How *that* Black Hole scene was done, plus other visual effects in the show.
Season 2 of Gen V once again pushes the boundaries of what a superhero series can look and feel like, unleashing a new barrage of wild, visceral, and often darkly comedic visuals that lean fully into the unpredictable powers of Goldolkin University’s student body.
Leaping off from what audiences had witnessed in The Boys and in season 1 of Gen V, this new season showcases everything from explosive, anatomy-defying transformations to reality-bending psychic assaults. The show’s most outrageous moments hinge on a seamless fusion of practical filmmaking and cutting-edge digital artistry. Behind just about every shocking gag and every superpowered flourish lies an extensive visual effects effort.
befores & afters was able to go behind the scenes of the season with visual effects supervisor Karen Heston. In particular, we explore the miniaturization (and growth) of Emma, the gender shifting powers of Jordan, the blood manipulation abilities of Marie, and, yes, what happens with Black Hole (read at your own peril).
Emma’s adventures with beer pong, and in the toilet
Emma Meyer (aka Little Cricket), who is played by Lizze Broadway, is capable of shrinking down in size. This required a range of scale and miniaturization effects to be achieved. At one point, she is at a party and shrinks down in order to be thrown into beer cups, much like a beer pong game. “It really was a giant red cup they had on set that they built,” remarks Heston. “It had proper water filtration to it, just like you would any other scuba tank shooting.”
Similarly, Emma is shown wandering around on the floor of the party carrying a normal-sized phone (enormous for her). “We had her running around with a giant foam phone that would light up,” says Heston. “There were so many cool props and such an amazing attention to detail from the art department to create interactive pieces for her. We really aimed for, if she’s touching something, we’re going to be building it, we’re going to be making it and then we can augment it in post and do what we need to do.”
The Termite character from The Boys had helped establish some of the tone of a tiny character, and Heston had worked with that show’s visual effects supervisor Stephan Fleet on season 1 Emma shots for Gen V. “One of the hero things that really makes that kind of gag sing are the particulates,” notes Heston. “Particle simulation and little particles that go in and out of focus and hang and bring in that little tiny detail. From there, it really was working closely with Jonny Cliff, our cinematographer, to dial in the right lighting ratio.”
Earlier, Heston had been involved in crafting techvis for the tiny Emma scenes to establish where to place cameras and what angles and lighting would help sell the miniaturization really dialing in the lighting ratio. “Because she is so small, the techvis would show things like, the ceiling of the stage would have to be twice as tall, and it just wasn’t, of course. So then we had to work out, well, what does that (do if we) cut (it) in half? And then what does that do to her shadow? So, when we go into comp, do we need to double up on her shadow or bring it back, and how can we get that lighting to shore up so that for the final, it looks correct to the human eye.”
Later, Emma in Little Cricket form, is flushed through a series of pipes and ends up in a toilet bowl. “We had a whole tank wrapped in black for the pipes,” outlines Heston. “And then we had another tank that was wrapped in white to create the white light of a toilet bowl. We also created a piece of that toilet bowl from the art department, scaled properly and had it connected into the water tank, via the special effects team. Beyond that, there was a lot of wire work involved, too.”
Conversely, Emma is also able to grow in size. For a moment of her in a secret vault room where she grows, production built a set that was built to scale, ie. where the actress could be lying amongst a series of small-scale filing cabinets and books. “All those little books in the background were about the size of my thumb and had little miniaturized hand-written titles on them,” marvels Heston. “The attention to detail was just out of control. Most of it was just practical. There was a little visual effects work done to comp in another character, but there’s a few shots in there where it’s mostly practical.”
“For example,” adds Heston, “Emma hits a tile on the ceiling. In the shot, it’s a little tiny square tile but in real life it would be a big tile. We helped augment that to make sure that that beat really sang so that when she hit the ceiling the tile moved.”
During the season finale fight against Thomas Goldolkin (Ethan Slater), Emma grows larger and manages to kick him across the floor. “For that,” discusses Heston, “we did use some in-camera tricks. We had her being big in front of stage, with her real foot there and shooting as much of that as practically as possible. We would toggle between the two plates that we were planning to shoot. We did end up creating a full CG background for that shot when she gets big because we wanted it to go so fast and the Technocrane could only go so fast to kind of mimic that move. So, we had a plate of reference for it, but we really needed it to be designed in a way that allowed for the VFX to happen as fast as possible.”
