TV/STREAMING
WATCHMEN’S LEGACY: NEXT-LEVEL CINEMATIC TV VFX By TREVOR HOGG
TOP: YouTube footage of pig races was an important reference for Mackevision when putting together the court scene. (Image courtesy of Mackevision and HBO) OPPOSITE TOP: It was important for Framestore to make the experience of the energy being sucked out of Doctor Manhattan as visceral and painful as possible. (Image courtesy of Framestore and HBO) OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Creator Damon Lindelof on set with Regina King while shooting the HBO limited series adaptation of Watchmen. (Image courtesy of HBO)
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As with the original 1986-1987 comic book maxi-series conceived by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the HBO production of Watchmen was treated as a limited series by creator Damon Lindelof. The alternative history drama begins with the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and then focuses on a white supremacist group known as the Seventh Kavalry violently opposing the Tulsa Police Department in the present. The story ambitions are epic and at times surreal, whether it be frozen squids raining down from the sky, clones being catapulted, a mirror-reflecting mask or a super-powerful blue being. The workload was shared among 30 vendors under the direction of Visual Effects Supervisor Erik Henry and Visual Effects Producer Matt Robken, who previously collaborated on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Among those recruited by Henry and Robken were Hybride, Rodeo FX, Raynault VFX, Mackevision, BUF, The Mill, Important Looking Pirates, MARZ, One Of Us and Framestore, with artists situated in Paris, Stuttgart, London, Montreal, Toronto and Stockholm. A tight production schedule led to the decision to have a roster of visual effects vendors that would rival a Marvel Studios movie. “It was going to be tough to deliver the last three episodes, so we made sure that no one had too many shots at one time to avoid having a logjam at the end,” states Henry. “The scripts came close to the time we had to shoot, which meant not a lot of prep time. Way before the scripts came to the crew, we would be given a verbal description of what the big scenes were and in that way were able to do previs in some instances and certainly build models in advance. All that prep work helped us get to the finish line.” An important element of the visual effects process was having a quick editorial turnover. “We talked to Damon, the directors and editors, and requested that they lock the visual effects sequences early,”
“It was going to be tough to deliver the last three episodes, so we made sure that no one had too many shots at one time to avoid having a logjam at the end. The scripts came close to the time we had to shoot, which meant not a lot of prep time. Way before the scripts came to the crew, we would be given a verbal description of what the big scenes were and in that way were able to do previs in some instances and certainly build models in advance. All that prep work helped us get to the finish line.” —Erik Henry, Visual Effects Supervisor remarks Robken. “You can throw as much acceleration money at it as you can but there is only so much time in a day. Everyone was great about it.” Critical to the project were the design of Doctor Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the Millennium Clock and the reflective mask worn by Detective Wade Tillman/Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson). “I discussed with Damon whether Doctor Manhattan should glow all of the time and decided it should only happen when he was using his powers,” states Henry. “We also wanted to make sure that the performance of the actor came through. The Millennium Clock took a lot of time and had to be like a Trojan horse. We had to have it look like it could tell time in some strange atomic clock way but [in reality] be a machine that could trap Doctor Manhattan. As for the silver shiny mask that Looking Glass wore, I came up with the idea that cameras would be needed on the head of the actor because there was no real way to get production to shoot everything twice.” Approximately 2,600 visual effects were produced with the range for each of the nine episodes going from 500 to 150. “HBO came in with a great attitude and knew what it was going to take to put these scripts onscreen,” states Robken. “Our budget was always hefty and appropriate. There was some contingency money that
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