Back for season two of Rome is vfx supervisor James Madigan, who faced a whole new set of unexpected vfx and budgetary challenges, since matte paintings and environments couldn't be reused from last year. All images courtesy of HBO.

Caesar may be dead but the treachery, violence and debauchery behind the machinations of the Roman Empire are only getting started as the second season of the epic BBC/HBO drama, Rome, debuted on Jan. 21. The fall of the Republic continues to be chronicled in expansive scope and accuracy against the backdrop of the smaller, human stories of love, honor and betrayal that reflect the larger issues of the ancient society imploding upon itself. Back for the thrilling ride behind-the-scenes is visual effects supervisor James Madigan. Back for the thrilling ride behind-the-scenes is visual effects supervisor James Madigan, who returns to Rome after working with vfx house The Senate on The Da Vinci Code during the production hiatus.

After winning an Outstanding Visual Effects Emmy for the season debut, Madigan admits season two of Rome offered a whole new set of unexpected vfx and budgetary challenges for his team. "It seems like it would be easier having already done the first season," Madigan relates. "There was very much an attempt to reuse matte paintings and environments, but to be honest, there wasn't much reuse of things from last year. Most of the views we're looking at this season are new places or are places we saw last [time] -- 12 years later. Most of the things that are a direct repeat of places we saw are usually things I wanted to improve on anyway so they were reworked. The main thing that was nice about coming back a second time was that you already know everyone… "

With the tightening of the budgetary belt, this season was more controlled and preplanned as opposed to last year, when the vfx team constantly filled in bits of backgrounds and the set had patches of bluescreen everywhere.

A hallmark of the series is the scale and attention to detail mandated by the producers, who had a huge budget for the initial season. While the first year was a critical success, Rome had to deal with severe cutbacks for its sophomore season. Madigan admits, "The budget this season was considerably tighter. I'd say we had less than half the amount of money and about 1/10th the amount of time to play with that we had last year. The shot count was lower but the shots themselves were much bigger in scale. Last season we were constantly filling in bits of backgrounds. The set had patches of bluescreen everywhere so whenever we shot the exterior sets there was another shot. This season it was much more controlled and preplanned… Any approach that could save money and time was put in play. I had a still camera and a DV camera with me all the time and any trip I made, while in Italy, I wound up supplying us with resources for our matte paintings. We had small strips of blue that I would put up behind extras when the main unit would let me steal the B or C camera to get elements for the shots without extra costs. It was a bit 'by the seat of our pants.' Any opportunity to get a piece of something had to be capitalized on."

With the universal tightening of the budgetary belt, Madigan says the collective goal to streamline the production helped bring both his personal vfx goals and those of the producers in line. "The mentality of the producers and HBO this season as far as vfx were concerned was that when we do decide to spend money let's make it worthwhile, I'd say in that aspect we meshed. There was very much a concern to not shy away from the big battle sequence this time, which was cool. As far as 'vfx goals,' to be honest, when I considered the bit of history that we would be covering, I envisioned the vfx being much more epic than season one as far as the amount and size of our work, which would have been nice. But, as it is, we've been able to do a lot of great work and considering the amount of time we have to get it done, there is just no way more could have been handled. We've had some really incredible artists working very hard to get it through in the time we had."