VFX Supervisor Karen Heston talks gender-changing and shrinking/growing characters, moveable silicone blood mats, and capturing as much as possible in-camera on the second season of the Prime Video ‘The Boys’ spinoff about students at Godolkin University whose lives are complicated by injections of Compound V.
Prime Video’s , entering its fifth and final season, provides an unfiltered, dark, satirical and quite graphic look at superheroes who have mostly gone bad.And its spinoff series, , which just launched its second season, has done its predecessor proud.
The show tells the story of students at Godolkin University (God U) whose academic, sexual and social issues are magnified and complicated even further when they are injected with the superpower inducing drug, Compound V.As with Season 1, Season 2 consists of eight episodes and features a wide range of visual effects under the watchful eye of VFX Supervisor Karen Heston.“It's a super fun show and a super fun universe to be a part of, especially as a woman, because you would expect with all the penises and extra blood and gore it might suit itself stereotypically more to a male role,” she shares with AWN and VFXWorld.
“But I enjoyed breaking that boundary and being like, ‘I'm a girl and I can do blood and guts, too!’ Much of the effects work in Season 2 was well suited for capturing in-camera, such as the character Jordan Li switching between male and female genders, or Emma Meyer shrinking or growing giant-sized. “For our Marie Moreau character, she wanted to level-up and have more control of her blood power. I knew that would mean visual effects blood simulations.Do those simulations look different from Season 1? There were definite considerations for how we could make some of these things look amazing in-camera. We're not going to try and cheat it with editing and cuts.We're going to do it with visual effects, get the best practical ingredients as possible and make this happen. It was exciting to have some new challenges.” Practical elements were shot as reference. “There were a lot of things that I knew we would need to create in CG, but I wanted to have strong references going into post,” Heston explains.
“For example, in the lab, when we had a face melt character and the tentacle character, we needed to have some references in the scene to get that cloth interaction.For the melting face, we did some footage tests with baking soda, baking powder, and boiling milk and maple syrup.We went in knowing what the slow, bubbling skin could potentially look like.
That was fun to create.” Miniatures were also created by the art department to use as reference.According to Heston, “We did scaled-down models based on the size ratio of what a little person looks like running across the floor, standing, or sitting at a table.Then there was the water tank work.
How do we get the scale of the water to match her size when she's a real sized person that needs to be little? There were a lot of math considerations and planning with the art department and some of our other departments, like stunts with John Koyama, to make sure that the wirework was solid in the tank.Special effects had to make sure we had some cool atmosphere throughout the scenes.We wrapped a tank in black for when she's in the pipes, and wrapped a tank in white for when she’s in the toilet.” Noting key simulation work that was also done, Heston adds, “There was a lot of simulation work with the blood tendrils and big arc at the end where we had a huge wave of blood.
Those were two of the biggest things onset that we dealt with.” Stuntviz played an important role in how key scenes were choreographed.“I worked closely with our stunt team and John Koyama,” Heston says.“He would often start with stuntviz for one of our advance seminar sequences.
I would take that stuntvis and layer in visual effects viz to the different beats.Sometimes we would even drop animated storyboards into the final piece.When we shared with production, this visual template would often go from a little bit of stuntviz into visual effects viz into some storyboards the director created. Sometimes we put title cards in there because we didn’t have enough time to throw in another beat or two that were missing. I worked closely with stunts and the director to make sure that their vision was being heard, as well as our cinematographer Jonathon Cliff, to make sure he was getting his camera angles.
It's a real collaboration. Then of course, when you go to shoot, you've got two or three handheld cameras that are running around.So, all this viz is really just a guide.” Visual cues were taken from .
“Certainly, blood color is a big thing on the show,” observes Heston. “They like this black blood, and I would hear the note over and over again, ‘More black blood, less cherry red.’” Many lessons learned from Season 1 were applied to Season 2. “Being part of production from the start, we were able to say, ‘We need interactive lighting here but not there.’ We wanted to have some blood onset, so we created this thing with the special effects department called blood mats.Special effects had silicone blood that they were able to put down in the advanced seminar room, for example.Keeping the floor wet and slick, drenched in blood, is not great for all the camera tracks and dolly tracks needed on the set.
Having these blood mats was a way to have blood reference in places onset where we needed it.But, it could be lifted up without getting crew footprints all over the place tracking blood throughout their equipment.The blood mats, getting that interactive placement, as well as the interactive lighting, were some of the big lessons from Season 1 used on Season 2.” Weight and wind had to be taken into consideration for the miniature work. “When we have Emma shrinking really quickly in the bathroom, that's a surreal moment,” Heston explains.
“We did look at miniature work on other shows that have those beats to figure out what worked and what didn’t.We were able to devise a spot where visual effects would takeover.Wind was a big consideration. We got a number of takes where the air cannons and leaf blowers used on her hair were working on one side, but not the other.
We needed both sides working at the same time, so trying to trigger all that in real-time and get it in-camera was challenging.” A funny onset moment was when Emma crouched into a 1:1 miniature library. “There were these tiny books with actual writing and drawings on them,” Heston says.“It was this amazing miniature set.She forced herself to get into this position on that set with a real ceiling panel that she actually touches. That made for a fun day onset to see these interactions.” A major challenge was the look of the main antagonist, Thomas Godolkin.
“Colin Penman did this amazing prosthetic work on our friend Godolkin,” remarks Heston.“It was something like seven hours of makeup that he had to go through to get this crazy build.We needed the geometry on the body to start with, but we knew that there would probably be a layer in post to elevate it a little bit, like adding a sheer sheen and a translucency to the skin as well as subsurface vein work to age the character. We wanted to keep it as 2D as possible in post to keep the cost down.
There were over 100 shots of just him.It needed to be something we could achieve reasonably well in the amount of time we had and for the number of shots we had to do.” DNEG and Scanline VFX were great partners in VFX crime on the production.“Our supervisor at DNEG, Andrew Simmons, is amazing.
They also have a great producer, Oliver Eikhoff, who I have worked with for many years. It has been great to keep that team going.Scanline, which is now called Eyeline, is an exciting company and great partner to work with.My supervisor over there, Curtis Carlson, was great as well.
It was a fun group in post, with great artistry and talent.” Heston concludes by noting that regardless of the VFX complexity or wow factor, ultimately, serving the story overrides everything else.“It's fun when visual effects are not in their own little bubble and they’re helping to tell the story,” she says.“Jordan's character is a good storyline; she's able to be female or male, which is interesting visual effects work.
But it’s also the character driving her story point along.It's fun to be a part of the visual storytelling beats in the show.”
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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