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[00:00:00] Jeremy Hindle: we can't use artificial anything because we want to use real goats. Do we not want to do the goats. Because anything artificial, no goats.

Intro

[00:00:11] Rob Bredow: Welcome to the Lighter Darker Podcast, where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. Thank you for joining us for this episode. This is episode 19, 19 of 20, planned for season one, and we release every other Tuesday. Uh. We're coming to you on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever your favorite podcast service is,

I'm Rob Bredow, SVP of Creative Innovation at Lucasfilm, and my co-host Todd,

[00:00:38] Todd Vaziri: I am Todd Vaziri, compositing supervisor and artist at ILM.

[00:00:43] Rob Bredow: and always our producer, Jenny Ely.

[00:00:45] Jenny Ely: Hi, I am Jenny. I'm a production manager at ILM.

[00:00:49] Rob Bredow: And today we have with us two very special guests to talk about the show Severance. Uh, first the production designer Jeremy Hindel. Jeremy was a production designer for, uh, things other than [00:01:00] severance as well. Top Gun Maverick, the critically acclaimed and award-winning Zero Dark Thirty, a favorite of mine. He's been nominated for several awards, uh, for his work on Severance and won the Excellence in Production Design Award from the Art Directors Guild for the series. Welcome to the show Jeremy. Thanks for joining us

[00:01:17] Jeremy Hindle: Hello. Thanks very much.

[00:01:19] Rob Bredow: and Eric Levin. Eric is a primetime award nominated visual effects supervisor who recently oversaw the visual effects work on the second season of the series Severance, we're gonna, as you can tell, we're gonna talk about Severance today. He was also the production visual effects supervisor on Marvel's, the Falcon and Winter Soldier, and on Cloverfield, for which he received the Emmy Award nomination for outstanding special visual effects on that show. Welcome, Eric.

[00:01:44] Eric Leven: Hello. It's a real pleasure to be here.

[00:01:46] Rob Bredow: And today's show is pretty simple 'cause we wanna spend a lot of time talking about the visual feast that is Severance and all the craft and design that goes into that show.

Rejection Letters

[00:01:55] Rob Bredow: But first we're gonna start with a favorite feature called rejection letters. [00:02:00] And this is our opportunity to dive into these origin stories, the getting started, and the the times where doors get slammed in your face and then you turn around and another opportunity presents itself that, that, eh, we've found over the years that the, or over the episodes of the show, that the new opportunities tend to be the best ones. So I don't know if you wanna get us started, Eric, with a, a rejection letter or a, a getting started story of your own.

[00:02:24] Eric Leven: Yeah. well, I always knew I wanted to work in visual effects and, uh, my first job outta college was at a, uh, small commercial house in Philadelphia, um, doing flying logos and things like that. But I was constantly trying to, to move out to California and get a job in visual effects. And I, you know, I had, I had applied to several places and got several, uh, rejection letters.

And when I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles, he was out at work and I had nothing to do during the day. And I literally went through the yellow pages, if you guys can remember the yellow pages, and I cold called every visual [00:03:00] effects company that was listed in there. And most of them could not help me.

And I was talking to a receptionist and I was just, Hey, I'm, my name's Eric and I really wanna work in visual effects. What do I do? And they said, I'm, I'm sorry. I don't know how to help you. And then one woman at Boss Films um, spoke to me. She was really, really nice. I believe she was the production manager of the computer graphics department.

[00:03:22] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:03:22] Eric Leven: And, um, and we spoke for a long time. She told me how things work and what visual effects is like. And, and she, at the end of the conversation, she said, you know, you should really call this company up in Berkeley because they're hiring right now. And so that company was Tippett Studio. They were hiring for Starship Troopers.

I sent my reel and resume up to them, and then I did that thing they teach you to do in college, which is that little follow up. Say, Hey, my name's Eric. I wanna make sure you got my material. And they said, yeah, yeah. We're looking at, we're looking at how did you get our, uh, how'd you know we were hiring?

And I said, oh, I was talking to Michelle at Boss Films and she said, you know, Michelle at Boss Films, we'll put your resume right on top. Yeah. And [00:04:00] that was, and then what was funny was just this last week, I had only known this woman as Michelle from Boss Films for decades. Just this last week I was talking to Scott Ross at a visual effects conference in Germany, and Scott was like, oh, that was Michelle Murdocca.

And I'm like, I gotta find Michelle Murdocca I gotta find her and thank her. And then I didn't realize that Michelle is now like a super duper top of the line fancy pants producer.

[00:04:23] Rob Bredow: Absolutely. I worked with Michelle for years at Sony Pictures. Uh, she produced a bunch of the animated shows there, so, uh, if you're not already in touch, I'll make sure to get you in touch with Michelle.

[00:04:32] Eric Leven: I, I would love to thank her because I mean, it, there are, there are many ways, many people that helped along the way, but Michelle was definitely a part of my journey.

[00:04:39] Rob Bredow: Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you Eric, for sharing that. Jeremy, do you have an origin story, a rejection letter story that got you off the ground or, uh, earlier in your career?

[00:04:48] Jeremy Hindle: You know what? I was just laughing 'cause I don't, I can't think of earlier ones. I, I, I do want to share the one I just mentioned. 'cause what I think is funny is having one way later in life actually makes, is for me more potent.

[00:04:59] Rob Bredow: [00:05:00] Yes.

[00:05:00] Jeremy Hindle: 'cause I do probably have a million rejection ones. I just, I'm really good at just rejecting them myself. I put them away. I just, they're gone. They're not,

[00:05:07] Rob Bredow: You compartmentalize those? Yes.

[00:05:10] Jeremy Hindle: just, I trashed them. I just, I dump, but it was, I did do this call with Damien Chazelle for Babylon for hours and we talked and talked and it was during Covid, so we zoomed it must've been hours.

And I was like, it was really fun. And it was period. And it was just how we dove into it. I thought, this is amazing. I really want to do it. And it was really funny. The next day he called me and he said, you know, I'm really, gonna go a different way. I, I, I might, I, I don't know why I'm making this decision, but I'm gonna go with somebody else. And it was really, it was, was interesting because, I mean, it's always their right. It's their decision. It's,

[00:05:44] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:05:45] Jeremy Hindle: think it's the right, it's always the right decision if, for whatever the reason is. But for me, it wasn't, you know, I've done so many interviews where, you know, instantly you don't even really want to do this.

You're not, you don't want to engage with this person. You're gonna, it's not gonna happen. But it was interesting 'cause we really connected, like emotionally. [00:06:00] And I could really see it. And I thought, Hmm, this is kind of, this is gonna happen. And it never did. And to me that's happened still today.

That's only a couple years ago.

[00:06:08] Todd Vaziri: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:09] Rob Bredow: Yeah. And a beautiful looking show in the end, for sure on Babylon.

[00:06:13] Jeremy Hindle: Well it's funny, so my buddy Linus was shooting it and we really wanted to work together and we were really excited and I thought, this could be amazing. And it was really, I just, I really saw in a, you know, in my way and it would've been, but it's, it was more just, it really, it is always a reminder every day that you just have to be positive and keep going ahead. not everything, it's not personal at all. It's just Everyone makes, and I do it, you know, I hire people and I don't hire people. It's all, it works for everyone. You just have to move on.

[00:06:43] Rob Bredow: Yeah, you have to keep moving forward. And I don't know how the timing would've worked out, but I'm certainly grateful that it worked out that you got to design on Severance.

Severance

[00:06:52] Rob Bredow: Um, I brought my, for those watching on YouTube, I brought my Lumen mug to celebrate the fact that we're going to have a whole episode [00:07:00] dedicated to the visual feast that is this show.

