When it came to isolate the stunt man from the smoky green screen, mocha Pro's tracking-assisted rotoscoping capabilities and variable-edge feathering helped to save the day.

Everything was shot on Arri Alexa at 1080p25 to Apple ProRes4444 codec as LogC. Everything was processed as a 32 bpc workflow with Rec709 LUTs used only for viewing, and output offline copies for the editors as DNxHD 36 or 120 with baked-in Rec709 for import into Avid MediaComposer 5 suites. The final delivery was done as 1,920 x 1,080 16 bpc LogC TIFF sequences that were conformed in a Nucoda grading suite.

Almost all of the 290 VFX shots for season 1 of Äkta människor were composited entirely in Adobe After Effects, with a few exceptions that were handled with The Foundry's NukeX.

“It's pretty amazing to be able to do high-end, seamless and photo-real HD effects on hardware that costs less than $2,000 per machine and with software for even less than that,” Hummelstrand concluded. “Being an in-house shop, I know that we need to be extremely efficient, but I know of similar TV shows that have paid more for one tenth the amount of similar effects done on the outside. And ten years ago the budget for this would have to have been ten times that!”