LAVs, tanks, two types of helicopters and a jet plane were all created in CG.

TB: Did this series require a lot of R&D or the use of new tools to get the job done?

Partridge: There was a wider project level in that we wrote some color matching tools which we used to send out graded QuickTimes of latest comps to sit in with the Avid cut. But mainly it was using existing tools that were primarily proprietary within Cinesite. We used a combination of software with Shake, but a lot of our plug-ins are written in-house, as well as with Maya.

TB: How did you break up the workload and what was the turnaround time?

DS: Generation Kill had more of a film schedule than television, which meant that we had more time to spend developing the look of the visual effects. From start to finish Cinesite's involvement was about a year.

Partridge: There are seven episodes in total and we ended up splitting it into three blocks: episodes 1, 2, 3 and then episodes 4, 5, 6 and episode 7 was the final block. Pre-production started well over a year ago but there was no turnover until the start of this year. The last plates were literally just turned in a few weeks ago. There was a slow build up with a very intense end of the project trying to get the work finished. We had about 20 2D people and maybe 10 or 15 3D people as well, and then five or six production people. There are about 450 shots in total.

Tara Bennett is an East coast-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as SCI FI Magazine, SFX and Lost Magazine. She is the author of the books 300: The Art of the Film and 24: The Official Companion Guide: Seasons 1-6.