Agent Carter: Creating Movie-Quality Effects on a Weekly TV Schedule
Released on 02/18/2015
(ambient music)
Ready for another adventure?
(dramatic music)
I'm not afraid to kill a woman.
I won't make it easy.
(grunting and yelling)
If that thing is activated
it can cause large-scale destruction.
(bomb exploding)
[Male] What now, Ms. Carter?
(gun fires)
I go to work.
Hi, I'm Mike Seymour from FXGuide.com for Wired.
With the new Agent Carter, Marvel expands still further
into the television space,
and they're not the only ones
that are moving to the small screen.
Visual effects for the new series were done
by Industrial Light and Magic.
Now traditionally ILM only did visual effects for films,
but now they're doing series
and brought their considerable talents
to episodic television under the supervision
of series VFX Supervisor Sheena Duggal.
Not a newcomer to the Marvel Universe herself,
Sheena has done second unit on a range of Marvel films
from Thor II, to Iron Man III.
The problem that Sheena and the ILM team faced
was producing the effects at feature film level
on a weekly TV schedule.
The effects range from everything you might expect
from a period drama set in New York in the 1940s,
and a huge range of effects that would obviously
only be at home in the Marvel Universe.
As we can see here, as Peggy Carter deals
with another one of Howard Stark's inventions,
complex fluid, particles, and smoke simulations,
all using ILM's Academy Award-winning proprietary tools
that required a huge range of effects
for just this sequence alone.
ILM pulls no punches in their detailed work.
Major effects shots such as the oil refinery explosion
are painstakingly crafted out of multiple layers
of practical, and primarily, digital explosions.
With smoke, fire, sparks all being added
and tracked in carefully to give the sequences
the kind of production value that audiences
have come to expect from both Marvel and ILM.
The primary challenge actually for ILM
was not the effects themselves,
but this punishing TV schedule and constant delivery dates.
To facilitate this, well-controlled green screen
and set extensions work was shot
with all of the work being filmed
by one cinematographer, Gabriel Beristain,
who Sheena had actually worked with extensively before.
Interestingly, Sheena actually worked herself
as a composer at ILM in the mid-90s.
So it's great to see ILM expanding to television,
and given the nature of this show's
particularly strong independent female lead,
it's also great to see women such as Sheena
in such a senior visual effects leadership role today.
Well don't forget to subscribe
for more behind-the-scenes action.
I'm Mike Seymour, for Wired.
(suspenseful music)
(ambient music)
Starring: Mike Seymour
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