Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1100392
www.postmagazine.com 24 POST MAR/APR 2019 there and immersed in that. I think we're doing that better than any other show on broadcast TV." — By Linda Romanello AMC'S FEAR THE WALKING DEAD The notion of zombies, or the living dead, can be traced back thousands of years to many cultures around the world, invoking fear among the living, as zombies have a reputation for being hard to kill. In fact, the popular belief is that the only sure way to permanently stop a zombie is to destroy its brain — the approach taken in the widely pop- ular AMC TV series Fear the Walking Dead. To this end, the majority of the visual effects work — performed by Alkemy X, one of last sea- son's primary VFX vendors — evolves around kill shots to the head of walkers, says Steve Sanchez, senior visual effects supervisor at Alkemy X in New York, which is continuing the work on the upcoming Season 5. That usually involves weapon extensions, whether a knife, stick or other object. "Our job is to extend the blade or prop in CG and have it enter the walker's head," Sanchez says. "We also remove limbs and create the sub- sequent wounds." Sanchez notes that in Season 4 — for which Christopher Scollard served as the on-set VFX supervisor (client side) — one of the main char- acters fashioned a weapon from a piece of metal that she would thrust through walkers' skulls. On set, weapons such as this are half the size that is depicted in the show, and are retractable, with a soft edge. "All safe, all done in-camera," he adds. "We clean up the cushion at the end of the prop and extend it in CG, then add blood and gore, and a wound, and have the weapon exit the back of the head, with blood spurting out." Fear, which began in August 2015, is a spin-off of the equally popular The Walking Dead, which itself began airing in October 2010. In the apocalypse timetable, Fear is a prequel, occurring on the West Coast in the early days of the strain with a different cast. As such, the walkers are not in the full stages of infection as their Walking Dead counterparts are. However, the spin-off has been slowly catching up to the original series' timeline, as evidenced last sea- son with the Morgan Jones character crossover. "The longer they are infected, the more grue- some-looking they become. In Season 4, they looked similar as they do in Walking Dead," notes Sanchez, adding that the aesthetic is mostly a result of prosthetics and makeup. On average, Alkemy X produces 30 to 40 effects shots per episode with a crew of approxi- mately 18, depending on the VFX intensity of the episode. Although walker kills comprise the main- stay of the visual effects for the series, the artists' work runs the gamut, from large set extensions to crowd duplication and more. Last season, for instance, the artists performed a wide range of digital work to support the story line as a survivor, Madison, works to establish a commu- nity of fellow survivors inside an abandoned baseball stadium. Through flashbacks, the audience learns across various episodes that the Vultures, a rival group of survivors, have created a walker horde that sieges the stadium and destroys it in a fire. For the setting, the film crew turned a functional Triple-A baseball stadium near Austin, TX, into the apocalyptic settlement, complete with the addi- tion of livestock, such as goats and cows, as well as crops and gardens. They also converted luxury boxed seats inside the 15,000-seat stadium into apartments for the survivors. Because it was a working stadium during baseball season, the facili- ty could not be damaged, although the filmmakers were permitted to turn the lush grass field into a dusty landscape that could easily be restored. At a certain story point, the stadium succumbs to the devastating fire. Although the set dressers did a good job of making the wood appear se- verely charred, Alkemy X assisted with the wider shots, adding digital matte paintings, various enhancements and atmospheric smoke. For the massive walker horde, 30 or so actors were dressed in charred costumes. Then, Alkemy X created hundreds and hundreds of digital walkers. According to Sanchez, the on-set production team sent Alchemy X photos and digital scans of the costumed actors, as well as motion-capture data for the walkers' movements. The artists then used the digital scans as reference while modeling, rigging and applying the walker mocap data in Autodesk's Maya. From there, they built custom shaders for the digital walkers and ingested the animated models into a custom crowd system within SideFX's Houdini. Also utilizing Houdini, they lit and rendered the frames within the software's Mantra. "We sporadically inserted them and added some keyframe animation for the hero walkers and procedural animation cycles for those in the background," he says. As for the stadium work, Alkemy X found a good deal of references and purchased photos of burnt wood and charred walls, and along with the skill of the studio's digital matte painters, "we just went to town and painted everything," says Sanchez. "With a 3D track — duplicating the cam- era to match what was done on set — it was easy to integrate everything." Typically, the matte painters at the studio start their work in Adobe's Photoshop and then finish in Foundry's Nuke. Alkemy X often provides set extensions and other environmental work to alter the appearance of backgrounds for the series, including a cliff AMC's Fear The Walking Dead. CoSA completes the VFX for Station 19.