throughout the series — some new and some reoccurring — as well as compositing them into production plates. "Television is so fast now, and so furious," says Clark. "The work we're doing now for TV is what you would have expected two years ago for features. The expectations are so high and we have to main- tain that because we could potentially lose the contract." Clark is a partner in Hive FX with executive producer Gretchen www.postmagazine.com Post • April 2012 33