[00:07:02] Jeremy Hindle: You know it's funny seeing that logo. 'Cause I was at Config or last week and Lululemon are making, they've made, they've made a Lulu Lem, Lulu, Lulu Lumen logo.

[00:07:11] Rob Bredow: oh,

[00:07:11] Jeremy Hindle: making their own, like literally these companies are making their own logos based on Severance. It's just spiraling. It's really funny.

[00:07:19] Rob Bredow: It's such a, I mean, I think the specificity of the design is such an important part of the show and clearly you're driving that. Um, I would love to just talk about the, how that tone got set originally. Um, how, when you got involved in the, the show, I know it had a very, I understand it had a very specific tone on, on the page, but that's still a long ways from the visual style that you ended up developing.

Would love to just hear a little bit about that specificity.

[00:07:44] Jeremy Hindle: for me it didn't have any tone at all. It really, it read like the office, it read like Parks and Rec. It read like the Office. I. It was budgeted to be shot on location. It read like to me exactly like one of the shows, but bizarre a [00:08:00] lot stranger like the tone I would say maybe was in the, the concept, but tonally for me it was, wasn't there and I didn't want to do it at all.

I read it and I was like, I don't want to do this at all, and what would I do? Like it's just an office that seems so boring. And then I talked to Ben and for a while and, and I kind of started to get this idea. I thought, you know what if I just, I'd never done it this way, I'm like, Ben, what?

I didn't know him. And I said, what if I just give me two days? He was coming to LA anyways. He said, gimme two days. If I come up with a look that I am really happy with in two days, I'll show it to you and then let's meet and talk about it. And if not, whatever, it's like because there, there was nothing there for me to do.

So if I could create it, that'd be interesting. So I put this look book together and it started with William H Macy from Fargo in the snow. That high angle shot looking down in the parking

[00:08:50] Rob Bredow: Uh.

[00:08:51] Jeremy Hindle: And I was like, this is Severance. This is everything outside. Should always be cold, emotionally cold, vacant, not [00:09:00] happy.

He should always be tiny in the frame outside. Like that was the, that was the opening shot in my book. And then it just went through a few more images like that. And then big buildings, it was all about people being little outside. And then inside I just, I already instantly ran into the John Deere building, which was kind of my favorite idea for like stylistically what the show would look like.

'cause I thought if this is and it's, they've been, they've been birthed into the birthplace and they're going to just work in the office. Should be, should like, it should be like the sixties when offices were and there's no human resources yet. So you have one pen, you have a Rolodex, you have a phone, you just work. You don't, and you work eight hours. You're not, Hey, guess what guys? Let's do 16 hour days of bring your family to work. Some plants, some pictures. And I was like, let's go back to if they're just working. It's just work. And I pitched Ben that book and he, I was like, I will do it if, if it's this. And he was like, let's do it. And it was like that.

[00:09:58] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:09:58] Jeremy Hindle: who met Jessica, who [00:10:00] I hadn't, didn't know at all. And then she

had her

[00:10:02] Rob Bredow: Jessica was the dp, right? Yeah.

[00:10:03] Jeremy Hindle: Yeah, Jessica Lee Gagne. And she, she had her references were Lynn Cohen and how she would shoot the show. And they kind of instantly, we just, we were like, all all three of us were like, wow, it just merged.

[00:10:15] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:10:15] Jeremy Hindle: And then we just kind of went for it. And then obviously we hit, there's the budget thing right away because it was budgeted for a location show. And I was like, man, we have to build everything, everything underground, everything has to be manufactured by them. Everything has to be artificial tweaked. If, if anyone ever one of the Outies got up top and could remember something, they explained, oh, we have this computer and it's amazing.

It's got our track ball and it's, it's got a, I even made the touch, the touchscreens and it, you know, there's no escape. Like it had all these crazy tropes. that would make no sense when you're in the outside world. So I'm like, but we need to make everything. And that was already the biggest bomb because then it was like, okay, you just added snow to the entire show forever, that's not here forever, [00:11:00] which we'll get into talking about. And then there's the whole, just like the world needed to be fictional in a way that it was super attractive, that kind of like the offices people, you know, people dressed amazing. The styling was amazing and it just gave us something more interesting to do with a show.

And Jess said the same thing. We just wanted to play. And I referenced Playtime to Ben too, the film Playtime, which I'm really, I hope you guys plug it. I hope everybody does. 'cause Jacques Tati obviously went pretty much bankrupt making it, but it is one of the most mindblowing pieces of cinema

[00:11:31] Todd Vaziri: Yeah.

[00:11:31] Jeremy Hindle: you just leave the planet. Like you're watching this thing that's 2D, 3D, and it's just playful. And I was like. It's just, then we just have to play like we're playing and we all just did it and we fought and we laughed, and we had, there's no egos involved. And it then it was like, okay, who are the right people to make this with?

And then it was like bring in those pe everyone in and getting the most particular people. And then there's the hardest part, which is policing the show. policing design is so hard because [00:12:00] everybody wants to go fast and cheap and all those things that people are doing right now is not what this show is. And it's, we, we are meticulous. We don't shoot if it's not perfect, if it's not. We're so detail oriented and that, and it's,we had to train everyone in what that means. And I don't mean just the crew, I mean studios, producers, visual effects, like when, from beginning to end, we're all in it together all the way through and everyone has a voice. Um, and I, I don't know, we're on We finished that season two.

[00:12:30] Rob Bredow: It

[00:12:30] Jeremy Hindle: worked.

[00:12:31] Rob Bredow: It works. That's for sure. There's so much to dig into. Todd, you were, you were saying to me before we started the show that the way you pitched the show was a cross between several things. Jeremy was just referencing,

[00:12:41] Todd Vaziri: Right. I mean, there's always that moment when people watch the first episode of Severance and they're like, I, and, and somebody asks you, who hasn't seen it? Well, what's a show about? And you're like, I can't, how do you describe this show? And I was I was trying to at least stylistically to describe it somebody, that's like, well, what if you took a Mike Judge's Office Space, [00:13:00] and, but it was designed by Ken Adam in a Stanley Kubrick esque era,

[00:13:05] Jeremy Hindle: That's it.

[00:13:07] Todd Vaziri: it's, it's so mind-boggling. The, the way the story influences the design. And in hearing what you just said about the lookbook that you came up with and how. You made it compliment the, the themes and the story and the design is driving the storytelling and the storytelling is driving the design.

I love hearing that. That is so wonderful.

[00:13:29] Jeremy Hindle: I mean, for me it's, it's ultimately like when you read like, and that's what Dan is the best at, the writer, the creator. You get a word like mammalians and you get to make what that is. Just that word is amazing and every time I read it. it takes my brain to a place that's so bizarre my whole role as a designer I think is to infer things like I want to infer emotional responses during all of what that pro, you know, creating as many things for actors to do that they feel really real in the moment, like. Like Dario, the, the big Icelandic beast [00:14:00] in our in, up in season two. Like, he'd always walk in, he's like, Jeremy, it's amazing. Like, I feel so bad we're not gonna see some of this. I'm like, oh no, we will in your face,

[00:14:09] Eric Leven: Hmm.

[00:14:09] Jeremy Hindle: see it. We, we will know this will be, it's not for me. It's not for the audience, it's for you. we create these environments that even though they're absurd, like the break room, but it's so believable and it's kind of scary and emotional and you want to be there, and it's all those things that, as a designer, that I, that's what I want to create. It's not, it's like a, it's almost sometimes counter to the dialogue. Like, what's a way that you can really, you know, you're spinning, you're, you're building a web around everyone and that's kind of, it's just fun and I love it. It's fun to do.

