TV
SNOWPIERCER: A SPEEDING TRAIN THROUGH MANKIND’S FROZEN FUTURE By TREVOR HOGG
All images courtesy of Turner Broadcasting System.
14 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2020
A volatile class struggle that takes place onboard a massive train speeding through a post-apocalyptic frozen wasteland was originally conceived as a graphic novel called Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette in 1982. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) co-wrote and directed Snowpiercer (2013), a cinematic adaptation that was his English language debut, and it garnered such acclaim that the rights were optioned to develop a television series, produced by Joon-ho, which airs on TNT in the U.S. in May, and globally streams on Netflix. Like the story which is built upon conflict, the journey beyond the page has not been a peaceful one. Controversy erupted when The Weinstein Company removed 25 minutes of footage from the director’s cut of the film before restoring it after critical acclaim for the film and the pilot episode was entirely re-shot with showrunner Josh Friedman (Emerald City) being replaced by Graeme Manson (Orphan Black). “We have a completely different train and effects,” states Showrunner/Executive Producer Manson. “There are no sets from the original [film] production and the pieces we did reuse were heavily modified.” “When I got the chance to pitch for the job, I was a huge fan of Bong’s Snowpiercer,” states Manson. “When I saw it, I actually thought it would make a great series, then forgot all about it. When I began looking into pitching for the gig, I got the graphic novels and discovered this whole other world that is more abstract and has great themes. There was a marrying between the movie and the graphic novels. For the visual style, I was inspired and pushing towards the visceral quality of Bong. It’s an action adventure and so are the graphic novels; that’s a key thing about it. It’s about class struggles as well as climate change, environment, class structure, migration, immigration and detention. All those things were great to form the base of a TV series that could keep going, and be about
resistance and revolution.” “Graeme likes to write big, even back then, which is always good and a challenge,” notes Snowpiercer Visual Effects Supervisor Geoff Scott. “There’s nothing worse than somebody who thinks, ‘Let’s play it off of expressions or have the magic happen behind the camera.’ We always try our best to make it so no one hopefully notices what we’ve done.” Selecting the visual effects vendors was a long process, with work being divided among Method Studios, FuseFX, Torpedo
OPPOSITE TOP: A greyscale model layout of the Snowpiercer. TOP: The lighting is composited into the shot. BOTTOM: The final shot which reveals the entire nighttime environment.
SPRING 2020 VFXVOICE.COM • 15
