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From apocalyptic landscapes to Walton Goggins' schnozz-hole, Amazon's Fallout series boasts some serious CGI magic — but the line between practical and visual effects might be finer than you'd think...
Transcript
00:00From apocalyptic landscapes to Walton Goggins' schnozzle,
00:04Amazon's Fallout series boasts some serious CGI magic.
00:07But the line between practical and
00:09visual effects might be finer than you'd think.
00:12The first season of Amazon Prime Video's Fallout adaptation
00:15follows several heroes and villains who are
00:17still working to understand their strange world.
00:19Walton Goggins' movie star character, Cooper Howard,
00:21slowly comes to realize that corporate America
00:24is making up an apocalypse to sell back to itself,
00:26while Brotherhood of Steel squire, Maximus,
00:29quickly learns that the powerful men he idolizes as a kid
00:32aren't all they're cracked up to be.
00:34It's vault dweller, Lucy, though,
00:35who gets the biggest reality check,
00:37when she leaves her underground dwelling
00:39to explore a ruthless surface world
00:40with no place for her chipper sense of entitlement.
00:45Okie dokie.
00:48Given these themes, it seems fitting
00:50that it's just as hard to tell what's real and what's not
00:53behind the scenes of Fallout.
00:55As the show's visual effects supervisor,
00:56Jay Wirth, told FX Guide,
00:58we got the footage back after the first day,
01:01and we couldn't tell where the practical set ended
01:03and the virtual one began.
01:05Though the series shot much of its action
01:06in locations such as Utah and Namibia,
01:09much of these settings were enhanced
01:10through the use of massive, immersive LED digital sets,
01:13known as volumes.
01:15First made popular by The Mandalorian,
01:17digital volumes have taken Hollywood
01:19by storm in recent years.
01:21Fallout employed LA-based company, Magnopus,
01:23to make the show's giant digital screens,
01:26which were built during the COVID-19 pandemic
01:28with the help of 37 Magnopus employees,
01:30as well as the show's art and visuals departments.
01:33Unlike other productions
01:34that have used these giant, dynamic 3D sets,
01:37Fallout didn't require a lot of post-production adjustments
01:39to the initial footage.
01:41Walton Goggins recently told IGN,
01:43I thought I was going to be looking
01:44at a green screen for nine months.
01:47It's not.
01:47They built it.
01:48It's all tactile.
01:49It's all tangible, man.
01:51The underground vaults in which Lucy
01:53and the other vault dwellers live
01:54also employs volumes from Magnopus,
01:56but you're actually supposed to notice these ones.
01:59Bright and vibrant shots of cornfields
02:01form the backdrop to Vault 33,
02:03which are clearly meant to evoke the feeling
02:05of a summer's day in Nebraska.
02:07They're uncanny and obvious by design,
02:10unlike the volumes that were used by the film's crew.
02:12And while the sound stages of Fallout
02:14might create impressively realistic backdrops
02:16for the show's post-apocalyptic action,
02:18one bit of CGI is slightly more noticeable,
02:21the ghoul's nose, or lack thereof.
02:23As an irradiated survivor of nuclear bombing
02:26kept in one piece by mysterious vials of liquid,
02:28Goggins' character has a dark hole
02:30in the spot where his schnoz once was.
02:33A recent featurette from Amazon Prime Video
02:35includes a quick shot of Goggins on set,
02:37which reveals that his nose was entirely digitally erased.
02:40Despite the obvious use of CGI on the ghoul,
02:43much of Goggins' look was achieved practically
02:45with the help of a makeup team
02:46led by prosthetic department head Jake Garber.
02:49Garber was nominated for an Oscar
02:51for his work on Star Trek First Contact
02:53and has worked on everything from The Walking Dead
02:55to The Righteous Gemstones.
02:57Jake Garber is one of the best
02:59special effects makeup artists in the world.
03:02Of course, executive producer and longtime Fallout fan
03:04Jonathan Nolan is no stranger
03:06to complex visual and practical effects
03:08after co-creating Westworld.
03:10In the Amazon Prime Video featurette,
03:12he seemed impressed with the level of versatility
03:14to Goggins' prosthetics.
03:16The makeup was thin enough that you could still see
03:19all of the expressiveness of his performance.
03:22Around the time of the show's release,
03:24Goggins also posted a time-lapse
03:25of the makeup process on his Instagram,
03:27a process that originally took around five hours to complete
03:30before Garber and his team whittled it down to about two.
03:34At one point, the makeup actually got a bit too real
03:36for Goggins' own comfort.
03:38As he told IGN, he once took a nap
03:40in front of a mirror in his trailer
03:41while shooting in Namibia and startled himself
03:43when he awoke to see his own face.
03:46Goggins recalled,
03:47"- I was like, oh my God, God damn.
03:49I scared the out of myself is what I'm saying."
03:52Now that's what we call movie magic.

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