Neil Riley brings 27 years of visual effects experience, including an extensive tenure at Passion Pictures. Known for his contributions to Black Mirror and A Discovery of Witches Season 3, Riley dives into the creative process behind his work on Netflix’s KAOS.
What is your background?
I started my journey into VFX as a motion control operator and cameraman in 1997, working on live action and stop frame animation shoots. Through the invention of stop frame digital video assist I started to use the video assist frame grabs to start compositing shots during long stop frame shoots, to the point where I had really good 90% finished comps by the end of the shoot. I also got heavily into camera tracking, developing techniques for Live action and stop frame hybrid projects. From there I spent 16 years as VFX supervisor at Passion Pictures working on all sorts of animation, events, features and live action/animation projects. I became freelance again in 2017, and have since focussed more heavily on long form projects including Black Mirror, Discovery of Witches, and now Kaos.
How did you get involved on this series?
I started early 2022, at the start of the main Pre-production phase for a July 2022 principle photography start. I had quite a tight budget to work with and the scripts were ambitious, so being able to be a part of production early was extremely useful. We did extensive location recces for a few months before setting up in Spain June 2022 for the shoot.
How was this new collaboration with the filmmakers?
It was a really collaborative environment. The show was ambitious, 90% of the show was being shot on location throughout the whole of Spain. A lot of aspects of the scripts had to be changed to accommodate the situations that a lot of the locations threw up. There was a huge amount of location recceing, and tech recces’ trying to put together the pieces for all departments.
How did you choose the various vendors and split the work amongst them?
First on the list was Cinesite, they had already done an amazing test for Fotis during lockdown before the current incarnation of the project started, I really wanted them to carry on and develop Fotis. The other aspect that I wanted to adhere to, was to delineate between the worlds so each vendor took on the environments for each world. Freefolk took the majority of Earth, Milk took over the Misc work on the Underworld, and Glassworks took on ‘The Nothing’. Although this was the ideal, once into post, there was some movement in this ideal, and I brought in Viridian and Jellyfish to fill some holes. Studio 8 took on the majority of the clean up work.
What is the your role on set and how do you work with other departments?
I like to be very involved on set as much as possible. I feel it is really important to be around for all departments to reach out if they feel they need VFX help later down the line, so we can then work together to find a solution. I worked especially close to the Art department, Dick Lunn as production designer, and Antonio Calvo as Art director.
I had help from on set supervisor, Arturo Balseiro, and VFX data wrangler Marcus Redondo for the whole show. We didn’t really have a traditional block schedule so each location was shot out for all 8 episodic scene needs before moving on. This did put a bit of pressure on the team, as with new locations coming on line throughout production, I was flying around all over the place looking and planning what was coming round the corner.
Can you describe the creative process behind designing the visual aesthetic in KAOS?
Giving the audience a clear sense of which world they were watching was paramount in the early designs. This started with Georgi Banks-Davies (director) and Kit Fraser (DOP) creating a camera language for each world. Dick built onto this a production style to each world, Costume and Make-up created different aesthetics for the characters in each world, and as the VFX team I tried to continue their work in Post. Earth was gritty realism, a lot of handheld anamorphic camera work, a slight twist on the world we know today and set in more late 80’s / early 90’s technological era. Olympus. More staged camera work, more track/dolly, spherical lenses, a heightened colour palette and opulence, but more Scarface than classical. The underworld was shot full frame spherical, which gives an added width to formal lens choices, the camera was more static, more symmetrical framing, and in a design world that needed to feel like it was designed and built by Hades. More brutalist in nature, trying to find a coherent style from a man who had world building forced upon him.
The black and white decision came from some tests that were done on location recces. The architecture and the Spanish sky suddenly felt of another world in black and white, this was agreed and shot Black and white from the first day of shooting.
What were the main challenges in bringing the city of Heraklion to life through visual effects?