[00:14:39] Eric Leven: People are always asking me this question. Uh, because we are often, uh, filling in digital versions of, you know, set extensions and things like that. People are always asking me why? Well, A, they, they wanna know generally, what is the timeframe of this show? Because there's a lot of anachronistic stuff, but, but specifically, why the eighties cars?

Where does that come from? I wonder of if you had a hand [00:15:00] in that.

[00:15:00] Jeremy Hindle: is really easy. The White rabbit was my first car when I was 18. I had an 80 82 GTI White, it's the same car. The Volvo was my other favorite car. The two-door Boxy Cherokee is my other favorite

[00:15:12] Rob Bredow: Oh, these cars are so great.

[00:15:14] Jeremy Hindle: for me, the design of the show is literally all my favorite things.

[00:15:18] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:15:18] Rob Bredow: That's incredible.

[00:15:19] Jeremy Hindle: because, but there are also a lot of people's people that are into detour realms are still, that's their favorite car. You start to realize that shapes and styles, like the Scirocco I wanted, I still want that car. And it's all those things are, they're things that I find kind of emotive and emotion to people. Certain people, and those are the people I'm talking to, they know what that feels like. They know like, oh, that's, that's interesting. Like it's just, and I also, the key was the cars was, and that's from, I've noticed that in Fargo too. Like what if I put in period cars? Is that there? We should never have any idea on the outside world where we are.

I mean, I don't know what, other than the cell phones, which I wish we didn't have to have

[00:15:59] Rob Bredow: [00:16:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:16:00] Jeremy Hindle: there's nothing that gives the time away. Everything is a little bit like, are we in Poland? Where are we? Are we like, we don't know where we are. The train station, it's all about creating a world that it's not. It's fictitious. It's like, you know, it's based on Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks was the thing that has always made my head explode. And it's the same thing. It's like if you watch Twin Peaks, they barely even show Twin Peaks, but you know it from your own building up in your own head. And I find it's like we do all our work and then the audience does their own work and then they make it theirs and it turns, it's just the more you gift them, the more they gift themselves and gift back to you.

And it starts to, you know, and it lasts for years too. It's not just like a, a moment and you know, it's, I find Severance work, you gotta watch it a few times and that's what's, to me, that's the value in what we do is getting people to watch it multiple times to. Really put the effort into the show and, and feel something like, how do they really feel after watching this?

And what did it teach them or what that process is very interesting to me that we spend all this [00:17:00] time and it's not really just entertainment, it's all, it's all sorts of things. And if we can make that many people happy, sad, and, and just like, you know, I was speaking to Config last week.

I spoke to 10,000 people in a room at Moscone. All designers from, whether they're, corporate design or, um, digital design. It was just people who really get design. And I was like, was really in awe. I stood up on stage. I didn't know what the event was. I was just asked to come speak.

I did it. But when I saw this audience of 10,000 people who are just that particular and want to talk about particular, It's so fun. Like. And actually the one thing, and Eric, honestly, the best thing for me about VFX, which is why I love this show and why when I met Eric and why we wanted ILM, was that it's like the same thing.

We're looking for the best, most particular piece of work and this, and as Eric knows, the simplest ones are the hardest. They're really hard. The ceiling in Mammalians was, I would say is probably the hardest [00:18:00] thing we did on this show. And it is, it, it is, it's, it's so hard because it's just, when you have the, when people have so much time to look around, there's no dressing, we're not hiding it.

There's nothing to hide flaws we're on. So it's really having the same mindset where people want to go down that rabbit hole and it's 'cause it can be frustrating how many, you know, there's iterations that we do. A lot of iterations. And the nice thing is we, we enjoy that process because when you, when you know, we all we all know. Eric, like all of us together at the same time, go, oh, that's it.

Like, it's when we all connect, you know, it's done.

[00:18:35] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:18:36] Jeremy Hindle: we all connect, it's just not done. And it's usually Eric, Ben, Jess, me, Jeff Richmond. That's it. It's like, and that's, um, you know, the, the team isn't really the, is the key.

[00:18:49] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:18:49] Todd Vaziri: can I ask about, like, the lifecycle, about, uh, like a specific set, particularly in on, in Lumon, like, how you and Jessica and Eric [00:19:00] collaborate on how to build a set that needs to be claustrophobic. It needs to go on for infinity. That we need to be able to see the ceilings. How do you collaborate, uh, with how to, how to deal with wild, wild walls and deal with the onset lighting, the practical lighting.

How, how does that, you know, manifest itself into a final product? What is the, what is the process?

[00:19:23] Jeremy Hindle: me, the cool thing, and you know, since we've really gone digital, I think, and since all lighting has all changed so much in the last five years, it's like seven, eight, like all the, you know, everything's on a board now. Like all the lighting is real lighting. Like, I've never done more lighting in my life, in my, you know, now it's all practical. Everything's a practical, you know, this show when we, when I said we're gonna build all hard ceilings, they were like, it's a TV show. Nobody. What? What do you mean? Like, well, we're gonna see them all. I want them to be really low. But also Jess wanted to light them like, you have to, they have to be real. You have to have zero limitations.

So we kind of just dictate it, like, we're like, here's the set. We're gonna build it. [00:20:00] you, when you start to bump into things, like we can't get that shot, that set's got another set on the back of it. Like the stages start to get really, like we're crammed. I build right to the fire lanes. So it's, first, what's the set look like? And then how we achieve it is kind of in the process of what's the next phase. And like, you know, season two, Ben threw this curve ball to Eric and I really early on that we'd never heard. He's like, you know, really like him to run as fast as possible through the hallways for two minutes. And we were like, uh oh, and it's not you.

And people say to me, how did you do that? I'm like, well, it's not really me, it's Eric and Jess. For me, I designed how I like it. We all, you know, get to the point where it's shootable and then it's like, okay, Ben likes to do those. Once he kind of sees the set, then it really goes. For him. And he's like, when you start running and then it's like, it's Eric and my art directors and Jess, they all start to really collaborate on how to deconstruct them, how to put them [00:21:00] together. it's really, it's, it's that whole team, like these guys, it's, it's kind of becomes Eric's baby all, you know, more than mine at that point.

[00:21:06] Eric Leven: Well, I will say also the The first time I went on set and saw the Lumon white hallways, they have such a specific look on camera. And then I got there. I'm like, this is just painted drywall

[00:21:19] Jeremy Hindle: Yeah. And, And,it's beige, very beige.

[00:21:22] Eric Leven: but it is so specific and it just, and the way that it resolves it, like it, and, and it really does come down to the details in the sense that, you know, to make a CG version of these hallways is everything is so particular and everything has to match just so,

[00:21:36] Jeremy Hindle: Yeah.

[00:21:36] Eric Leven: because it is such a specific look. It was a really interesting, like you say, it was, it was one of the hardest things because it is so, so simplistic.

[00:21:42] Jeremy Hindle: honestly, when we picked the color, this was in season one when we were doing camera tests for MDR in the hallways, I tested 25 whites. We're doing a camera test. We built up a, third version of the MDR, the ceiling, the walls, and it had 25 different whites. And Ben was like, this is, they're whites, like [00:22:00] 25.

I'm like, you'll see. I, I watch. Let's just do it. We all went to the grading after we shot them. Jess me, like 20 people in the grading. Two were good. One was amazing. 23 were like, what the f*** is that? It was, they were not good. And it's like, that is what you have to do. And that, and then, and as soon as everybody saw that, it really set the tone for the whole show.

Like, oh, wow. we test everything

[00:22:26] Rob Bredow: literally the level of specificity needed.

