The VFX supervisor on all 3 seasons of Apple TV’s hit sci-fi drama, about a band of exiles on a journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization, discusses his love of the story and fondness for shooting things practically, producing almost 4,000 visual effects shots, 1,000 more than on Season 2.
Before signing onto any project, Chris MacLean has to find something that hooks him into the story.Which wasn’t difficult for his work on the hit Apple TV sci-fi drama, ; he has served as VFX supervisor on all three seasons of the show, which premiered in 2021. “I will usually read a script and have to have at least one thing that I want to do,” explains MacLean. “For Season 3, when I read David Goyer’s introduction of the Mule, I was like, ‘Holy shit! We’ve got to do that.’ I was hooked right away. I wanted to do that scene.”
Based on Isaac Asimov’s epic, seminal sci-fi stories and starring Jared Harris, Lee Pace, and Lou Llobell, the recently wrapped Season 3 continued the epic chronicle of a band of exiles on their journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire. The show was recently renewed for Season 4.
is produced for Apple by Skydance Television.David S.Goyer executive produces alongside Bill Bost, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Matt Thunell, Robyn Asimov, David Kob, Christopher J.
Byrne, Leigh Dana Jackson, Jane Espenson and Roxann Dawson.The Season 3 trailer amply highlights the breadth and depth of the show’s VFX work: In Season 3, the Mule presents as an aberration that psychohistorian Hari Seldon did not anticipate, who portends the demise of civilization by demonstrating a terrifying telepathic ability that causes the Kalgan armada to turn against itself. “For the Mule, visually we came up with an objective effect from the camera for the Mentalic effect and then we created a pure POV that is more of a hallucinogenic effect. We shot that sequence in two separate fields just outside of Prague.
In the opening shot of us flying through the mountains, waterfalls and buildings, Rodeo FX had to design everything and set it up to feel like we’re going somewhere exotic. This season more than any other, we leaned on visual effects a lot more to give the scope we established in Season 1.” Because of the extra environmental work, 1,000 additional visual effects shots had to be created by BOT VFX, Crafty Apes, Framestore, Accenture Song, Outpost VFX, Otomo FX, PFX, Rodeo FX, and SSVFX, thereby, increasing the total to almost 4,000 for the 10 Episodes.“David Goyer likes to destroy a lot of things when he writes!” laughs MacLean.“The producers would love it if we kept every planet that we went to so we could keep going back to them.
There is a lot of destruction at a large scale across a lot of the season.For example, when the Vault lands on New Terminus in Episode 301 we go through old Terminus’ destruction, then fly towards the planet and with our timelapse, see the new city build-up.That’s how we establish a lot of new environments and locations. We did establish the timelapse in Season 1, but I don’t think we did any in Season 2. In Season 3, we leaned on the timelapses more and had a couple of them to help establish Ignis and New Terminus, as well as show the passage of time.” Maintaining consistent lighting among the various cinematographers is always difficult. “This season we had David Goyer do Episodes 301, 302, and 303,” MacLean explains. “We brought in Tim Southam after he left.
Christopher J.Byrne did 305, 306 and 307.Then Roxann Dawson did Episodes 304, 308, 309, and 310. Season 3 was a bit strange because stuff that Christopher Byrne shot is in Roxann’s episode and vice versa. Everything got shuffled around during the editing process. Our Colorist, Tony Dustin, had his work cut out for him a lot of the time because of how different scenes were shot and interpreted by the directing teams.
Often times the same set would be lit differently and would always look different.Tony did a bang-up job this season in getting everything in line.” Imperfections had to be worked into the lensing, especially for the telepathic effect. “Our 3D software creates a linear image, which we then have to put lens distortion on,” MacLean shares.“Everyone does the focus in post because of deep compositing.
But all of the lens aberrations are per lens.That’s why we do lens grids.I started doing a bokeh board as well because every lens has a different bokeh. There’s nothing that drives me nuts more than knowing it’s an anamorphic lens and in visual effects they put a spherical bokeh shape.” Season 3 introduces a tidally locked planet. “Haven doesn’t rotate,” states MacLean. “One side is always exposed to the sun; the other side is always in darkness. There is a city in the center of the planet’s terminator line that’s inhabitable.
We shot in Warsaw at the Jewish Museum.We had a set that was used and redressed at Prague Studios. For the exterior Haven, like the Flitter Bike Chase, we shot at a small quarry.” Noting that the magnetic engines on the front of the Flitter Bike create antigravity that enables it to move quickly, MacLean says, “They’re our version of an Imperial speeder from . They’re fast.Because we had to have them ride beside each other, they built this elaborate airbag system where they flitter around like hover bikes, but with a little bit of roll.
