The VFX of ‘Fallout’: shooting on an LED volume on film, crafting one-eyed digital humans, mixing practical and digital, and more

Visual effects supervisor Jay Worth on the extensive visual effects of the Amazon series.

The variety of visual effects work in the Prime Video series Fallout is stunning to think about: creatures, environments, flying vehicles, LED volume work, CG humans, digital make-up effects, and, of course, nuclear explosions.

All up, this first season features 3,352 visual effects shots over eight episodes, overseen by visual effects supervisor and supervising producer Jay Worth, and visual effects producer Andrea Knoll. Incredibly, too, the series was shot on film with anamorphic lenses.

At the recent FMX conference in Stuttgart, Worth broke down the many VFX challenges on the show while discussing his collaboration with showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, and executive producers Jonathan (Jonah) Nolan and Lisa Joy.

Here’s a look at highlights from his talk and highlights of Fallout’s visual effects sequences.

How LED volumes were used on Fallout (and how they were shot on film)

The Los Angeles locations of Fallout were achieved via a combination of shooting in Namibia, Utah, on sound stages and on a purpose-built LED volume wall. This was carried out by MBS and Fuse at the Gold Coast Studios in Bethpage in New York. Magnopus handled the real-time rendered imagery for the LED wall in Unreal Engine and the running of the LED stage.

Worth had already worked with LED tech and virtual production with Nolan previously on Westworld, at a time before their huge growth in popularity owing to The Mandolarian. Now, with Fallout, he had a chance to incorporate more of the game engine developments and understanding about where LED wall scenes could prove most useful. “When you want to work with a real-time rendering and want to have it not be the central part of your season, you have to create a separate and unique pipeline,” observes Worth. “You always have to identify what sets and locations will work well with the technology, and we had a built-in one with the vaults in the farm.”

Those vaults existed as primary sets built at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn. However, for scenes like the wedding, certain angles (generally those looking out to the ‘fake’ horizon outlook) were filmed on the Gold Coast Studios LED stage. Worth says the show’s makers wanted to give the sense that the outlook wasn’t a digital effect for the vault dwellers. “Jonah and Graham and Geneva wanted to lean into the Fallout world of this analog feel, so we went with a Tele-sonic projector with lenticular screen idea, instead of trying to emulate LED technology. It was a real collaboration between the art department, the virtual art department, Magnopus and VFX.”

During the massacre that takes place at the wedding, this film projector is shot, and ends up projecting “a haunting and beautiful image of the film strip burning,” notes Worth.

Much has been made in recent times about how much LED wall imagery is then replaced in final VFX. Fallout relied heavily on the LED ‘in-camera’ footage itself, although things were certainly augmented if need be by VFX (done by Refuge VFX). Says Worth: “We did some cleanup for the lights when they snuck in above the top of the frame, but the material itself that was projected was mostly untouched from a quality and look standpoint. It really worked amazingly well throughout all the different lighting setups, the various angles, and this was extremely effective as a visual tool to help establish our world inside the world of this vault.”

One virtual production set made significant use of LED wall imagery, for the moment Lucy leaves the vault to enter the wasteland. “The design was based on the entrance from Vault 76, the game, and the design was really beautiful,” discusses Worth. “The only thing there was on the day was the elevator, the floor and the bridge, and the vault door. Everything else was the Unreal asset. The coverage in parts was so good that I actually thought they had built more of the sets until a couple of takes where I saw the wall shift. The lighting, the distance, the shape–all of it worked really beautifully with LED technology. The team from Magnopus did a gorgeous job on this to marry the design and technology in really a seamless way.”

A more traditional playback approach, but still on the LED wall, was conducted for vertibird flying sequences. Array plates filmed with a helicopter in Utah and with a drone at the Griffith Observatory. “We also shot the helicopter as a proxy with our drone and used that for all of our vertibird sequences,” says Worth. “Prior to getting on the volume though, we needed to previs some of the basic angles to make sure we were covered in terms of placement for the vertibird in space. We then put some floor panels on the ground to help with interactive lighting and reference, and this was extremely valuable to make sure we maximized our time on the LED stage.”