[00:22:29] Jeremy Hindle: and it's not just camera tests, it's like. You guys, you know, the effects are doing tons of tests for us up to that point. And then camera test, and then we go back to like, it's, it's almost like we're discovering everything together. not, we don't know it all.we just know that It has to be perfect. And to do that you have to test everything.

[00:22:48] Rob Bredow: So Eric, we've been kind of hinting around visual effects on this show. It doesn't feel like a big visual effects show, which I think is the absolute goal of a, of a show like this. And Jeremy was [00:23:00] talking about the specificity of the design and where you're filling things in, you know, is the opening shot of 201 a good place to start when you're thinking about making seamless visual effects and those kind of dynamic cameras moves, running down long hallways that probably aren't quite as long as they appear like. Can you just describe a little bit about what goes into making that as seamless as possible?

[00:23:20] Eric Leven: Yeah, so that's actually where ILM was first brought on was to help realize this two minute oner that Ben wanted to shoot and he wanted to mirror the, sort of the opening of the season one when, um, Mark is casually strolling down these endless hallways, and this is just sort of his way to work. The opening of season two, his, his Ben's big thought was, okay, we're gonna do similar thing, but this time he's gonna be running panicked because we've just found out about his wife. And so there's gotta be a certain tone and, and yeah, the, you know what's funny is that the. There were two stages of hallways. It's, there are massive, massive sets of hallways, and yet they're still, they're never big enough.

[00:23:55] Jeremy Hindle: Hmm.

[00:23:56] Eric Leven: Um, so part of it is that they're not big enough for, [00:24:00] for Mark to really just run all the places for two minutes that Ben wants him to run.

And then part of it is that Ben really had some interesting camera ideas, um, about how he wanted to shoot it. So the, one of the first things we saw was the test that Ben shot with Jess in the elevator, the separate elevator, which is surprisingly narrow. It's really, it's almost just to your shoulders.

And he wanted to do this bit where the camera goes 540 degrees around Mark's head and then pushes with him out of the elevator and then does these really interesting quick moves around the elevator lobby, and then moves with him down the hallways. That's where he wanted to start. That was gonna be 20 seconds of this two minute shot.

Um, and then Ben wanted us to explore just, you know, well, where's, what's the path he's gonna run and what are some interesting camera angles that he's gonna do along that run? So we actually started with a, we pre-vis the whole sequence, which I think was, was a first for Severance. Um, you know, and again, I can see the, the moneymen thinking like, this is supposed to be set on a set in an office interiors, it's so simple.

But, so we, [00:25:00] we went through rounds and rounds of previews with The Third Floor, and they did a really interesting job. And, and the, the, the mandate was just do some interesting cameras, just do some, what are some interesting ways to see this guy run? And we tried all kinds of different things and the, the goal was to just make something that looked interesting, forget about how we would actually do it, what's some interesting ways to do it.

So, uh, once we had something that looked interesting, then we set about trying to figure out, okay, how can we actually do this? So some of the cameras. You know, we are, we're pushing with Mark and then we're orbiting around him 180 degrees. So even if we could figure out how to do that on set, even if we could figure out, you know, how to get a track and a dolly to do all this stuff, there's just no room to literally fit the camera there.

So we started pulling the sequence apart and figuring out, okay, well, you know, how would we do this part? How would we do that part? We know that Ben likes to shoot as much practically as possible. and so yeah, we just sort of went about trying to figure out all the different ways of doing each little section.

Then we had to [00:26:00] figure out how to stitch all the sections together. And it was really important to Ben and, and to others to make sure that we weren't doing the standard stitch where, you know, we would wipe, we we'd cut to the white wall and then everything would wipe, and we suddenly weren't, you know, Ben really, audiences are much more sophisticated than they were before, so we wanted to make sure that that wasn't obvious.

So there are scenes and you can go back, you can watch it where. Adam is running around a corner, for example, and instead of just using the corner of the wall as a white point, we left Mark's foot in the frame as much as possible. Sometimes even going in and painting his foot back in frame by frame so that if you watch it, he never really leaves frame.

And you're, your brain is sort of thinking, oh, how did they do that? Because he's there, I can see his foot. And so our goal, uh, was for the, for the stitches anyway. if you do some stuff that's real, that's practical on location, some of the stuff had to be on a green screen stage. Um, some of it was on a stage, but we took one of the walls totally out and we used a robot [00:27:00] camera. If you try all these different methods, eventually your, I think your brain kind of gives up and you're like, well, it must all be real because it's just happening in front of my eyes.

[00:27:07] Jeremy Hindle: treadmill too, or did I? Am I crazy?

[00:27:09] Eric Leven: so, there was one bit where we had to push with Mark and orbit around him 180 degrees, and there was just no way to get that practically.

And the easiest thing, or the thing that made most sense to do was to put him in a complete green screen stage. He was running on a treadmill while the camera moved around him, and then we built an entire CG hallway that had to a hundred percent match the practical hallway. That happened two seconds ago that we did run through the hallways with.

So it was a really, really interesting challenge and it was really, really exciting to watch the team get to, to do it. And it was really fun.

[00:27:40] Jeremy Hindle: it was a great way to start. 'cause what was cool for me was, Eric, do you remember when we first met, we first talked the very first time what? I said

[00:27:47] Eric Leven: No.

[00:27:48] Jeremy Hindle: it was you and the producer. Right? And it was, it was, and I was like, you know, it's gonna be the most thankless job. It has to be. No one can know that you did anything. Not that we won't talk about [00:28:00] it. I'm not, I don't believe in that kind of like, oh, it just happened. Like I, I hate that. But I, what I wanted was that whatever's in my head has to happen and it's, every tool is imaginable. I have an amazing cinematographer. We have Jeff, the editor, I have my amazing supervising art directors, props set dec, Eric. It's like you have this core team that we are all on the same page. And it was, it's, and it's just how do we make it look like it's no one should know. And, And that's that's the goal, and it's gonna be so simple that you're. gonna be like. But it's, to me, and I, that's why I wanted ILM so bad. I'm like mammalians in my head. I knew what it was gonna be and I hadn't told anybody how big I wanted it to be. And I'm like, I knew if we didn't have them, I would never have done that set in a million years. I would've aborted.

[00:28:47] Eric Leven: This was the first show I've been on in my whole career that is nothing but invisible effects.

[00:28:52] Jeremy Hindle: Yeah.

[00:28:52] Eric Leven: Um, usually there's something that, you know, no matter how good you make your effect look. You know, that we didn't really shoot in a space station [00:29:00] or whatever, you know?

[00:29:00] Jeremy Hindle: No, and it's, and literally, we touch every frame. It's not like, were, it's every frame has some sort of enhancement, erasure, anything like it's, that's the tool. It should be.

That's how I believe the tool should be in the same way as anything else.

[00:29:16] Eric Leven: For people who don't know, this show has thousands of visual effects shots. Thousands.

[00:29:21] Rob Bredow: Which is like comparable to something like the Mandalorian in terms of just shot count, something very visual effects heavy that you, you can always know where the visual, like you see where the visual effects are. You feel them. This is a lot of subtle work. I think you described half of em were relatively small. You know, you're painting something out, you're enhancing something. Here, they're just decorations, minor tweaks. But some of them, like I've seen them before afters and it's shocking. Like I didn't even realize that you stitched in a green screen surround for that moment of the running on the treadmill.

That's really tricky to do. Requires incredibly close collaboration with the DP to make sure that lighting on him out of a white environment into a green screen environment [00:30:00] can work. I remember seeing, I think you showed me Eric, um. Or maybe I saw it on A BTS where they had the big robot swinging around.

It was gonna be Adam's face, I think it was your face in there on the first test. You stood in the middle and the, the robot gets relatively close and is whipping around very, very fast nearby. And I like, they cut to Adam and he's like, he kind of gives like a little bit of an eyebrow raise when he sees what, how fast the robot's moving.

