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Deadline

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00:00 Let's welcome, he's a Primetime Emmy VFX nominee

00:03 for the show, Foundations VFX Supervisor, Chris McLean.

00:08 (audience applauding)

00:11 So, there's, you know, the sci-fi shots of spaceships

00:19 and galaxy in this show can make the entire canon

00:24 of Star Trek and Star Wars blush.

00:27 It is just really, just mind-blowing.

00:31 And there's a saying in the VFX world,

00:34 you could have it fast, you could have it cheap,

00:39 and you can make it good,

00:40 but what we're seeing here is excellent.

00:43 When building this out, are you guys like going back

00:48 to the Asimov books, or are you looking at like Hubble,

00:52 like deep space Hubble telescope stuff to, you know--

00:56 - When we started on season one, we looked at,

01:00 we started with real space.

01:01 It was all NASA, we wanted it to be more realistic.

01:05 Then we started looking at, you know, Asimov covers

01:09 and things like that, and tried to bring a little bit

01:10 more color into the world, and you know,

01:12 and then also riffed on some of the sci-fi greats

01:16 like Doug Trumbull and Slitscan and things like that,

01:18 where we could, you know, like the FTL jump in season one

01:22 was all based off of kind of old school technology,

01:26 like burning wire wool, Trumbull Slitscan.

01:30 We did some fire effects and kind of combined everything

01:33 into a CG world that, you know, Dine did a really great job

01:38 on kind of bringing to life, so.

01:40 - I mean, this plays on a big screen.

01:42 This is really amazing.

01:44 - Thank you.

01:45 - What of, in regards to the diggers at the end there,

01:50 talk about designing that.

01:56 - Well, Rory Shane and I, we have a very good relationship.

02:01 We're kind of like the real Bob and Doug in space guys,

02:06 'cause we're, you know, both Canucks.

02:09 We started out, you know, we both started out scouting

02:16 in Iceland, and we started just designing the show

02:19 on planes, you know, passing each other iPads

02:21 back and forth, kind of drawing over top

02:23 of each other's stuff.

02:24 And that was one where, you know, usually you don't want

02:29 to do CG spiders in film, and we kind of said,

02:35 fuck it, we'll do a CG spider.

02:37 And we tried to make it cool.

02:39 It ended up kind of being like a CG crab.

02:41 But then we took that design, we gave it to Framestore,

02:44 they did a bunch of motion studies for us,

02:46 and we just tried to really make sure

02:48 that we nailed the scale, and it turned out really well.

02:52 So, I think so anyways.

02:54 - And then how long for the entire show,

02:59 you know, for one season as far as the FX?

03:04 - I mean, we were almost two years on season one

03:08 because of COVID, but I've been on the show

03:11 for four and a half years now.

03:13 So, you can tell I have PTSD.

03:16 (audience laughing)

03:18 But no, it's been a long run.

03:20 It's about, you know, season two's taken

03:24 just about as long now, especially with the break

03:26 that we're having right now.

03:28 - And I gotta imagine it's not.

03:30 I mean, there's a lot of season two that has to drop.

03:33 You're still working on it?

03:35 - Oh no, we're done.

03:37 We're done.

03:37 I kind of slipped out there and said season two

03:39 instead of something else.

03:40 But no, yeah, season two is very much done in the bag,

03:44 and I'm excited for everybody to see it.

03:47 - And then tell us more about working

03:49 with the other departments, because similar to Silo,

03:54 there's so much that's live,

03:57 and there's a majority that is green screen.

04:00 - Well, I know Jack's here in the crowd somewhere.

04:02 He's my VFX producer, but we kind of live

04:05 in Candy Mountain on Foundation because visual effects

04:07 has such an important role on the show.

04:09 We are in everybody else's business for better or worse,

04:14 but we all work together to make the best product possible

04:18 and the best show possible and just try to make sure

04:20 that everybody doesn't pay attention to what we're doing.