Heraklion, overall, was mostly shot in camera, with VFX dealing with signs and physical architecture that didn’t fit our world but couldn’t be removed in camera. The biggest Challenge was the Palace of Seville, the location for the Olympus ceremony and the Orpheus gig. The space is huge, and although we had full access to it, our time was limited, and the distances meant moving the camera from one setup to another, which was time prohibitive. On one day we had 7 camera units, including the VFX element unit shooting crowd extras, all cameras had potential VFX crowd extensions. I did extensive previz in Unreal of all the camera positions for the gig and ceremony to help production understand where cameras would overlap, how to hide the production trucks and kit that was needed on the day, how to make best use of the 300 extras to get as many in camera shots as possible, plus the design and placement of the 48x4m green screen.
What role did practical sets play in creating the world of KAOS, and how did VFX enhance them?
Everything was a practical set, apart from the Nothing, for the most part we had little to do on most of the locations as far as enhancements go. For Prometheus’ cliff, there was an initial will to try and find a physical location which could be used, but through accessibility and safety this plan was changed to building a partial cliff. There were some really strong physical options which we had found, so I did some drone photogrammetry and reference shooting of the chosen cliff, then modified the area for Prometheus to suit the story. Then following the natural cracks and crevices, cut out a 6x4m section which I sent over to the art department who CNC routed this out full size as the basis for their set. Once shot this piece would fit neatly back into the rest of the CG cliff that had been worked up. We did some augmentation to the texture of the set to blend the 2 pieces. This also meant that the eagle elements that we shot could be filmed in situ on a set the eagle could be trained on, rather than trying to shoot green screen elements.
But mostly for the other locations, as a whole team we were aware of the potential VFX cost of extending numerous unique locations, and that was not really how Georgi wanted to work., She was very keen to tweak the scene/shot to have it in camera if possible.
How closely did the VFX team collaborate with the production designers to ensure a seamless integration of physical and digital environments?
Dick and I spent a lot of time together during the pre-production and on the shoot. The collaboration continued throughout post, until all visual choices had been signed off.
I think the need to have close relationships with VFX and all departments is better understood these days. I don’t think these shows are achievable without it. We, as the VFX team are asked to get involved in all aspects of the picture, and it’s vitally important that you have a relationship with all the HOD’s across the show to be able to do that well.
How did the mythology influence your choice of colors, textures, and effects for the various environments?
Charlie Covell has had this show in prep for 10 years and came with a huge number of visual nuggets from mythology that were added into the production design. But everything we did was a slight twist on the mythological stories, which was nice to have fun with. For each story point it was fun to try and find something in the historical mythology. Suddenly a lot of my kids books on mythology and an old Dictionary of mythology that I have had for 30 years became more useful than I ever could imagine.
It is interesting to think of this as this show is set living in mythological times, and if we moved to 2000 years in the future, how what we have created would evolve over time as the stories get distorted with each generation. Maybe Cereberus was always a small pet dog, but one child came across him and saw this relatively huge dog towering above her one day. Over time as this kid grew up in her memory this dog became bigger and bigger every time she described this story, now grown-up the relative height of the dog, from the 1m dog being 3x the height of her a toddler becomes a 3 times bigger dog than a grown adult. A 4.5m monster. This show plays with the normality of living in a world where the Gods are real and dictate how you live and how you die.
How did you approach scale and perspective in visualizing massive structures like the palaces of Olympus and Heraklion?
I like to initially build everything out as real world scale as a basic previz model, then I take a look at camera positions and lens to create the composition that provides scale. Then if there are some elements that require a bit of visual manipulation you know that is required and if it all starts to feel odd you can revert back to the accurate scale model you started with and start again.
I will always try and find something on physical on the earth as it is now, that helps people understand the scale that we are looking at. Often this can be building models from contours to show more accurately the scale of mountains and valleys.
What were the most intricate VFX sequences you worked on the series?
Fotis is right up there. The amount of work I did in casting for the hero dog, the training, scanning, then on set making sure we had usable takes and that there was room for the 3 heads, and that we had performances to work up. Then this got magnified 6 times in the Port scene, where we had 6 potential 3 headed dogs to deal with. The Fotis days on set were some of the most stressful, and the most rewarding.