[00:30:21] Eric Leven: Yeah, we should talk about that. That's a really funny bit. So the, the interesting, the, the very first shot where the camera is going around Mark in 400 of 540 degrees and then pushing out, um, Jess was actually the one who wanted to use, she wanted to use this bolt motion control camera. 'cause it's, it's possible to make these very, very quick, precise moves and severance if nothing else is all about, uh, precise stuff.

so we were testing this bolt and the only way to go around somebody. Like this 540 degrees over their head is to have this arm that, that literally reaches over their head. And this robot, you know, it's not gonna stop once you program the move [00:31:00] and it if it's gonna conk ya in the head. So anyway, we were, we had pre-vis and we had tech vis'd it to see like, well, we're gonna be about this far away from the actor's face.

And we went to a motion control house that had one of these bolt cameras and there are two kinds of bolts. This one is the smaller bolt. And he said, you know, I don't have the bigger bolt arm and you're gonna need the bigger bolt arm to get really a little more distance. But even if I did have it, I would not do this shot because you don't want your number one actor to get clonked in the head.

So then we went to, uh, the Garage, which is a motion control company in New York that had the bolt x, the larger camera, and he said, yeah, I'll try it. And that's, that's how we did it. So we were very precise. We went through rounds of techvis and then testing stunt performers were standing in for Mark and then, you know, half speed, quarter speed.

And yeah, Adam was watching, uh, just, Hey, this is what's gonna happen, Adam, this, this giant robot's gonna swing around your head really fast. And he was sort of like, whoa, okay,

[00:31:55] Jeremy Hindle: and kudos to him. He's amazing at it. Like he really, he, I don't [00:32:00] think many people could do what he did. Maybe Tom Cruise, like there's, there he really was at one with it. And it's, those things are terrifying. They're so fast. And he was, I thought, I thought he was dancing with it. I think Adam deserves a lot of credit for being able to, I just don't think most people would do it. They wouldn't do it.

[00:32:16] Eric Leven: Not only was he able to stand there while this thing was moving around his head, but he was able to act

[00:32:21] Jeremy Hindle: And he's acting and he's playing at the speed of that. He's like, he know, he got it. Like he really. I, I thought it was a very, he was doing special kung fu stuff. I don't know how he does it. I, I would not have been able to engage like that.

[00:32:33] Eric Leven: So I'll tell you, I'll tell you another story. So here's a secret visual effects trick. so after the camera moves around his head and moves down the track out into the lobby, we now wanna move with him through the hallways. And so the bolt camera is obviously stuck on this track. It can't get off the track.

we had two cameras. We had the bolt that would basically pan, sort of whip pan with Adam as he left the lobby. And we had a second camera, smaller camera that was on a little gimbal, on a pogo [00:33:00] stick, a little stick that a, camera operator would run and that was able to move through the halls. And we filmed Adam twice, once, you know, with the bolt and once with the smaller camera.

But because Adam was. He ran from his position outta the lobby. He led with the same foot, both every take. He led with the same foot, he led with the same arm. We were able to do a stitch right in front of the right, in front of the audience's eyes. There was no hiding anything. The, the wipe between those two cameras happened right in the center of frame and it was, again, it was due to Adam's performance.

It was amazing.

[00:33:34] Jeremy Hindle: pretty amazing.

[00:33:35] Rob Bredow: That

[00:33:35] Todd Vaziri: The, one of the

[00:33:36] Rob Bredow: is, that is.

[00:33:37] Todd Vaziri: privileges of this year was when Eric, you started to show me a bunch of the before and afters of not just that first shot, which blew my mind. I mean, I knew it was a complicated shot, but I was like, this is far more complicated than I could possibly have imagined. And putting it together was in incredible, uh, accomplishment. But seeing. And again, the thousands of visual effects shots you said, [00:34:00] um, that are within the the show and like you said, uh, some of them are big, and of them are small.

you know, at ILM we are usually, uh, taken to task with doing big spectacle shots, big shots that people will be remembering as they leave the theater or watch the, the TV show. But when the vast majority of your shots are, uh, intended to be invisible and to extend the, the design of the show, how, how do you balance those? how do you switch gears between spectacle and, uh, invisibility, uh, for, for visual effects work?

[00:34:39] Eric Leven: You know, it's, it's funny, the, I consider them all spectacle because to us and the crew that's working on, on the effects, you know, when we're completely replacing the background of a shot, like when, in episode four, when the, the, during the ortpo, when everybody is out on this big frozen lake, you know, they're, on the one hand, the actor, if you listen to the actors talk about [00:35:00] it, they're very excited because they were on location.

Ben was really, he really wants to shoot on location, which is a great credit to him. He wants to do everything as much practical as possible, but the, the ultimately the location was not what, you know, Jeremy had designed. It wasn't what everybody wanted. So everything gets replaced.

[00:35:16] Jeremy Hindle: it also melted. We went from zero to 80 degrees overnight. We got the big wide shot, and we got the, the dream sequence. But everything else is like, we shot it, it was 80 degrees all of a sudden. Everything. It was just awful.

[00:35:29] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:35:29] Jeremy Hindle: And luckily I'd seen that and we knew what it was, but it was, we had to put it all back in.

I mean, how many times should, I mean, we, I, I think the cool thing about this is, and I, I have to say everything that I did in this season, I could do, because I had Eric and, and it really like, I, I really want to do the hardest things imaginable and they seem simple like the boardroom, I had this idea, I want everything to be reflective now.

Everything, everything is a glass service. [00:36:00] Putting these in glass boxes and. You, you know, there are so many people who would just have a stroke seeing the idea how to shoot it. And I'm like, there's, we, we have the right team that everybody gets it. I say a lot of this stuff isn't, is fixing, it's not, I don't even know if it's the, it's not the right word, but it's, it's possible. It is possible. We just don't always know how and we shoot it and we, and we and you just keep going until it's great. And it's, as opposed to starting at the beginning and having all the answers, like, this is all we can do. I would, I have zero acceptance for that. It's doesn't make any sense. And now with this next stage of tool, which really, you know, it's been mostly used for things that I think are more recognizable to use these tools now that we're so free to imagine it now, like way freer. Like how we how we can change bark, how we can add just anything that we want anywhere is possible now. And as much as we can have those, early textures with a really good director and their [00:37:00] performances, like, it's just becomes like, we are not stopping the filmmaking process ever by saying, well, we should shoot this.

it should be volume. It, it should be whatever we think works the best

[00:37:11] Rob Bredow: mm-hmm.

[00:37:11] Jeremy Hindle: with. And it's not the simplest, it's just, and we all talk about a lot. And I think that's you know, I really, it was the, it was the partner that I needed the most from season one to two was this type of partner that I wasn't. 'cause a lot of times for me, it isn't just that I can't build it, we could build it. It's just, we just don't have the time. And is it, are you gonna spend $4 million on a set for one scene? No. So it's,

[00:37:35] Rob Bredow: Right.

[00:37:35] Jeremy Hindle: do we start to economically think those things too? And,it's like I have the best painter. I need the best, need the best of everyone. And their opinions and their taste and their heart, that they're never gonna stop either, because that's, this is that kind of show.

[00:37:53] Rob Bredow: So, you've mentioned mammalians set a couple of times, uh, which the goat department Right. And that the way [00:38:00] you collaborated to achieve that scale, I think people will, uh, who hear how that is constructed and both digitally and physically might be surprised 'cause it, like you said, it wasn't the easiest, it was the best.