Gender shifting Jordan
Jordan Li’s power is to be able to instantly transition between a female and a male form (played by London Thor and Derek Luh). “For season 2,” notes Heston, “we really elevated their powers by having them switch from the female presenting side to the male presenting side on-camera. On season 1, we used a few off-camera tricks here and there and sound effects and edits. It was very rare that they actually did a change in-camera.”
“But this season,” says Heston, “both actors were present and one would do one performance and then we’d swap in the other and they would both do the same take. So, we had those elements to work with and use as need be. We were able to do some fine facial tracking and use the tools to transition between the two. There were some challenges in their different sizes, so we had to do some slight growing and slight shrinking. Sometimes we would create an intermediate VFX comp where we take the female presenting side and the male presenting side, and create this hybrid take, almost like a third character that’s the in-between character, and then we pull from one to the other as we shift between the two characters to make the VFX shot work.”
Heston makes a point of mentioning the impressive performances from Thor and Luh. “Both London and Derek would show up and watch the other’s performance. So, if one of them continues, the other one will often be there and, almost method acting style, watch the other one and own that as part of their character, too.”
Blood as a weapon
Marie Moreau’s (Jaz Sinclair) blood manipulation powers were also ramped up for season 2. While the final results were effectively heavy effects simulations, Heston did try and gather as much reference as possible to inform the finished look. “We have some references that we run around with when we do our ball and chart pass. We also have a grayscale blood dart and tendril and we have a silicone-painted translucent blood prop. So we try and aim for a good color reference and a good grayscale reference to take that with us to post.”
For episode 8’s major battle featuring the blood powers, Marie crafts a massive blood swirl in the room, pulling from the deceased students to create what Heston describes as a “wave of emotion. Jaz worked closely with John Koyama, the supervising stunt coordinator, to devise a performance that really works well with all those fighting beats she does.”
Marie is eventually able to kill Goldolkin by causing his head to explode. That started out with some practical blood elements. “One of the fun things that I really pressed for on season 2 was to have an elements day,” advises Heston.
“For the head explosion, we shot an element. We call them the blood lollipop explosions. We have a big, big bag of blood that we explode. Then we of course have the performance of the actor. For the final shot, we consider, do we see the tongue? Do we see the teeth? Do we see some wiggling stuff happening after the fact?”
Heston mentions that the most fun kind of practical blood explosion she witnessed was for the goat scene in episode 4. Here, Marie is forced to practice her blood powers on the animal. “Our make-up effects designer Colin Penman came up with some organs and a hoof and this and that and gave it to special effects. Then they had it all rigged up with tons of blood. The explosion is primarily a big visual effects beat, but the drop of all the blood raining down is taken over from a special effects shot of an actual bag of blood and goat bits falling down on the floor.”
OK, how did they do the Black Hole shots?
Part of the defeat of Goldolkin is made possible by students being able to hide inside Black Hole (Wyatt Dorion), whose power is to absorb unlimited matter in his anus. They then ‘emerge’ from the character’s rear end. “I would say that that was definitely one of the more crass beats on the show and definitely one of the more shocking moments—am I really doing this?” admits Heston. “I was kind of questioning my career a little bit on the Black Hole character, but alas, it is the show.”
Heston says it took a lot of ‘R&D work’ to devise how the Black Hole beat would look. “It became a lot more CG than we initially devised it to be. The creative team wanted to see more and more of it. We had done a more split-screen approach for another scene where someone comes out on the quad at the college, with a CG butt. We were getting away with creative camera angles and tricks, but then episode 8 came and, well, it turned out we really were showing it.”
The actor Wyatt Dorion’s Instagram page features some behind the scenes images of the work.
“It was a crazy arc of development,” continues Heston. “At one point we said, what if it looks like an actual black hole? What if there’s some light coming out of this? Luckily we dialed that back. It stayed grounded. The show does have crazy visual effects and crazy scenarios in it, but it is grounded, to a degree. Instead, we went for a birthing reference. I said, ‘I’ve got that. I’ve got two kids. I know what birthing looks like. I can do this.’ So we really leaned into an actual person birthing a person and what does that look like, done fast and time-warped fast. I think it worked out in the end. As always, the right call was made.”
