Check out the breakdown reel - as main visual effects vendor, the studio enhanced the series’ haunting atmosphere, mysterious disappearances and weird phenomena, adding to its chilling backdrop both literally and figuratively.
Award-winning animation and VFX studio Cinesite has shared its breakdown reel for the new 6-episode season of True Detective: “Night Country.” The HBO series’ newest backdrop is the chilly permanent “night country” of Alaska, where detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Keli Reis) must unravel the dark history of a remote town on the edge of the US’s northern-most state. “Night Country” is directed by Issa López; the VFX supervisor is Barney Curnow.
The studio served as the show’s main visual effects vendor, enhancing the series’ haunting atmosphere, mysterious disappearances, and weird phenomena. Cinesite London worked on the project under the creative leadership of VFX supervisor Simon Stanley-Clamp.
Notable VFX contributions include the series-opening Caribou herd, polar bear, and invisible environments for the remote Alaskan Ennis Town, which provided the chilling backdrop to the critically acclaimed drama. According to Stanley-Clamp, the mysterious series’ opening sequence, which is almost entirely computer-generated, stands out as one of the biggest challenges tackled by the Cinesite team. “The plates were filmed in Iceland, on a glacier in a mountain range where the white snowscape leads up to a white sky,” explained Stanley-Clamp. “We needed to add the sunset and create definition as that sunset moves into night. Ultimately, we replaced everything, extracting the hunter from the plate photography and dropping him into our bespoke environment, which was based loosely upon the layout which had been shot.”
Watch True Detective: “Night Country” - VFX Breakdown
Reindeer and caribou are the same species, sharing many physical characteristics, although caribou are slightly larger and stockier, with longer fur. Cinesite’s starting point was a photographic reindeer shoot. Reference obtained from that shoot informed every aspect of the caribou, from texture, groom, and lighting through to movement.
Caribou have different coats in different seasons; the team settled on a cross between spring and autumn, which was neither too shaggy nor too short. There is a range of fur textures and lengths all over their bodies, and one important characteristic is the creature’s waddle, almost like a beard across its chest, where the fur is far longer and thicker than anywhere else.
“We created various fur textures on the back, legs, tummy, and chest,” continued Stanley-Clamp. “When the legs began to look too fluffy, we wet the fur down to make it more matted, clinging closely to the skin. Another important consideration was that reference footage showed us that snow is always in the caribous’ fur, gathering around their hooves, up their shins, and also on their noses and eyebrows. We needed to carefully integrate the snowflakes.”
The animals’ facial rigging allowed for necessary close-up detail, including flaring nostrils, the interior of bellowing mouths with extruding tongues, as well as the subtle twitching and movements of cheekbones and eyebrows.
The animation of the animals needed to be entirely convincing while subtly creating a sense of unease as it spreads slowly and gradually through the herd. The animators built a library of stances, exploring how the animals shift weight on their front legs, graze, sit down, and stand up. Those movement cycles were built into the behavior of the wider herd, adding touches like grazing, cocking heads, flicking ears, etc. Animators built a series of walk and gallup cycles to blend between.
“The herd movement was created using a combination of crowd simulation and hand animation; the animation was mostly hands-on,” noted Stanley-Clamp. “There are shots where you are glimpsing 25 or 30 caribou where each one has been hand-animated, even those which are deep out of focus in the background were still tweaked on a per character basis.”
Several animals appear as sinister omens in the series. In the first episode, a polar bear walks out in front of Evangeline’s car in Ennis Town, startling her as it pauses before walking away. The same bear returns in a later episode, where Danvers swerves from the road to avoid hitting it, ending up in a snow drift as the animal peers menacingly at her through the driver’s window.
The production created a realistic stuffy head for use on set to provide a reference for lighting and scale, as well as to provide the performers with an eye line. Added digital breath reflected the frigid, chilly atmosphere. Achieving a realistic sense of weight was essential to the bear’s convincing movement. It is heavy and slow, advancing with slow intent and a sense of power. The creature FX team created realistic fat. “The Polar Bear went through several looks before we settled with the director on the right one,” Stanley-Clamp said. “It is an emaciated, damaged bear with a scar where it has lost an eye, having been in a fight at some point in its past. However, it needed to retain a convincing sense of power and danger. We also created various grooms before settling on the right one. Initial versions were more shaggy, long, and greasy. The final version is cleaner than that but carefully adjusted so as not to be too cute or fluffy.”
The show's setting is a remote Alaskan Ennis Town; however, filming took place in Iceland. The production required extensive environment work throughout the season to convincingly re-create the Alaskan territory and terrain. Distant mountain ranges were added to the background, leading down to the town, the outskirts of which extend out to the frozen, open expanse of sea, a perpetual snowy wilderness. The town extensions are a combination of CG and digital matte painting techniques. Other work required the addition of streetlights, road sign language changes, and crew removal.
Many weather effects used practical snow captured on set, but it also needed to be closely matched and extended using visual effects techniques. Stanley-Clamp revealed that fake snow with smoke was pumped in and blown in with fans, adding, “We augmented that, recreating its look with a volumetric mist combined with CG FX, adding in snow particulate to bulk it out, adjusting the speed, density, and depth on a shot-by-shot basis.”
Other considerations for the team included re-creating the look of the old lenses, resulting in interesting aberration, distortion, and imperfections, impacting the snow’s path and motion, which needed to remain faithful to the main photography. In addition, the snow is often seen through car windows, so a double layer of distortion was sometimes required.
“With fantastical creatures, there is no existing audience expectation about what they might see,” said Stanley-Clamp. “However, with realism, you have the additional challenge that people think they know what something should look like, which is in many respects harder. I am incredibly proud of the whole team for its work on ‘Night Country,’ which I believe raises the bar in terms of quality and realism.”
True Detective: “Night Country” is now streaming on Max.
Source: Cinesite
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
