Medical Investigation features signature visualizations through Dr. Stephen Connor ‘s (Neal McDonough) p.o.v., which form the turning points for the story. All Medical Investigation images courtesy of Stargate Digital.

Perhaps the most popular genre in scripted television today is the investigative, forensics-type show, as evidenced by the consistent top 10 ranking of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its offspring CSI: Miami and the addition this season of the spin-off CSI: New York. Other shows such as the critically acclaimed Without a Trace and this season’s new offering, Medical Investigation, expand on the genre. Although all the shows are similar in that they use investigative techniques and forensic-type evidence to draw conclusions, they each have different ways of presenting that on screen. Steve Michaels, Brickyard vfx producer for CSI: New York, reveals that his team wants to “create a distinctive look for the new series that builds on and complements the success of the other shows.”

All the shows use visual effects to help them not only achieve their signature styles, but to create a sense of reality. That sense of reality might be showing the audience a view of the body that they would not normally have the opportunity to see, or convincing them of a location where the story takes place without the expense and complications of a location shoot. But where CSI’s “zoom into the body visualization” is an obvious in-your-face effect, the use of visual effects in Without a Trace that create a sense of place are much more organic and subtle. VFXWorld investigates the similarity and differences of several of these established shows as well as two of the new season offerings.

Medical Investigation
Medical Investigation premiered Sept. 10 on NBC. Jaison Stritch of Stargate Digital supervises the creation of the show’s visuals effects and explains the difference between CSI and Medical Investigation: “We’re not zooming down into cells, into molecules. We don’t get into that kind of graphic detail. We’re distinct and uniquely different than CSI. All the visuals are organic. They’re natural. It’s all about the story, the people.” Besides the creative challenge of making the series stand out visually and stylistically, Stritch and his vfx team face three specific challenges presented by the premise of the series itself.

The most involved vfx challenge is the signature visualization by main character, Dr. Stephen Connor (Neal McDonough). These sequences show what Connor is seeing in his imagination and support the logic that is the basis for Connor’s medical conclusions — turning points in the story. These visualizations constitute the majority of the vfx for each episode — up to 30 shots. The effect has a ghostly, streaky look achieved through multi-pass layering of the scene with action shot in different speeds — 150 fps to 6 fps exposures. To create a separation and draw the audience in, the visualizations have a distinctly different look and different lighting from the live-action footage. Under most circumstances, Connor strikes a nighttime look and visualizes the scene at another time. The visualizations actually comprise a daytime overexposed look, juxtaposed with higher contrast and a specific color design. Dynamic greenscreen and motion control photography using organic tracking points — such as textures in a wall design that the computer can track — are some of the techniques employed to create the visualization sequences.