[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Cosmic Cafe, the companion podcast to thecosmiccircus.com I'm Isla Ruby, and we have an exciting interview today. The second season of Apple TV Invasion premiered a little over a month ago, and we got to speak with Eric Henry, the show's VFX supervisor, about bringing those big cinematic sequences to life. Enjoy.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Hi, Eric. It's wonderful to meet you.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Nice to meet you.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Isla so Invasion is a very VFX heavy show, and I'm very excited to talk to you about it. So I want to kind of just jump right in since we're limited on time.
So that first episode, let's talk about it.
It came out today. And that first sequence is like, there's.
[00:00:53] Speaker D: A lot of fire there's.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: The aliens. Can you talk about bringing that to life? I think I've read that it took six weeks to just shoot, not post or anything like that. So I'd love to hear how that came to be.
[00:01:07] Speaker C: Six weeks to post or six weeks to shoot and know? Four or five months to post. Oh, my so it's we started alex Sokorov is the director of the episode, and he was keen to have something that felt like the camera was in amongst the fighting.
And of course, Mitsky, our heroine, is fighting and saving people, whether it be children or people who have been knocked down. She's doing all of that stuff. So what we started with Alex did storyboards for the whole sequence, like every little beat, and then we previz the heck out of it. Adding the alien in small tweaks were made because of the way the aliens move. Oh, we can take advantage of that here or there.
And then they went and shot it. And let me tell you, they just did exactly what we planned.
[00:02:10] Speaker D: Oh, wow.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: As it works.
It doesn't always, but they just shot it perfectly and gave us every opportunity to have success in giving room for an alien, moving the camera in a way that allowed for the alien to be placed in the scene. Alex and his team really delivered for us.
I had a supervisor on the ground who helped in that. And then we go into post, and the team at Weta took all of those shots. And this is an alien that they knew well from season one because they had done all of those. But what happens when you work with an alien? Over time, you get better and better at it. And there was a shorthand between us and getting those 3D objects to sit in the frame. And the animations were, I think, exceptional in that scene. We get a chance to, of course, have people killed, but just seeing them in all giving different places for them to run rooftops down into alleys and giving a lot more character than I think we had in anything in season one. So that opening scene was supposed to do one thing, and one thing only is to say season one, you have a little bit of aliens and a lot of character development. And what are you going to get in season two? Boom. You're going to get aliens left and right and a war basically open up and tell the audience this season is about all out war.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: I'm glad you mentioned that because so season one, a lot of character development. But season two, there's a lot of Sci-Fi stuff without going too much into the show because I know it hasn't aired yet. There's like the mothership. There are these really cool there's this fog, which I would love to talk to you about.
So there's this big battle between Anisha, Luke, Clark, they're escaping these hunter killer aliens. Can you talk about bringing the fog to life? Because that just was completely creepy. It totally worked. And it wasn't a jump scare, but it was terrifying.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: Well, yeah, I mean, obviously that was a challenge because we were shooting that in outdoors. And it's tough to keep all of that fog, the live action fog. So obviously we had to augment it. And there are scenes where people are being chased and they couldn't get any fog. And so we're really adding it. And the idea of the fog was supposed to be a little bit of where is it coming from next?
And also just when they're in the car and driving along and Anisha looks out, searching and searching and Luke's feeling something, and then you see them kind of running alongside, in other words, these new aliens being able to keep up with the car easily, it's like, okay, now what's going to happen?
I just think that that scene was really well, again, prevized and thought out. And I think that anytime you can use a natural element to play hide and seek with your aliens, it's going to be a success. And I think that's probably why that is. And I think people like that scene quite a bit.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Was there anything, whether it be other shows or other movies, that you kind of drew inspiration from or kind of had little Easter eggs for in this season? I think I read something about The Abyss at one point and how that inspired some of this stuff. I'd love to hear if there's anything else.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, years ago I actually worked on The Abyss because I'm old.
That was one of those things where we were super careful of we had to create an alien for season two, a higher life form, a sentient life form.
And Simon gave us the marching and Simon Kenberg, the creator of the show, gave us the marching orders that he wanted it to be beautiful and kind of ethereal and it wouldn't have eyes and it wouldn't be able to communicate in a typical human to human way. So how are you going to do it? And then he left us with it because that's our job. And what we came up with, I think still can emote. And there's a great level of emotions that we were able to get in.
And obviously the comparison to The Abyss came in because it does feel like it's at sometimes made of water, this entity. And of course, there's the character, the alien takes on the shape of water in The Abyss. But in The Abyss it also creates a face. At one point, the actor to work against. We never did that.
We couldn't do that. And yet I think there are intimate moments with one of the characters and this entity alien that I think are real powerful and it's amazing that you can do it.
But we were aware of the comparison to The Abyss and we said if people are comparing it, that's high praise. And I don't think that we are overtly trying to copy it in any way.
It's a whole different thing. And it's driven by all the emotional moments are driven by something that happened to this character as recently as season one.
And so you have to have watched to understand why there's a kind of love hate relationship going on.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: I think it totally works with the story and everything that's been building. And I think this might be my last question. Was there anything that you really loved working on this season that you're super proud of that just was like a joy to create and bring to life?
[00:09:31] Speaker C: I would say that one of the things that I think is most successful is in season one you saw a ship that was an unknown and in season two, we get to go inside it. And I think that as you watch the episodes because it's a little later in the season when you go inside and you see certain things I thought that the execution of that was a lot of fun. I think it gives you real science fiction moments that I guess that kind of are near and dear to my heart. Sure, the challenge of the entity was a tough one and I'd say more difficult than what I'm talking about in the interior. But there's some great big, vast moments where it's almost, I guess, the success of the interior of that ship and my love of that part was that it reveals without being in your face.
You walk into it and you go, oh, my God, this is a place that is so vast my mind is blown. But we're not making too much of it.
You're just seeing it as of course, that's what it is because it's just big. And I just think those interiors by a company called Renault Effects in Montreal are some of the best in the show. And, yeah, I think people will really enjoy those if you're a science fiction freak.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: And we definitely are.
[00:11:18] Speaker D: Well, thank you very much.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: This has been wonderful talking.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Okay, well, I enjoyed it too. Have a great day.
[00:11:24] Speaker D: You too. Take care.
Thank you for listening. You can find the companion article for this podcast along with all the other news. For those who like superheroes, science fiction and fantasy films, TV shows and other
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[00:12:05] Speaker B: Sam, it.
