Hutzel and his team raised the bar in creating gritty, documentary-style vfx and received two Emmys and a VES award for it.

"But then the finale was a different thing," he continues with his warm chuckle. "It was interesting because we had a jammed schedule. It turns out with Caprica we did the pilot [in 2008] and we completed it with previs and presented it to the studio and network. But at the time they presented, they didn't feel they had the ability to pick it up so it sat there. Our scheduled delivery date was October [2008] and it sat and sat and sat. Everyone knew it was a winner but they had no scheduled date or game plan for a pick-up. When they did find out about the pick-up, then there was a new game plan from the DVD folks [Universal Home Ent.] that wanted to release Caprica [on April 21]. For that to happen, they need it months in advance so that became a panic because it had to be done immediately. And that pushed the delivery for the BSG finale. So we have been working seven days a week for four months to put these shows out."

But when Hutzel initially got the scripts for the last three episodes, "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" and "Daybreak Part 1 & 2," nothing seemed so dire. "In the beginning, I thought the finale was very light on visual effects," he admits. "In reading it and the way the visual effects played out in the show my concern was that we wouldn't have any set pieces at all but then we had five! It was weird. It was effects light with exterior shots and nothing dramatic but then as it was rebuilt and we got to tell some major story. It was a great opportunity for us. I just wish it happened three months earlier," he sighs with a laugh.

Explaining how it all changed, Hutzel details, "As a whole, for the finale, we wanted to do a lot of new stuff. We didn't want to end on the same note that we had been doing. To that end, we went with a radically new design for the Cylon colony/home world. Michael Rhymer, who directed 'Daybreak Part 1 & 2,' virtually demands that everything be different. His first criterion is will it be different than anything we've done before and then he is down with that. Going into the show it was very demanding for him and tough for him emotionally too. He was literally the heart and soul [of the show] from the beginning and he was there to the last minute. It was like living out a life in four years.

The team worked round-the-clock to get the effects done for the final three episodes, but some extraordinary sequences were achieved.

"So we got into editorial and he was working through the story in his own way and we had lots of dialogue about his issues with the mechanics of the story," Hutzel continues. "He did his edit and we began to work on the study models for the stuff that we discussed. Then it became apparent that they were going to restructure the show, which is standard procedure for the show. I can't remember a show didn't restructure... well there was one," he laughs.

"But they went in and started reforming. By then we had created previs to develop and they were cutting it into the show and as they continued to change it, Ron came in -- and this is months after wrap now -- and said this is not at all what I wanted to do. I think that he was reacting to the new structure of the show and what he felt would be the strongest moment. We had quite an extensive visual effects sequence planned but he didn't want that additional layer to it and wanted it straightforward so we redesigned all that work. The delivery schedule was so short on the show that there was no approval process. We redesigned and had meetings five weeks ago and that was the last meeting we had. There was no time because we just had to do it. But I feel we captured what Ron wanted to do. We haven't discussed that and he might call up and say, 'What the hell did you do?,' because there are a lot of surprises. With the level of detail that we put into the effects and the number of decisions that are made on every effect, it really requires a lot of meetings and in this whole back ten there have been no meetings."