How ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ used virtual production to plan a train station scene

…and how it also used a truck stuffie to run over Elizabeth Moss!

This week on the befores & afters podcast, we’re talking The Handmaid’s Tale with visual effects producer Stephen Lebed and visual effects supervisor Brendan Taylor, who hails from Mavericks VFX.

For season 5 of the Hulu series, the visual effects team had several challenges, and here we talk about the planning and execution that went into a couple of major scenes.

One is the mass exodus from a train station, which involved some early Lidar scanning and virtual production Unreal Engine-driven virtual camera previs used to help work out how many real extras were needed on set.

There’s also a funny story the guys tell about painting out a crew member and even adding someone into a train–I won’t spoil that here.

We also talk about a stunt orchestrated on set involving rolling over lead action Elizabeth Moss with a truck stuffie, yes, a truck stuffie. It’s also a really fun story you should tune in for.

Listen to the podcast below, and also see an official Hulu behind the scenes video here.

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