VFX supervisor Greg Behrens discusses the production of otherworldly visuals on Kelly Marcel and Apple TV+’s supernatural thriller about a book dealer searching for his missing wife and son in the Big Apple.
In true fairy tale fashion, a dark undercurrent prevails in the Apple TV+ series The Changeling, created by Kelly Marcel and based on a novel by Victor LaValle. The show tells the story of used book dealer Apollo Kagwa (LaKeith Stanfield), who searches for his missing wife and son in an alternative New York City. Surreal, psychological, and supernatural components to the imagery cause one to question how much is real and imagined throughout the eight episodes. Brought on to provide the visual effects was visual effects supervisor Greg Behrens, who previously worked on the similarly themed Prime Video series American Gods. For this series, he teamed with Atmosphere VFX, Crafty Apes, FuseFX, Pixomondo, and Refuge VFX to produce the otherworldly visuals.
LaValle served as narrator, which reflects the production’s effort to include him in the decision-making process. “Victor was on set a lot of time sitting in the video village with us,” states Behrens. “It was nice having him there, as sometimes I would get confused by the scripts because the narrative jumps time. So, I could pick his brain and go, ‘How does this work?’ Then he told me the whole story. It is hard to put a novel into a TV show. The important thing is even though it was a fairy tale, we wanted to keep it grounded in the reality of New York City, especially since Melina Matsoukas [director of the pilot episode] is from there as well as Victor. The big thing with the visual effects was to keep them real.”
Cinematographer duties were shared by Steven Cosens, Christopher Norr, and Marcell Rév. “The Changeling was shot and lit so well, and in particular, Episodes 101 and 102 set the look,” notes Behrens. “Even when watching the dailies, you could see the production value, and that comes across on the screen because it’s a good-looking show!” Initially, the plan was to shoot in New York City and Toronto and return to the former to capture anything that was missing. “It was important to shoot as much in New York City because the story is based there. They decided that since we’re in New York City to stay there, shoot as much as we could and then come up to Toronto. Episodes 101 and 102 were shot at the same time, and when we came to Toronto, the series was shot per episode for the most part.”
Steam was a significant atmospheric for the project. “Since the story takes place in New York City, there is that stereotypical steam coming out of the grates on the street and blowing around,” explains Behrens. “There was a lot of that to keep this gritty New York City feel. When Apollo was a teenager brushing his teeth and the shower is going, there is this regular steam from hot water. But when he was younger, there was this spooky steam because that’s his memory of it. We were wondering how to shoot those scenes because steam has to have a creepy character movement. Our special effects department [led by Roy Savoy] was able to make a lot of practical steam on the day that had this slow, creepy, heavier movement. However, when you’re doing the various camera setups, it is hard to get the steam to do the same thing each time for continuity. That was always going to be an issue, so I said, ‘Lets shoot it all with the practical steam, but also shoot it all clean.’ We referred to it as ‘dream steam’ to differentiate for the vendors.”
Another close collaboration with the special effects team was the house fire. “We were first looking for a house that was going to be torn down so we could blast flame bars because they could only be on for eight seconds before it will start to adversely affect the wood and begin melting things,” notes Behrens. “This is not a heavy visual effects show, and real is always better, especially when it comes to organic things like fire and water. We also had to find a place where we could shoot the interior scenes and burn that as well. At the end of the day, we found a house that was being remodeled. Special effects put flame bars in all the windows and gave us a good base. For the interior, they built a matching house on a stage. In the corner of the living room there was a flame bar that stood vertically, which was enough to get some interactive light. In the kitchen, there was a flame bar that went horizontally on one of the counters. We had an element shoot where construction built a house outside that matched the proportions of the set, and we tried to lineup the camera in the same place that we shot those shots. And we really lit it. We took those elements and put them into shots. However, we still ended up doing a lot of visual effects fire for bits where the elements didn’t quite work.”
In on scene, a faceless man appears in a hallway. “A prescored neoprene mask was made so when the actor would grab it, the mask would tear where it was prescored,” notes Behrens. “But at the end of the tear, there was too much resistance. They didn’t want the scene to look like he was trying to escape from it. It was supposed to be the freaky reveal of this creepy blue face. Because of that we added the blue face in post. Every blue face that you see in the show was visual effects. When Young Apollo opens the door and sees the man with the blue face there, Pixomondo had to do a rough proxy CG head.”
Subway trains had to be augmented. “When the baby was born in the subway, the only thing that we had to do was to add graffiti. I didn’t realize when you shoot on subway trains in New York City, you would think that they would have a subway train that was like a film car where you could put blood on the ground but you can’t do anything to it. There are parts where they look up and see a music lyric, which was something we added.”
In one episode, Apollo gets beaten up quite badly. “When we were shooting Apollo getting hit with the hammer, the first thing is to ask the producers, ‘How much blood do you think Apple is going to let us show?’” Behrens shares. “It turned out to be a good amount. In the shot of Apollo chained against a steampipe, practical blood was on his face and shirt. But one of the tricky bits was the way they shot that scene, which was filmed from the beginning to the end. The blood would dry and have to be reapplied. Editorial would take one bit from one take and cut it to another take so the blood on the shirt was bouncing around. We had to go and paint out and add blood to make sure that the blood spots on his shirt were more or less consistent at the end. Before Apollo gets hit, the stuff dripping out the corner of his mouth was all practical. After he gets hit by the hammer, we added some blood that flew off of his face as well as the gouge that you see.”
The cityscape was digitally extended in the background. “We did a few of these because it’s supposed to be in New York City,” states Behrens. “That shot of Emma [Clark Backo] was captured at Humber Bay Park and it was looking back towards Toronto and the island. Our job was to extend and continue that over, so it didn’t look like it was going off into nothing on Lake Ontario.” The boat ride was shot in New York City. “For some of the shots, we had practical fog on the water, but for most of them, they weren’t able to do that because it was too windy. In post, for a lot of those shots of William Wheeler [Samuel T. Herring] and Apollo, we added a lot of visual effects fog into those.” The cliff scene in Episode 108 required asset sharing between vendors because of resource issues. According to Behrens, “Pixomondo did the cliff extension, and the atmosphere added onto that was done by Atmosphere VFX. Pixomondo sent their final composites to Atmosphere VFX, where they added and rendered haze, and then delivered the final shot. Most things were parsed out so vendors could work on entire sequences.”
Storyboards were created for the opening sequence of the sloop in the ocean. “That was all CG,” reveals Behrens. “There was a lot of water in that! I spent a lot of time on YouTube finding footage of ships and high waves in the ocean that I was sending to the vendor to help them match the look of how ocean waves act. That was definitely a challenging sequence. Originally, it was discussed that it would be great to have people on the deck. In a perfect world where we had more time and money, the ship would have been built in a pool, had fans, special effects water, lined up the greenscreens and then shot some closeups of the sloop practically with people and then augment the background.”
The most complex visual effects shots were the sloop, burning house, and the cliff. “I was trying to push production to build a set that represented the top of the cliff that we could put outside somewhere with real trees and sky,” Behrens says. “Originally, there was an actual cliff, but the problems with that were safety and logistics. Anytime you’re on the cliff looking out there was no way to put a bluescreen up because it was 100 feet up. In the end, a set was built, which was great. Every time they looked off the set, we extended it. The bits where Apollo is midway down a 30-foot-high set piece was built on a stage, and we wrapped it with greenscreen. We extended it whenever you’re looking at the sides and down. Once they get down to the beach for the most part it was an actual location. The cliff scene was tricky but worked out in the end.”
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.