A vertibird set piece was built atop a motion base gimbal, choreographed by special effects supervisor Devin Maggio, and placed on the LED wall stage. “With the playback footage, it really felt like you were on a roller coaster ride,” marvels Worth. “It made such a difference for the actors, the production team, and it ended up looking great. DOP Stuart Dryburgh also added flickering lights above the LED wall to emulate the sunlight coming through the propellers. This, along with all the reflections, interactive light swaying movement of the wires and the movement of the actors; it really helped capture everything in camera. Sometimes a drone was even flown inside the volume to capture a view of the vertibirds flying across the wasteland.”

An important thing to remember is that Fallout was shot on film. Worth felt that shooting on film lent itself well to shooting on an LED stage, in that it softened the digital projection. But choosing film did require production to do far more testing, advises Worth. “When you shoot film, you don’t have a nice large monitor to review what the camera sees. You have to shoot it, get it developed, wait 24 hours until you get your dailies back, and really hope that it worked the way you wanted it to. So it requires a lot more testing, especially when you want to plan for final pixel shots and you’re not just replacing it all in post.”

The wasteland: remnants of LA

Namibia stood in as a central shooting location for the wasteland of Los Angeles. Production designer Howard Cummings found a number of shooting spots that would serve well for ruins of past LA structures. RISE then took the lead on crafting the post-apocalyptic views. One shot in particular is a fly-over towards what used to be the Santa Monica pier, with the plate a mining facility on the coast of Namibia, as Worth breaks down.

“It was a mining facility right on the coast, and the remnants of this massive glass structure were really unique ruins that were left behind. The wind and sand, it had just slowly eaten away at the whole area. We worked with Howard in the art department on the design, and then the team from RISE took over the execution and the first exposure to this post-apocalyptic LA.”

Another iconic environment shot was for the moment the character Wilzig realizes he can’t make it any further. Initially, this was just going to be an expansive shot showing the desolate wasteland with no structures in it. However, in editorial, there was a desire to add more obvious remnants of Los Angeles landmarks. LAX, in a dilapidated state, was incorporated into the shots, as was the iconic Randy’s doughnut.

“Adding these iconic locations ended up really helping the story greatly in terms of propelling our characters and helping the audience feel like they were along for the journey,” notes Worth. “It really worked perfectly to have our characters walk over the overpass and head towards LA in the distance. But to get the perspective actually ended up being a challenge–the location was so flat, when we put the elements without adding topography and hills, you couldn’t see anything and it just looked weird. It was the team at RISE that executed this beautifully.”

RISE also tackled the nuclear explosions in Los Angeles from the Great War of 2077, the Shady Sands crater, vertibird flying scenes, the Dirigible, and the Griffith Observatory attack sequence, alongside many other crucial moments in the series. For the LA nuclear explosions which are seen from the point of view of the Hollywood Hills, RISE built out sections of the city first based on key landmarks. It produced rough explosions to help with layout, while also working in Houdini to produce detailed blasts. A fun aspect of the explosions is that at first–from a distance–the explosions look more like smoke, before taking on the classic mushroom cloud shape.

Check back soon at befores & afters with a special audio podcast with RISE on their work for Fallout.

Power armor: practical suits and great flying reference

The T-60 Power Armor suits in Fallout existed primarily as practical suits made by Legacy Effects. Of course, some moments, such as a few flying and fight scenes, made use of digital take-overs or augmentations. One was for a moment Titus takes flight in Filly, which came directly from a technology conference Nolan had attended featuring a man in a flying suit. That man was brought in to shoot reference for the flying power armor moment.

“Jonah gets back from seeing this guy flying around, wowing the crowd,” relates Worth. And he says, ‘We need this guy for reference when the power armor flies around Filly.’ So, we bring him on set, throw some power armor boots on, and then he flies around. And we have everything we need for tracking, for correct body movement and position, for the debris and the downwash on the ground, for lighting reference. These shots done by RISE ended up being some of the more straightforward for the season because of all the practical elements we captured on the day.”

Nosapalooza sessions: The Ghoul

Walton Goggins as The Ghoul is a character whose nose is effectively missing; the result of loss of connective tissue from prolonged radiation exposure. A number of methodologies were considered for how to pull this off. Firstly, via make-up effects. Worth says the first make-up tests “looked amazing, but we weren’t really positive on how we wanted to remove his nose. So we ended up doing some training on the sculpt to see if we could do a machine learning approach. It was interesting, but we realized it wouldn’t really give us the flexibility we would need for 500-plus shots in so many varieties of body positions, environments, and lighting conditions.”

