Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545821
and we also need to make sure that we are including everyone in that thought process, not just in a typical, very superhero-y show of like, "Okay, blast it on blue screen and post will figure it out later." It was so exciting to be integrated into a grounding organic show. We wanted to do everything practically. We didn't get the opportunity, but there was even talk of miniatures. So I think being able to rip back all of the noise about technology and bleeding-edge stuff and just going back to, let's look at differ- ent film grains. Let's look at how things were addressed in the noir filmmaking time period, and let's learn from what they did because they've already done it. Let's just bring it back. Getting the opportu- nity to bring all of that artwork and aesthetic to a new generation is really cool. Also being part of a very small group of people that have success- fully delivered a dual delivery show is pretty cool. But being able to go back to traditional art-form filmmaking — which is why any of us got into this business — is to tell stories and be able to do it authentically. So what really drew me to it was that we got to be authentical- ly a show and not just another quote unquote ripoff of IP. We were genuinely doing something that was going to be an interesting, en- tertaining show, but also an art piece as well. Seldom do you get the opportunity to do that successfully. How did the dual delivery of two unique visual styles influence your visual effects pipeline? Brooke Noska: There was a lot of testing. Again, no one has the playbook on how to do this. So it was really trusting all of the genius- es that we got to surround ourselves with to make sure we weren't doing it in the hardest version possible. I think we ended up with 11 or 13 versions of the tech specs because of how we started the show and how we ended it. We grew along the way, but we also were able to embed the EXRs [high-dynamic-range image file format] with mattes. There were an impressive amount of mattes that we could integrate into a single EXR that we were able to deliver back to and through color. There are 3,200 shots that aired, but there are hundreds and hun- dreds of versions per episode. There are animation versions, but we had to look at the animation version in both black-and-white and color to make sure that it would come across that way. Our pipeline was very large because it needed to support basically two shows in order to be able to successfully review through the pro- cess. But with our internal team and also our vendor teams, we were able to get that lead-up time to work through those processes and try to figure out what the most efficient versions of that were. Also to work with our VFX editorial and lead our editorial team. We know that you've never seen 99 tracks on an Avid, but we need it in order to organize. Because if we just kind of throw every version at the wall, then we get lost in the sauce of organization. Did we like this version? Do we not like that version? Which version's in the edit? Because we also have to be thinking about the department's downward of sound and color and just QC [quality control] in general. Making sure that everything was set up for success at any given moment was a large undertaking. I think our tech spec was also like 20 pages long. We were very organized. We pride ourselves on think- ing about the end in the beginning. Making sure that we're setting 14 cgw a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 6