John Gross, partner in CG firm Eden FX. Eden FX helped the pilot for Homeland Security fly. Photos courtesy of Eden FX.

Such creative alliances also help teams educate the producer team. For John Gross, partner in CG firm Eden FX (which provides CG work for Enterprise and the pilot episode of Homeland Security), “Producers are starting to see the benefit of getting involved earlier with us because that way they can make it a better shot.” For this season of Enterprise, Gross’ team has developed “a new bad-guy race” called “the Xindi, which manifests in five different forms — we are creating two of its five states — insectoid and aquatic — in CG.” While CG characters have appeared before on Star Trek, the level of interaction with human characters is new to the show.

Signature Shots
As part of their increased pre-production responsibility, teams often work with a show’s creative team to develop signature shots (for example, the hyper-slow fly-throughs of events in the top-rated crime dramas CSI at Stargate and CSI: Miami at Zoic). These shots are key to the overall “look” of the show. For the new UPN show Jake 2.0, Stargate uses its expertise in optical and digital imaging to seamlessly blend transitions from the “nano” world to the “real” world and back again, helping the audience understand what’s going on inside the show’s main character.

The move to HD has rendered useless much of the stock footage shows use for transitions. So shows now turn to visual effects teams to help them create their own “stock” libraries. Says Modern VideoFilm’s Carriker, “A lot of existing stock footage is 4x3 and that a huge problem because it won’t work in 16x9 and because it comes from tape it looks bad in HD.” Even some sitcoms, which rarely used visual effects in the past (and then for garden variety car window composites), are now turning to providers for unique act-in/act-out and in-show transitions. For example, for the sitcom What I Like About You, the Modern VideoFilm team uses independently moving still photo approach made popular in the documentary The Kid Stays In The Picture. A photographer in New York sends a series of stills to the visual effects team as the show progresses through the year. As a result, the transitions echo the subtle changes of seasons over the course of the year and tell the story better than a stock establishing shot.

So what’s FX-y about this? These shots from What I Like About You are actually collages of various still shots of the city. Photo courtesy of Modern VideoFilm. © Warner Bros. Television.

Virtual Locations
With increasing frequency, television visual effects providers are bringing the location to the crew instead of vice versa. As a response to increased transportation costs, security restrictions, and the simple human need to want to work close to home, visual effects firms are creating photoreal virtual environments. This approach, of course, is especially critical for the globe-hopping espionage shows such as Alias and Threat Matrix. As Alias’ Kevin Blank says, “Our main bread and butter is putting our cast into other locales. We find a location that has similar architecture for the foreground and then put an iconic structure in the background (for example Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower).”

But it’s also important for shows such as ER (which takes place in Chicago), because it allows producers to save significant location, transportation costs associated with a large company move to a distant location. “We can take the production ER to Chicago,” says Stargate’s Nicholson, “and convincingly ride on virtual trains around town. It’s just as believable as reality but costs up to half as much and is twice as convenient because everybody gets to go home at night.” Equally as important, the virtual backlot approach allows the production team to focus on performance rather than on logistics or other problems associated with location shooting.