Ultimately, that resulted in a more traditional 3D approach, although some reference of the nose sculpt on set was filmed to see how the light interacted with this kind of face shape. The final VFX work was awarded to FutureWorks Media after a range of vendors did tests. “They stepped up to the challenge and delivered these shots flawlessly,” states Worth. “However, they definitely weren’t easy. We would have ‘Nosapalooza’ review sessions, as we called them. We didn’t review them with any other shots. It took lots of seeing the shots in repetition over and over and all the different scenes to make sure that they matched.”

Yao guai: a bear, but more

The bear-like creature, the yao guai, was crafted by Framestore. For the yao guai’s battle with Titus in his battle armor, production filmed a stunt performer in a gray tracking suit, with a bear stuffy head, and wearing platform shoes. On set visual effects supervisor Grant Everett was on hand to supervise the performance.

While a bear was the basis of the design, one aspect Worth mentions is that it was initially ‘too cute’. “Early on, it didn’t capture the kind of mutated head and skin of the game, and we kept needing to push it further and further away from a bear into something new and different,” he says. “We stripped off most of the hair, lengthened the neck, and gave it more of a unique shape. It ended up being closer to the game, actually, with a bear-like body, but a mutated wolf face and ears and neck. We worked a lot with the texture of the skin to give it an irradiated look from being outside in the nuclear environment for years.”

Gulper: so many fingers

Another Framestore creation was the gulper, which at one point attacks Lucy. The creature is a human-amphibian hybrid, and its design was based on several references coming from an axolotl, lamprey, toad and an iguana. One of the distinctive features introduced into the gulper is its mouth. Initially, relates Worth, the texture of the mouth was going to be like a cat’s tongue and would contain some spikes on it. “But midway through post Jonah, Graham, and Geneva get an amazing and horrible idea,” the visual effects supervisor shares. “What if the nubs in the mouth were actually human fingers? This really pushed the creature over the top in terms of a memorable visual.”

For on set interaction with the stunt performers, a large puppet of the gulper was built. This aided also with water interaction and to give the VFX team something to match for look and texture. The puppet was even left in an occasional shot with just some minor digital enhancement to make its pupil dilate.

Find out more about the Gulper and yao guai in issue #18 of befores & afters magazine.

Snip Snip: propmastering

The robot Snip Snip (voiced by Matt Berry), which at one point attempts to harvest Lucy’s organs, began as a practical on set creation delivered by Fallout’s props department. “We shot all of our Snip Snip sequences with a mini crane arm to give Snip Snip the necessary float and movement,” explains Worth. “We ended up using a lot of the production footage in many of the shots and coverage without VFX ever touching them.”

Important Looking Pirates built the digital version of Snip Snip, which often intercut directly with the prop version. The VFX studio sometimes added or augmented the practical version with eyes, the appendages and the thrusters. Notes Worth: “It definitely would’ve been easier on VFX to just always replace it and just use it for reference, but we were able to lean into the methodology, which really I think helped ground the character more effectively.”

Cyclops: selling a one-eyed character

Ben the Cyclops overseer of Vault 4 (played by Chris Parnell) had a very front and center visual effects challenge. He would have one central eye instead of two. Worth immediately realized the difficulty of bringing such a character to life. “The single eye, the single eyebrow, it just doesn’t look natural, to be honest. We had numerous vendors trying a whole collection of methodologies and styles to try and figure out how to capture the performance that Chris Parnell gave and create something that was unique and natural.”

One test, leaning on machine learning, was completed by Pinscreen, featuring footage of Mike Seymour from fxguide. The test proved incredibly interesting, and involved doing an interview and training a set of data. However, it was not the chosen approach. “That felt a little like we had comp’d one eye into his head and it didn’t capture the humor and the natural look we were going for, and it didn’t quite give us the freedom and flexibility we were going to creatively as an approach, so we needed to figure out a different methodology,” says Worth.

The solution was to go with an all-CG head, crafted by Important Looking Pirates. “I had done some digital human work with them for Westworld on a few characters, and we trusted them,” advises Worth. “One of the breakthroughs creatively came when we decided to go with two eyebrows over one. It seems so simple and natural looking at it now, but it really took some digging to get through on that one. Did we connect with this character and the actor’s performance? This was the only goal, and these ended up being some of our favorite shots to review. And, I’ve got to say, we laughed every single time. We are huge fans of the Cyclops.”