Post Magazine

October 2016

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CW SUPERHEROES www.postmagazine.com 28 POST OCTOBER 2016 W hile there's always plenty of hype surrounding new TV shows mak- ing their primetime debuts, it's also fun to revisit returning favorites as they enter into brand-new seasons. Here, Post takes a look at the visual effects mastery behind The Flash, as well as related CW superhero hits, Supergirl (which now lands at The CW from CBS), D.C.'s Legends of Tomorrow and the scores behind these top shows, including Arrow, the series that started it all for the network. KEEPING UP WITH THE FLASH, SUPERGIRL & MORE In 2014, Post helped introduce readers to the fastest man on television — The CW's then newest hero, The Flash, as part of our cover story on the coming fall TV season. Following Arrow, which was already a huge hit for the network, The Flash also quickly became a fan favorite and ratings booster. The series is now speeding its way into its third super season and helping The CW, along with hits Arrow, D.C.'s Legends of Tomorrow and now Supergirl, corner the market on bringing D.C.'s famous superheroes from the comic book pages to TV life. According to Armen Kevorkian, VFX supervi- sor on The Flash (as well as Supergirl and D.C.'s Legends of Tomorrow) and senior VFX supervisor and executive creative director at Deluxe's Encore VFX, he isn't surprised at how the network blew up with its lineup of D.C. comic book heroes. "I think we were at a level visually that we could bring the D.C. heroes to life better than ever on a TV sched- ule and budget. Once one was done right and it was successful, that opened the door for the other shows to be greenlit." Kevorkian says that there's an average of around 120 to 130 visual effects shots per episode on The Flash alone, which is shot in Vancouver on Arri Alexa cameras in 1920x1080 resolution. His team pulls the files and converts them to raw DPX to work off of. "We create a lot of digital doubles for all the shows," says Kevorkian. "All three shows have main characters that do spectacular things. For Supergirl, we have Supergirl herself as a digital double and then every few episodes an all-CG creature that we have to deal with. Last year, we had the White Martian that we had to create. For The Flash, we have Flash himself, some other speedsters we had this year, and crea- tures, like King Shark and Gorilla Grodd. For Legends, two of our main characters fly — the Atom and Firestorm — so we always have digital doubles for those characters and then whatever else we need as far as the villain of the week or really, whatever is pre- sented to us. Depending on the show or the episode, THE CW'S FALL LINEUP BY LINDA ROMANELLO VFX AND SCORING HELP POWER THE NETWORK'S RETURNING COMIC BOOK HEROES Armen Kevorkian

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