Behind the visual effects of the Netflix limited series starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Eric tells the story of a puppeteer named Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) searching for his missing son in 1980s New York City who is aided by an imagined life-size puppet named Eric. The show’s 670 visual effects shots were overseen by production visual effects supervisor Jean-Louis Autret.
Some live-action was filmed in the city, while a significant portion was also captured in Budapest. NVIZ and beloFX were the primary vendors, with visual effects also crafted by Dupe VFX and Anibrain.
Here, Autret shares with befores & afters the process he followed to deliver key environments and other visual effects for the series. He also details the interesting process for realizing 1980s TV screen replacements.
Finally, he discusses the intervening event during post of the main VFX vendor having to close its doors, and how production responded.
Scouting locations and environments
Knowing that visual effects would be required to augment pieces of plate photography to insert a New York City from 1985, Autret joined several early scouts with other heads of department. The first was for the Hudson Sanitation Plant. “I did some research on Google Earth, and found out that the Budapest location we found fit perfectly with an Upper Chelsea area in New York. It was really the same orientation, almost the same measurements. That became the starting point for the orientation of all the neighborhoods we have in the story.”
Autret also walked through the different neighborhoods of NYC that were featured in the scripts, including the Meatpacking District, Wall Street, City Hall and Broadway. “I walked every street I could with my camera, just to get the vibe. It helped me realize that New York is not about skyscrapers everywhere. You have very distinct areas with very distinct buildings. I could see the residential area would be mostly low-rise buildings. You would have midtowns with more high rises, Broadway with probably 30-storey high buildings. And then you would go to Fifth Avenue which has more of the skyscrapers.”
From these scouts, it became clear to Autret that the locations necessary for the story could be filmed in both New York and Budapest, and then added to with CG buildings and extensions. Sometimes an entire background was replaced with a digital New York setting. Some LiDAR scanning and photogrammetry was undertaken, mainly used for tracking reference. Autret worked with production designer Alex Holmes to instill New York with “an organic and messy feeling, because New York was a very messy place at the time.”
Specific scenes: the rooftop and the landfill
In episode five, Vincent and Eric take in a rooftop view of New York City. This moment was filmed in the parking lot of the studio in Budapest, as filming with an entire crew (including the puppeteering crew from Stitches and Glue) was not possible on the actual real New York rooftop. Cumberbatch and the Eric puppet were shot against a greenscreen.
“I only asked for a gray parapet, just to have something generic, and we put the only greenscreen we had left behind that,” says Autret. “We knew it would be some kind of view of New York, but not exactly where it would be. It was a very overcast day, so we played it something like a rising sun. They are standing in the shadow, in the shade of a building, and we planned to throw all the sunlight in the back, to justify the shade on top of them.”
Later, in New York, production filmed a plate on a rooftop. “Here we just replaced a few buildings, like changing the One World Trade Center for the Twin Towers, and a couple of tweaks like this. And then we shot on the actual rooftop we had originally planned for, and it was all stitched together with the sleeping bag on top and all the mess on the ground. So it was basically four different moments, two different continents, and three different locations. The final touch was the animation of the sunrise, done via compositing.”
A wide landfill shot in the final sixth episode features NYPD detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) and Cecile Rochelle (Adepero Oduye), the mother of a murdered child, peering out into a landscape of garbage with the New York skyline in the background. “I had a few images in mind during prep for this scene,” advises Autret. “I drew a landfill behind that, with just the Twin Towers. We decided to go very wide. Essentially it’s all CG, with scattering of garbage bags everywhere on the terrain. The backdrop of New York is a matte painting. The actors were filmed on a greenscreen in Budapest with just some garbage set dressing.”
The art of TV screens
Screen replacements were a completely different kind of visual effects challenge for Autret. They were also a crucial part of the storytelling, since a number of scenes included CCTV footage played back on VHS tapes, sometimes on 1980s-era TVs and sometimes on other monitors, and delivered key information on Ledroit’s investigations.
“For these,” recounts Autret, “instead of trying to find the VHS look in a digital way, we ended up with an idea, we came up with an idea with the DP, Benedict Spence. Everything was shot with an ALEXA in New York. We ran through all the CCTV footage in a Baselight. The Baselight would have an SD output to CRT screens. Then we would have an ALEXA filming that back, and feeding that into a 4K monitor.”
“The producers, directors, and executives would watch that 4K monitor,” continues Autret. “We would then tweak things in the grade or in camera, to make sure the look was appropriate. A week later, we filmed those TVs with all the different qualities, and that became the new footage. Dupe VFX then comp’ed it back into the shots. The point of the process was really to avoid having any circular conversations about the look of analog television at the time. It was a first for everyone, but I think it just paid off in the end.”
‘We bought the server’
During post production on Eric, the initial principal VFX vendor, Nviz, sadly closed its doors. The VFX studio had produced all manner of CG buildings and other assets to populate New York, and had begun on layouts, when they had to shut down. For Autret and the production, it required a fast response to ensure the already built assets could be preserved.
“I think we had 24 hours to get all the assets,” recalls Autret. “So, we bought the server. We were the only clients left in the facility so it was fairly easy to buy the server. We bought the actual device, and we took it out of the building, secured it in our office, which was luckily only a couple of blocks away in London.”
At that point, Autret then began the process of bringing on a new main vendor. That became beloFX. “They plugged the server in at the beginning of January 2024, and we also secured the services of William Foulser and Tamar Chatterjee, who had been at NVIZ, to work through the files. Basically, the entire pipeline from NVIZ was brought to beloFX. NVIZ had done a great job as our partner, and beloFX did a great job, too. It was amazing we were able to turnaround like that.”
VFX team
Jean-Louis Autret, VFX supervisor
Pete Oldham, VFX Producer – Post Supervisor
Nicola Brennan, VFX Production Manager
Nikoleta Wood, VFX Coordinator
Tamàs Udvardi, On-set VFX Supervisor
Nate Crowley, VFX Unit Producer (NY)