[00:38:12] Jeremy Hindle: I mean, for me and I, I'll do the first part and then Eric, 'cause, so the first part for me was, I had this, there's a place called Storm King in upstate New York, this amazing art installation farm. And this designer designed these amazing waves in the grass. In grass, like massive piece of art. And, and we were gonna, I was like, I, we were gonna shoot here.

No one's ever shot there. I want it. I want it. I'm gonna get it. I meet the board. Everyone's excited. Someone reads the clause in the contract. Yeah, technically you're altering the artwork. We can't do it. The artist, everybody wanted it, but there was a clause from the original founders that if you're altering it in any way, so we're like gone. I'm like, now what am I gonna do? Golf courses. They always have interesting between the green, between the, you know, the fairways, there's always interesting landscapes, Ryan. I need to see every golf course that we could possibly [00:39:00] shut down. I'm gonna send my, my favorite lidar scanner, Billy. Once we, I'm going to, you know, show like, look at them, then he is gonna scan them.

Then we're gonna build it inside our box. I didn't have the, I, we had no idea for the tent yet, how we were gonna do it. It was, we are going to shoot this. And everyone's like, why don't you just build it on stage? And I'm like, the hardest thing to do on stage are greens that are real. Like I had to look, I didn't want it to look like teletubbies.

It has to look like real beautiful, organic, not perfect, gnarly. You can't do it. It would, it's just not possible with, it would, it's just, it's not possible. So then I think it was the rigging gaffer or Jess said, what if I found this tent company that can build a tent up to a thousand feet long, 140 feet wide, no supports.

I'm like, that's amazing. once we started to model it up, we put the tent over it, we started to figure out the lighting and it was, this is gonna work. This is amazing. How do how do we, so I'll build the corners of the sets. I know what I can do.

[00:39:59] Rob Bredow: Just for people who [00:40:00] are listening here, hearing it for the first time, you went to a real outdoor location, tented it, then built the walls up to a certain height.

[00:40:06] Jeremy Hindle: a tent that was 40 feet high in the center that had a, very little amount of weight that we could, 'cause there's no center supports. So it's, it's like the biggest thing. It's like you could put a, plane inside one of these things and. The, but the key was how to light it.

And then for you, for Eric, how are they gonna do this work? And so we, we built these long LED strip lights that were, you know, to kind of, we needed to light it. Perfect. That was the core. How are we gonna do this? Honestly, it's so many people to, to do this, to see this huge circus tent on a golf course.

People were still golfing while we were shooting, it's like, to me there's, it doesn't matter how absurd it sounds, it works, but how the next part part was, i'm like, I just, this is in my head. I know this is gonna be really hard and I, it, this is why we went to ILM I really, in my heart, this was it.

[00:40:59] Eric Leven: I think [00:41:00] what's amazing about it is because when you see the finished product, it's essentially, it's a giant box with grass in a hill, in a bunch of hills, and you know, obviously some other stuff that makes it Severance-y. But for someone who doesn't know how movies are made, you just think like, well obviously you just do that on a stage. A stage is a giant box and you just fill it with grass. And Jeremy, you were the one saying like, no, first of all, grass needs light

[00:41:25] Jeremy Hindle: Mm-hmm. To be

[00:41:27] Eric Leven: And you know, and by the time you plant all this grass and shovel all this dirt in there, the grass would all be dead by the time you're ready to shoot. So just little things like, or little big things that you don't think about.

[00:41:36] Jeremy Hindle: Or the other one was, we can't use artificial anything because we want to use real goats. Do we not want to do the goats. Because anything artificial, no goats.

[00:41:45] Eric Leven: Right. It had to be real grass for the goats.

[00:41:47] Jeremy Hindle: Yeah. All those moving factors.

[00:41:48] Rob Bredow: 'cause they're going to eat everything they're around, so

[00:41:50] Jeremy Hindle: Oh, they'll eat anything

[00:41:51] Rob Bredow: amazing.

[00:41:52] Jeremy Hindle: we wouldn't even be allowed to do it.

So

[00:41:54] Rob Bredow: Right?

[00:41:55] Jeremy Hindle: What I love is, when you do something practical, the rules kind of help you create the [00:42:00] chaos,

[00:42:01] Rob Bredow: Right.

[00:42:01] Jeremy Hindle: then you find the people that can help solve the chaos and it, and it

[00:42:04] Rob Bredow: I love that.

[00:42:05] Jeremy Hindle: all possible. It's just it. But I would

[00:42:08] Rob Bredow: I would say,

[00:42:08] Jeremy Hindle: Eric, didn't You think this probably was the thing that took us the longest to get right?

[00:42:12] Eric Leven: Uh, well, you know, there were a lot of things that took us a long time to be right, but like everything on Severance. But I think it, what was amazing about it was it was, you know, it was really, there were, it was a giant, you know, a giant tent over a golf course with two corners that were built practically to sort of half height.

The, the ceilings of this, of Mammalians are, I don't know, 25 feet tall, and we built probably 10 feet tall. Um. And so we had two corners that we could shoot into for practical stuff a lot. And it was really great reference for lighting. And again, these walls, which seem so simple, it turns out, have a lot of specificity to them.

And then, yeah, we had the, we had the lamps that were hung in the position where we thought the, the real lights would be in the eventual CG building that we built. And then everything else was all done in cg. And it really was, you know, what did these, I remember we went back and forth a little bit, Jeremy, on the, [00:43:00] the ceiling.

What kind of drop ceilings are we gonna have? How big, how what, how big are the little holes in the texture of the ceiling? Originally the lights were all solid all the way across the mammalians. And then we sort of realized that doesn't look as interesting as if we separate them and have some gaps between them.

But yeah, back and forth trying to get this stuff just right was.

[00:43:18] Jeremy Hindle: the thing for me that made it the most difficult was I picked the highest point for the tallest actor. We have Gwendoline to be inches away from the ceiling. So you, that's where it got really complicated, because it, it almost felt like she needed to be at the ceiling. So it's not even that you're looking at If we'd have, if we were always low, I don't, it would, it was, we're low and then all of a sudden we're right there with her.

Like it's, it's, it was so hard even for me to understand the sense of scale. 'cause even when we drew it, but once we shot that stuff with her, the scale started to just get nuts. Like, the tiles looked so big when we were against her, it was like, what the heck? Like, it just, it, the mass started to really mess with us and it's, uh, you know, it's just [00:44:00] figuring that out as you go.

[00:44:01] Eric Leven: Yeah. I will say, and this is another thing, I mean to the credit, this is a really important thing for the whole show for us anyway, was. I think that usually on a show or any show, by the time we're deep into post, the production designer is off the show and gone on to their next project. Having you, Jeremy, and your team around for the run of the show was just unbelievably invaluable

[00:44:21] Jeremy Hindle: Yeah,

[00:44:22] Eric Leven: whenever a situation like that came up, like, are these ceiling tiles too big?

Having you guys do, quick sketches and sort of, you know, evaluate that stuff and that carried over through the entire show, Hey, this is what the train station needs to look like. This is the kind of snow we want to have, you know, on the background of this set or whatever. That collaboration was just incredible rather than leaving it to visual effects, having visual effects and production design work together was the secret sauce.

[00:44:47] Jeremy Hindle: and honestly, I'm, I, I've done it. This is how I always wanna work. It's really hard to get studios to understand it and producers, because it's a bag of money they need to set aside. But I personally find the bag of money gets a lot smaller. When you have, [00:45:00] like you, I don't have much of a team.

I just have you know, one or two couple illustrators on standby and it's just me. we go through hot, like 50 iterations sometimes on a lot of the snow stuff was really tricky and we just kept drawing it until we loved it as opposed to VFX spending all that time.

