The visual effects studio delivered 1,522 shots on the Showtime vampire/horror series, including fully CG chimps that morphed into vicious vampire chimps.
Streamland Media’s Ingenuity Studios recently delivered around 1,522 shots across all 10 episodes of the Showtime series Let the Right One In. The vampire drama, produced by Tomorrow Studios, debuted on the streamer this past October.
In the series, Mark and his daughter Eleanor’s lives changed forever 10 years earlier when she was turned into a vampire. Seemingly frozen in time, at the age of 12, Eleanor has lived a closed-in life, able to go out only at night, while her father does his best to provide her with the human blood she needs to stay alive. Now they’ve returned home to New York City, desperate to find a cure. Inspired by the acclaimed Swedish novel and film, the story turns a naturalistic lens on human frailty, strength, and compassion
As the sole vendor, the Ingenuity Studios team was part of the series from the initial pilot discussions to script bidding, creative calls, on-set support, first cuts of each episode, on through to final delivery. In addition, the studio supported production with a dedicated on-set supervisor and its visual effects supervisor, including Ingenuity Studios’ founding partner and VFX supervisor, David Lebensfeld.
The studios’ work ranged from winterization - such as matte paintings and adding snow – to full CG chimps; CG rats; vampire enhancements; minor gory gags (adding blood, scars, wound); Digi-double, set extensions (2D/3D); and cleanups. The first two episodes featured the highly realistic, fully CG chimps that morphed into vicious Vampire Chimps, all created by the Ingenuity Studios team, complete with fur and hair modeling. The team used various creative and pipeline tools, including Nuke, Maya, Houdini, and VAST Storage.
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“It’s rare to work on a TV series that requires such a breadth of scope and as many shots as Season 1 of Let the Right One In,” shared Lebensfeld. “In fact, I’d say there are about two feature films worth of VFX spanning all ten episodes. They really invested in bringing this show to bear with such realism that viewers willingly suspend their disbelief. The Ingenuity Studios team has been increasingly involved in developing and delivering creatures of all kinds. Adding vampire chimps to the mix gave us a fresh challenge, and it was a lot of fun working with creator/showrunner Andrew Hinderaker again.”
Hinderaker served as creator/showrunner on the series, with Ben Rosenblatt as co-executive producer and Marian Golden as VFX Producer.
The Ingenuity Studio’s team included Lebensfeld as VFX supervisor; Hallana Paula Barbosa as VFX executive producer; Nate Carpenter, and Juliana Watson as VFX producers. Philip McGuire served as VFX supervisor on the series Pilot. In addition, Kathryn Sigismund was the on-set VFX supervisor for episodes 101-107, and Zachary Coker was the on-set VFX supervisor for episodes 107-110.
Source: Ingenuity Studios
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