04:25 Even though they're like, "Oh, that's a cool shot,"

04:27 they don't think, "Oh, it's a visual effects shot,"

04:29 or anything like that, so yeah.

04:31 - For you guys, how can you tell when it's off?

04:34 Is it just, because for us sometimes it looks perfect.

04:38 For you guys, you just know if something's off.

04:43 - It's very subjective, depending on the supervisor

04:46 and depending on whatever.

04:47 But for us, it's just making sure that it looks

04:50 like something that could be photographed

04:53 or look like it has been photographed.

04:55 We pay a lot of attention to the cameras that we use,

04:58 the lenses that we use, the focal width of the lenses

05:03 and the T-stops and all of that stuff.

05:05 Everything that a cinematographer thinks about,

05:07 we think about on the show to make sure

05:08 that we're getting that right,

05:10 make sure we're not putting spherical bokeh

05:12 into an anamorphic shot, that sort of stuff.

05:15 - Tell us more about the technology you are using for this.

05:18 - Well, we have every kind of shot conceivable

05:21 in visual effects on this show,

05:22 so we use all the technology.

05:26 (audience laughing)

05:27 - But I mean, did you build anything,

05:29 any new programs or anything like that?

05:32 - Not really, no.

05:33 I mean, one thing that we do not use a lot of

05:37 is blue and green screen on the show.

05:39 And that's kind of, that's just an aesthetic choice

05:43 because we would rather get the natural color

05:45 than try to, you know, dispel stuff.

05:48 People turn gray when you dispel them,

05:50 when they get green spill on them, so.

05:52 But no, in terms of technology,

05:55 we use some volume capture on season one.

05:59 We built a scanning rig on season one

06:01 that we are using on season two,

06:05 or used on season two.

06:07 We are, I don't think, I mean,

06:12 the vendors are using their kind of standard processes,

06:15 but we didn't really, there wasn't anything

06:18 innovative in terms of technology.

06:22 We did look at a lot of old technology

06:24 to kind of give it that analog feel,

06:27 and tried to bring it back to reality a little bit,

06:29 'cause you can end up making impossible looking shots

06:33 if you're not trying to ground things

06:35 and things that already exist.

06:37 - For someone that wants to go into the VFX field,

06:40 what kind of advice can you offer them?

06:42 To start off.

06:44 - Learn about film first.

06:47 Decide if you want to do it.

06:49 And then pick one small piece,

06:54 or find out what you might be good at,

06:56 and go for that one small thing,

06:59 and then expand your horizons after that.

07:02 Like if you want to be a modeler, or a texture artist,

07:04 or a lighter, or a compositor,

07:06 focus on that craft first,

07:08 spend your 10,000 hours doing that,

07:09 and if you want to become a supervisor after that,

07:11 you got to spend another 10,000 hours doing something else.

07:13 But just spend as much time as you can

07:16 focused on that one thing,

07:17 and everything else will just kind of organically

07:20 come together.

07:21 I mean, I started as a junior asset modeler

07:24 way back in the day.

07:26 - Now, how is the industry changing?

07:32 Where do you think we'll be five years from now?

07:37 - I think we will...

07:39 I hate to bring up AI, but...

07:43 I think that's gonna become a big tool set for us.

07:48 And one thing that I always tell everybody about AI

07:52 is that you're always gonna need artists

07:55 to tell the AI what to do.

07:57 You're never gonna be able to just tell a computer,

08:01 or a neural net to write a script,

08:03 or animate a person, or do anything like that.

08:08 You have to have somebody who's balancing

08:11 and checking that information that comes out the other end,

08:13 i.e. a human participant in the operation.

08:17 (audience applauding)

08:20 AI is a tool.

08:23 It's not meant to replace us.

08:25 - Chris McLean, VFX Supervisor Foundation.

08:30 (audience applauding)

08:33 (audience applauding)

Foundation | Visual Effects & Screen

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