And then it's like, it's a shorthand between myself and VFX creating something that we can eventually present to Ben that cuts out a lot of pain for everyone, for Ben, for you guys, for me. it's keeping the vision the same. As

[00:45:28] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:45:28] Jeremy Hindle: that vision's lost and it's, it's weird to me, it's like everything now is, the dialogue is better for us to do it this way because we should be doing it together.

I shouldn't walk away. I shouldn't not see it again. You know, I'm doing a Kathryn Bigelow film right now and doing the same thing like we are seeing. I see every shot and every little thing, and it's like, it's just a way to make, to ensure that the quality is exactly as you saw it. And also just like when we're building something or shooting something, should always be able to go, well, that's really cool, [00:46:00] and that's what we get to do in VFX. I always believe that on set you, I can build something and go, that's amazing. And then I see the actors and they're shooting. I'm like, and then we go, wait, but that's better. And then to be able to do that in post with VFX at that point is better too. It doesn't, the laws should not change

[00:46:18] Rob Bredow: Yeah,

[00:46:19] Jeremy Hindle: can't change it because it's, if it's going to make it better, make it better.

I, I, I just don't understand that. And, and I, I really see in the quality out there, but there's so much stuff out right now, and I, I see that it's missing. It doesn't tonally connect things. It feels like no one's, like, it's not being policed enough. And I think, I'm looking for how to do it too. We're looking for ideas like you need to do it together.

[00:46:45] Rob Bredow: that specificity of tone and the carry through of that, I mean, this is a standout show for that. Um, it, to go back to the beginning, you mentioned. that very first meeting you had with Ben, the, um, the John Deere World headquarters [00:47:00] photo you showed him, which it feels to me like what you found in the actual location of the Bell Labs building is as close to that as you possibly could have.

[00:47:09] Jeremy Hindle: it's, it's the same two designers, Kevin Roche, and Eero Saarinen, exact same people,

[00:47:13] Eric Leven: Hmm.

[00:47:14] Jeremy Hindle: exact same time period. It's the same. And that building, I love that building. I, I thought it was defunct. It was be, it was supposed to be torn down. It was full of water, had trees grow. It was abandoned for years, and

[00:47:25] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:47:25] Jeremy Hindle: had bought it from the city for a million dollars and put a billion into it, and someone had said, Hey, we should go to Bell Labs.

And I'm like, well, why? It's, it's, what are we gonna do with it? They're like, oh, it's been restored. And we went and we were like, oh my God. This is, it's, it's Lumon. It's like it, the whole world just exploded for all. And that happens all the time. I, I still think that you, and I'm a big believer in manifesting.

I learn more about it every day. the more you put this stuff out there, the world gives you these gifts all the time, but you have to have the first idea to be able to see that. And that's the key, is putting the stuff out there, having the best [00:48:00] people, and then they're like, then they all, it all starts to come together.

[00:48:03] Rob Bredow: that's incredible to have from that very first pitch to actually having a location that no one had ever thought to shoot at before. That's close to New York where you have to shoot this thing anyway. You're even gonna,get some real snow. Well, in theory you might get some real snow.

I guess the weather might have been too warm for that. No real snow. Everything had to be brought in, but un unbelievable.

[00:48:20] Jeremy Hindle: it's why it's the largest in the world. Like, it's kind of just, I, it's wild that it happened. There's nothing like it that's of that scale that places it's a million square feet.

[00:48:30] Eric Leven: Uh.

[00:48:30] Rob Bredow: And how much did the specific design cues that you got to leverage in that building actually help to inform the rest of the design? Or, or was your design already pretty well thought out and then they really complimented each other? Okay.

[00:48:42] Jeremy Hindle: Well, here's the thing is, when Ben hired me, it was just before Thanksgiving. I got hired, I flew to New York. I only had 12 weeks for the first season one. We didn't

[00:48:51] Rob Bredow: No way.

[00:48:51] Jeremy Hindle: it, it was not gonna happen. But that was the thought, 12 weeks out. 'cause it was written like the office. But then when this all happened, I [00:49:00] had started working on, to me, the, the, the core was how do we design MDR is gonna set the tone for the show, the desk, the room, what that I worked on that so fast. If this works and, and this gets knocked off, everything else starts to click. It's like the Legos start to click together. That sets the tone for the show. There's wardrobe, all the styling, everything comes together, and then you get to keep, you get to expand from that. A lot of that was based on, on on Bell Labs stuff like the vents in the walls, that's from Bell Labs.

You see them everywhere

[00:49:29] Rob Bredow: That's great.

[00:49:30] Jeremy Hindle: I, it is also, and I learned really quickly. Ben loves really cold sets. He doesn't like them warm. Uh, he's an actor, but he's, and this set has zero vents in the ceiling. 'cause it all had to be lit, so there's no place to put real ac anywhere I needed to build AC into it. It just, all these things started to come together and some of the ideas just came from Bell Labs.

[00:49:49] Rob Bredow: That's fantastic.

[00:49:51] Jeremy Hindle: the look, the details of the walls are, it's not dissimilar to what it used to be like there. It's all been altered, but it's in the same vein and it [00:50:00] feels of the same. I. also I thought, what's funny about Bell Labs is it's kind of the same sort of entity. It's not evil, but it's full of mind blowing people. And it always was. And it's got this community of misfits of, you know, that all worked there from around the world. The, you know, this the first satellite, the first cell phone, I mean, what the microchip, everything was designed in that building. Everything.

[00:50:21] Rob Bredow: Yeah,

[00:50:21] Eric Leven: Also, apparently that building was the first mirrored building

[00:50:24] Jeremy Hindle: Yes.

[00:50:26] Eric Leven: Ever. um, which I found fascinating. Especially when we, you know, when we point the camera out to the parking lot, visual effects has to put extra snow in all kinds of cars and change the backgrounds and move the trees around and all that stuff.

But when we point the camera at the building, when you think we would not have to change anything, oh, it turns out we're reflecting all this stuff that we have to change. So we're replacing all that in cg. Yeah.

[00:50:47] Rob Bredow: All the period components.

It's amazing.

[00:50:51] Jeremy Hindle: much removal and, and it's scaling and I don't know. It's just, it's really, it's the most fun I think you could have. And you know what, honestly, it's very godlike. We get to [00:51:00] really be like a, like God, how would you alter, how would you make this world?

And with this, I don't think, you couldn't have done this 10 years ago, I don't think

[00:51:08] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:51:08] Jeremy Hindle: do it. Not with the speed, not on a TV show, on a movie

[00:51:12] Rob Bredow: Right,

[00:51:12] Jeremy Hindle: you had four years,

but to do 10 hours basically of insanely cinematic television. mean, for one season it was two and a half years for me. I, I think that's actually pretty mindblowing.

That's

[00:51:24] Rob Bredow: It is

[00:51:25] Jeremy Hindle: to end all

in.

[00:51:26] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:51:27] Jeremy Hindle: It's, that's a lot.

[00:51:28] Rob Bredow: Yeah. It's such a great example of the best kind of top of top tier creative collaboration and to hear the collaboration, Jeremy, between you and Eric and the other heads of departments,

[00:51:39] Jeremy Hindle: you know what's also cool is I don't feel like it's a big machine. Like it's just a few of us.

[00:51:43] Rob Bredow: right,

[00:51:43] Jeremy Hindle: it's, it's not about being like the more, it's really just, I just need, the core of us need to communicate and everyone else has their teams.

[00:51:51] Rob Bredow: yeah,

[00:51:52] Jeremy Hindle: keeping that really small and nimble, and mostly I'm a texter.