Environment wise it has to be a mix of the Gig, Olympia ceremony and the Nothing. All these scenes were shot in the same week. The Nothing shoot was incredibly complicated with the whole composition being made up of people. Mapping out where the made up extras would be, keeping continuity of the grid of extras as it was rotated and offset to fit into the small stage we had, then taking those elements and building out the world to match the tone and expectations of production was, at times, stressful for all, and incredibly detailed in execution. Duncan Malcolm who led the Glassworks team did a fantastic job with those sequences.
How did you balance creating realistic yet fantastical landscapes for the Underworld?
This is an interesting question, and for me when you are creating realism you end up adding and adding details and imperfections until something feels natural for fantastical you end up being constrained by a few more design decisions. It’s neater, it lives by some new rules, things are left out that you might imagine for something ‘real’. The Underworld is not a ‘real’ place, there are certain things the dead don’t have to worry about. But it is a slightly tired, very old, ever expanding space. So it’s really the living rules you set that help define the spaces.
How did the VFX team approach the challenge of visualizing Zeus’ powers?
Early on in pre-production the brief was that we would only really see the results of Zeus’ power and not create a ‘superhero’ vibe to the visualization of how he manipulates the world. It was always about the results of his power. We added a tiny bit when Zeus attacks Hades and it felt like he had lost control for a moment.
Were there any unexpected technical or creative challenges encountered during the production?
There were many, and to be honest you have to expect them. With so many locations and shooting over a 6 month period, the environment threw everything at us, intense Spanish heat, draught, so reservoir locations dropped 6m and became unusable, Covid kept rearing its ugly head, rain washing out shooting days on locked down streets. But the amazing thing is working with a huge team of dedicated people across all departments, problems get solved, new ideas come to light.
An interesting challenge was how to make a tongue speak with no mouth. The logistics of the Gig and Olympia shoot, training of eagles. Then we had a significant re-shoot in Italy 6 months into edit, with new sets, the whole Olympus island in the sky and the thunderstorm sequence were added.
We had some heavy machinery issues where the equipment for holding a 16m blue screen didn’t arrive, which meant the scene had to change to shooting 90 degrees to the original plan, that left a whole new angle of the underworld to design.
And to set it off our hero onset dog Stand-in grew 2cm over the course of the shoot, this didn’t become apparent until cinesite were roto animating Fotis for some later scenes and no-one could understand why his paws couldn’t touch the ground.
Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of?
I can’t really speak to that, as it’s not just me creating these shots. I’m really proud of all the amazing artists who put their heart and soul into creating the VFX for this show. I may come up with the idea, the plan, but it takes all of them to put this together. There is such a variety of VFX in this show, every aspect has at some point or other raised challenges, and at every turn the Vendors and artists have been incredibly patient and enthusiastic throughout.
How long have you worked on this show?
All in all from April 2022 to July 2024. 2 years 4 months.
What’s the VFX shots count?
About 950 in the end.
What is your next project?
A little bit of time to decompress, then there are a few things which which hopefully develop in the next month or so.
What are the four movies that gave you the passion for cinema?
As a child it was Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Tron, but I also loved old black and white movies of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin that were on BBC 2 early on Sunday. I was just an avid viewer of films on TV. I had my heart set on a scientific/engineering career. It was not until much later, post university, and after some years in the oil industry (another story), around 1997 that I got my first real glimpse into how films were made, behind the scenes on Event Horizon, that got me completely hooked. The work and craft and scale that went into every aspect of making a film blew my mind. From then on, I never wanted to leave being part of this crazy industry.
A big thanks for your time.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Cinesite: Dedicated page about KAOS on Cinesite website.
Freefolk: Dedicated page about KAOS on Freefolk website.
Glassworks: Dedicated page about KAOS on Glassworks website.
Viridian FX: Dedicated page about KAOS on Viridian FX website.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2024