Some of the panels had actuators on them to move them around.It was cool.” Almost all the second unit photography has a heavy visual effects component. “Last season I second unit directed the escape from Synnax when Salvor Hardin was on the roof of the Begger’s Lament holding on,” remarks MacLean. “Part of it is I try to push to get as much in camera even if we’re replacing stuff.So, that was practical rain and wind.
ILP replaced and augmented a lot of that sequence.But giving the visual effects artists something real to work with is important to me. On season 3, the same emphasis was put on shooting practically. For example, when Dusk blows up the clone tanks, we actually blew-up tanks with special effects pyro and had pre-scored prosthetic bodies in the tanks.This gave the visual effects artists a solid base to make something that felt real.” Levels of blood and gore on the show were frequently reviewed.
“When the Mule takes Kalgan in Episode 301, we discussed it [how graphic to get] and decided on head shots and digital squib hits. We went overboard with those to show how gruesome and violent the Mule could be.When we showed that to Apple and they didn’t give us any notes, we were like, ‘We’ll be fine with what’s coming in Episode 310.’ Because we have torsos, limbs, entrails, buckets of oatmeal and fake blood and water too.” Visualizing and creating what has been written into the script can be quite a hard process. “The Novacula is basically the Death Star and every design iteration that we did would always resemble the Death Star,” recalls MacLean. “It was like, ‘How do we not make it like the Death Star? We went through a lot of iterations, going back to other mega structures in our cannon, like the Invictus, to help bring the design into the world of . Then we also had the challenge of a beam weapon being called a black hole bomb. We did our best to make sure that there was enough energy to effectively say that the weapon had the energy of a bomb before it was fired.The Novacula allows an insane Dusk to go on a killing spree of planetary proportions. “We blow-up Clarion Station and Cloud Dominion from Season 2; we destroy their entire civilization,” MacLean states.
“Dusk also destroys Maiden moon and Surrah. This scene was especially difficult to choreograph because we were in three different locations while the scene was taking place and Dusk is speaking.On top of this we also had to go to places Dusk was destroying.We’re on Foundation space station where the Mule has captured everybody, then we’re in the palace in the throne room, and then we’re in the Novacula control room.
Roxann Dawson [Director] did a good job of covering those locations and then the editor, Paul Trejo, did an equally excellent job bringing it together.” Making math look exciting has been a constant challenge throughout the series.Cue Hari Seldon’s “Prime Radiant.” “The Prime Radiant had to feel like something alive, magical, and a totem for people to chase and worship,” reflects MacLean.“Chris Bahry was the prefect guy to figure out the graphics for it back on season 1.
We iterated a little bit, but he got the concept stuff right away and stuck with it all the way through.In Season 1, only Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick could read the math.By Season 2, we created this Tree of Time effect.
It became more of a graphic interface rather than just a map of math. We had to make it so that the characters who didn’t know how to read the Prime Radiant could understand this Tree of Time.It was a simplified version. By Season 3, we have a more developed iteration of the tree of time effect because both the Mentalics and Demerzel have been looking at the math and influencing it. Initially, visualizing the math was difficult, but when we started looking at math in the real world, like sacred geometry, Moorish architecture, and patterns in the ceilings of mosques, it became much easier to express.” One particularly unique and challenging environment was Clarion Station.“Clarion Station, which is where the Galactic Council resides, is an O’Neill cylinder,” explains MacLean. “We were in a massive curved mega structure.
We extended the environment here quite a bit.It was one of my favorite environments this season.Huge shout out to Carlos and the team at Framestore for pulling off this environment work. For the Sacratorium on Mycogen, we went and shot that in a location.
But as Mycogen developed, the location didn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the planet.So, we wholesale replaced it.We had these great concepts from the Art Department that were too elaborate to build practically but just fit our world so much better than what we shot.
So, we decided to take on that challenge.Kudos to Crafty Apes, Outpost and Framestore here.It was difficult, but I’m glad we did it. Another invisible effect was the crown of Sunmaster-18, which was a huge undertaking.” MacLean shares that he won’t be working on the show’s fourth season, which actually made his work more effective on Season 3.
“Part of the blessing of me not going onto Season 4 was not having to prep for Season 4,” he notes.“I was able to spend more time working with the vendors. A lot of times in previous seasons, I would see almost finished shots because we were prepping and everything had to get finished.I was a lot more in the weeds this season and it was a lot more fun to get in there with the artists and try to make something cool.”
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for , , and .
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