Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/491542
www.postmagazine.com 21 POST APRIL 2015 we wanted them to be Marvel quality visual effects, rather than television visual effects. That was really the challenge." With her impressive list of film credits behind her, Duggal, who had never done television before, brought on outside vendors ILM (www.ilm.com), Base Effects (www.base-fx.com) and later, Double Negative (www.dneg.com). Duggal says that her job was to "make sure we shot and executed the visual effects and that they were to the quality that Marvel is used to creating. And a lot of those shots were in the first two episodes, which were directed by feature directors Louis D'Esposito (Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy) and Joe Russo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)." Working closely with writers to stay ahead of upcoming storylines, and within a more limited television budget, Duggal says that "often times, we would actually be creating previs or concept art for the visual effects before we even had a direc- tor on board so that we could get the key people at the studios and the networks and everybody to buy off on these ideas and what we were going to do and get the ball rolling — get us time to actually execute them. So, I figured out how to do the shots, what the shots were, and was responsible for prepping everything for the shoots, and deciding where we were going to have a green screen." Duggal worked directly with ILM, who, in turn, communicated with China's Base Effects and the UK's Double Negative for a seamless workflow, as well as with three teams of editorial, with different episodes simultaneously in post. The setting was in 1940s New York. Duggal says they used every back lot in LA, including Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros., relying on a tremendous amount of green screen and matte paint- ings to create the show's authentic-look- ing locations. "We did a lot of set-extension work," she says. "Lots of matte paintings. Every time you saw the SSR building from the exterior, that was a set extension on the Warner Bros. back lot and we completely rebuilt the façade. Every time you saw the automat from the exterior, it was actually shot on Stage 7, so it was green screen. Every time you saw it from the outside, it was basically a CG front of the building. When you saw it from the inside, everything in the windows was green screen. When [Howard Stark] gets on the boat at the dock and we see the Agent Carter (left and below) was assisted with VFX from ILM, Base Effects and Double Negative.