Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/663385
46 cgw m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 6 The Right Stuff where they are filling the rockets with liquid nitrogen. That was a key look he wanted for the airplanes. We also use Nuke as our compositing package and V-Ray for ren- dering. We are all V-Ray. For a lot of crowd simulation, that's actually a package called MiArmy. There are literally thousands of people on those streets: There are people online for the movie theatre and walking in the background. We usually had 200 to 300 extras for a lot of the street shots, and then aer that we had to go to CG because it became impossible. How big of a team did Zoic have working on it? Baksinski: For the pilot, we did that in six weeks, so you were prob- ably looking at 20 to 25 people, with some rotating on and off. I'm not sure what it was for the series. It was probably a bigger crew because they had a lot less time. Hutcheson: If I remember correctly, Zoic [Vancouver] had about 15 or so on and off, and then probably four other vendors working on the show as well, of about the same size. That was mostly due to the schedule. [It] was so tight. I needed, on Episode 2, to have more Zoic [personnel], and then I'd have Episode 3 working with a couple other vendors, just to try to alternate as much as I could… just to meet the deadlines. You ran into unexpected VFX challenges? Hutcheson: Because of the subject matter, it actually introduced more visual effects than you might think. The locations would find out what we were doing and what they were shooting…. One was a government building here in Vancouver, and when they found out they would eventually put a big swastika on the top of it, they were like, 'No, you are not using our building.' We had to go and shoot in an empty section of a university, and the building then became 100 percent computer-generated." Baksinski: Same thing on the pilot! Hutcheson: In the last episode, they actually went to Berlin and shot some stuff. They were going to put big swastika banners on the flagpoles going down this major street in Berlin, and Amazon was like, 'No, you are not going to do that.' Suddenly it's a visual effects shot.... They were not expected visual effects shots, but you have to roll with it. Baksinski: We also ran into cultural issues. The San Francisco shots you see were actually filmed in a heavily Chinese-populated neighborhood. And we're now telling people we are going to start putting up Japanese logos all over the place. 'Your little city is now Japanese-occupied San Francisco.' There were store owners who backed out. There's a shot where the main hero walks across the street in front of this policeman, and this banner is there. Originally, a lot of those and the other blocks in there were going to be set-dressed. And at the end of the day, we had to track all of that and replace the entire thing. Our main block that we were on was set-dressed, but that was all we could do. ■ Before Aer Marc Lous (mlous@postmagazine.com) is senior editor/director of Web content for Post, CGW's sister publication. VESTIGES OF NAZI GERMANY AND IMPERIAL JAPAN ARE INTEGRATED THROUGHOUT THE ENVIRONMENTS.