Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1547068
14 cgw j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 6 for things like the cold breath FX. We also had a smaller team with us in LA called OPSIS that took care of a lot of visual stylization, war effects, and underwater comp work. And we couldn't have done it without the team at Day for Nite, who helped us from pre-production all the way into post, with fan- tastic previs and postvis work. Who were some of the key collaborators on your team? François Dumoulin: My dear producer Rene Sekula, VFX editor Dan Urrutia, project manager Mel Lyman, coordinator Monica Vera—they all made my life so much easier in post—a heartfelt thanks to them. I would like to give a shout out to the team at Framestore Montreal and Mumbai. In particular, VFX supe Nicolas Chevallier, producer Da- vid De Somma, and animation director, Meena Ibrahim. They were key people on the show, as well as Patrick David, VFX supe at Rodeo FX and his producer Nancy Heller. One artist that I always love to mention, because he's like a god to me, is a concept artist at Rodeo FX named Deak Ferrand. There are a few moments that were really hard to visualize, and I got Deak to help us out with concepting those things. He is, for me, the greatest artist when you have a sequence that is very challenging to visualize because it's a really high concept. Deak is just phenomenal at pulling those out. Were there any other sequences that were particularly mem- orable or challenging to complete? François Dumoulin: I don't want to spoil anything, but toward the end of the movie there's a moment that is quite trippy, and tonally very unique. It's a sequence where, when I was reading it on paper, it felt a little bit underwhelming. David asked me if I could come up with something that was more of a mind trip. You see aurora borea- lis in the sky, and it transforms into something else entirely and be- comes a very spiritual moment. Basically we took the aurora borealis and we made it into a completely psychedelic event. It's really out there. It's like a gate to another dimension or some- thing. We came up with this very high concept idea with Deak Fer- rand. I showed those concepts to David and he was like, "Yep, that's exactly it." Then we had Rodeo shoot some practical elements in a water tank and we combined those together in comp. We didn't rely on Houdini or anything procedural. We went old school using practi- cal elements, which is something Rodeo is really good at. They have this little live action unit where you can go and say, "Hey, I need to shoot some blood elements or some muzzle flash or whatever," and they just make it happen at their studio in Montreal, which is fan- tastic. So I really loved that. And I know that David Ayer, who is a really organic director and loves to capture as much as he can in camera, was really happy that we ended up doing something like that. It's in- teresting because we had such a range of work on that show, going from extremely challenging CG assets to very practical and organic elements mixed together in comp. A very wide range of visual effects work. WWW.POSTMAGAZINE.COM