MONSTERS FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT MENACE THE WITCHER By TREVOR HOGG
Images courtesy of Netflix. TOP: Along with battling monsters, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) had to fend off COVID-19 while making Season 2 of The Witcher.
While Season 1 of The Witcher was driven by Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) trying to find Princess Cirilla (Freya Allan) of Cintra before the Kingdom of Nilfgaard has an opportunity to capture and use her as a supernatural weapon of mass destruction, Season 2 brings them together and explores the theme of fatherhood as kings, elves, humans and demons battle for control of the Continent. An outside force that had to be accounted for was the pandemic that caused the production to go on hiatus a couple of times and shift the locations from Hungary to the U.K. Enabling the Netflix series creator, Executive Producer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich (The Umbrella Academy), not to compromise her vision was the visual effects team led by Visual Effects Supervisor Dadi Einarsson (Everest) and Visual Effects Producer Gavin Round (Adrift), as well as Production Designer Andrew Laws (Warrior) and Special Effects Supervisor Stefano Pepin (The Last Duel). Traveling with a production crew that consists of 400 to 800 members into other countries was not a viable option. “We had to look to expand the world of The Witcher in a virtual rather than real way,” states Schmidt Hissrich. “Dadi Einarsson was living back home in Iceland during the pandemic and organized a huge plate shoot there that ended up being integral to our entire season.” Andrew Laws is an integral part of the world building as he has been involved with the first two seasons and is looking after the spinoff, The Witcher: Blood Origin. “For the most part we were
82 • VFXVOICE.COM WINTER 2022
PG 82-88 THE WITCHER.indd 82
12/5/21 4:39 PM