Eric and I text all day long, like just text, text. It's just a way to always, [00:52:00] like, we just, it's the trust, but it's not, it's the trust that you can ask a dumb question too. That's a really tricky one. You have to be able to ask dumb questions. You have to be, and those dumb questions sometimes become realities. You have to be with the right people who go, wow, that's a bonkers idea.

[00:52:17] Rob Bredow: we're going to the golf course.

[00:52:19] Jeremy Hindle: I really want to figure it out most, and I'm gonna say this, a lot of visual effects people I've worked with for years, a lot of people always tell me how not to, how they're gonna do it. And I don't think there is, I don't want the way someone's already done it.

[00:52:32] Rob Bredow: Right.

[00:52:32] Jeremy Hindle: I want it to be its own thing. And let's, like, if we're gonna go to all this effort, let's do it in a way that is new. What's the freshest way for everything?

[00:52:43] Rob Bredow: That's great.

[00:52:44] Jeremy Hindle: and then Eric had a nap for probably six months after, 'cause I did.

[00:52:47] Rob Bredow: There's some seriously challenging work. Love it.

The Martini

[00:52:52] Rob Bredow: Well, that takes us to our martini. We could keep talking about Severance for hours for longer than the show is. Uh, but I think we wanna talk about at [00:53:00] least one fun thing we wanna highlight as we finish up the show today. So, Todd, did you bring us a martini today?

[00:53:05] Todd Vaziri: Sure did. two quick TV shows that I wanted to highlight. Uh, it's uh, one, the first is a comedy that's new to me. It's called Detroiters. It's from a few years back. stars, uh, and created by Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson. You may have seen them from Veep and the after party, and Tim Robinson, of course, from Netflix's I Think You Should Leave. Um, it is a drop dead hilarious show. Uh, only had two seasons, uh, but it's right now playing on Paramount Plus, uh, it's, I called it a, a spiritual cousin to Broad City, which was also on Comedy Central at that time, uh, about two very close friends who, in an environment that is extremely, the show is very specific to the city in which they live. Uh, for Broad City, it was New York City and, and for Detroiters, it's obviously Detroit. It is Drop Dead hilarious, and I love it, and I'm sad it's only two seasons, but, uh, it's, it's always there for us to [00:54:00] watch. So, Detroiters and

[00:54:01] Rob Bredow: Great.

[00:54:01] Todd Vaziri: uh, a show that's on the air right now, uh, on Apple tv Plus it's called The Studio from Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg and, and other co-creators. About a, fellow who becomes the studio chief of a movie studio, and it is very industry insider. I, I'm, I struggle with the fact that do, do people who are not in the industry, could they enjoy this? And apparently the answer is yes. It is controlled chaos. if you love movies and if you love how movies are made and you want to see how movies can be sabotaged, uh, self-sabotage sometimes, um, it's a really great show ultimately the show is about ego, I think, and, uh, how we can be our own worst enemies from time to time. So, uh, yeah, my martinis are the Detroiters and the studio.

[00:54:56] Rob Bredow: the studio. They're both hilarious. The studio, uh, the Ron Howard [00:55:00] episode had me on the floor laughing because if you know Ron Howard, he isn't that character, but he's playing a mean version of himself and it is so delightful. Uh, yeah, gotta check that out. And while you have your apple, if you haven't seen all the episodes of Severance, you get your Apple TV subscription, you can watch both.

[00:55:15] Eric Leven: There you go.

[00:55:16] Rob Bredow: Love it. Thanks Todd. Uh, Jenny.

[00:55:19] Jenny Ely: Yeah, so my martini this week is Andor season two. Um, so I love this show Andor the first season has been my favorite Star Wars TV show that has come out so far. Uh, I love Rogue One, the film. It's one of my favorite Star Wars movies. I love the characters, I love the story, I love all of it. Um, and specifically with season two, the costume design.

I mean, it's the same costume designer as season one. It's Michael Wilkinson. The costumes in the show are phenomenal. Like everything Mon Mothma wears, I'm like, I wish I could pull that off. Can I go to a Senate somewhere and make a speech so I can wear this outfit? But ev all the costumes are incredible and the storytelling in Andor is so good.

It's, I feel like most. [00:56:00] You know, Star Wars films or shows, they're the Star Wars universe. And then we set a story within them, I feel like, Andor is the opposite. It's like you take this amazing thriller, spy suspense series and then you just sprinkle some Star Wars in it and it's phenomenal. I am loving this season.

I am sad that it's only going to be two seasons because we know where it ends. But, I love it. I love Diego Luna and, um, all the actors and it's just fantastic. So if you haven't watched it, watch it for the story. Um, if you like fashion or costumes, just watch it for the costumes 'cause it's incredible.

[00:56:34] Rob Bredow: Such a good, some of the best Star Wars

[00:56:37] Jenny Ely: Yeah, it's so good.

[00:56:38] Rob Bredow: for sure. for that, Jenny. Jeremy, did you bring a martini today?

[00:56:42] Jeremy Hindle: I didn't, but I have a Martin, a different one.

[00:56:45] Rob Bredow: Great.

[00:56:45] Jeremy Hindle: know,

[00:56:46] Rob Bredow: You know.

[00:56:46] Jeremy Hindle: I actually having this talk, 'cause I've never done a really A VFX talk. Like this. What's interesting to me was how much, and I'd never been involved this critically, like on this much. No one has on this much content on [00:57:00] this for this much time on this da la la la and being allowed to be this particular, like actually getting to do it the lighting for me in visual effects is really, was mind blowing to me.

How much, like, you see, it's not hard to do 2D, 3D what things look like, but the getting light that's in the middle of something, like it's, it's, you know, like I'm sitting in my, in my living room where it's bouncing around and I, that part is really what I learned a lot. Like how much lighting they really do do and how much they can do.

Like when I look at episode 204, I mean, Eric, it's amazing. It's really, it's like atmospherically. I don't know how you do it. That's, that's my martini and maybe I'll learn someday.

don't even

[00:57:43] Rob Bredow: great.

[00:57:43] Jeremy Hindle: I want, I don't technically want to know. I just, it's what I really learned to appreciate.

That's a whole next level for me that I wasn't, I'd never seen it done. so well, but also just like it was such, with such understanding.

[00:57:58] Eric Leven: Uh, we've always said that, uh, [00:58:00] you know, how do you get your started visual effects? Uh, we don't want to hire, uh, computer graphics people. You wanna hire an artist because you can teach the artists how to use a computer. You can't teach a computer person how to be an artist.

That that is something that takes years and years and, and skills. And skills. So that is, that's, that's I think what makes a lot of the visual effects people at ILM different is that they really are, you know, they're artists first and they study painting and lighting and photography and. Music and, you know, everything, uh, movement, animation and, and then use the tools available to bring that stuff to life.

[00:58:30] Rob Bredow: perfect, Eric. Hey, can you, uh, did you bring us a martini too, Eric?

[00:58:33] Eric Leven: I did, I will say, let me just step back and say that bringing a martini to the ILM Lighter, Darker Podcast is, is there's a lot of pressure involved, especially as a, as, as someone who just shows up on one episode because it's your one shot to get it right. Um, so I went a different direction. It is, um, it is little League baseball season and I have an 8-year-old son who is playing right now.

And, um, after, uh, initial sets [00:59:00] of nosebleeds, you know, teaching my son Noah, how to catch a ball in the house and just, oh God, oh my God, we have to stop doing that. I found this thing called the Swax Training baseball,

[00:59:10] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:59:11] Eric Leven: which is like a, it's like a hacky sack, but it is the exact same size and weight of a regular baseball,

[00:59:17] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:59:18] Eric Leven: but it's, but it's soft, so you can throw it in the house or at your son's head.

And no one's or nothing's gonna get hurt. And so I've found that it's a great way to, uh, play baseball fearlessly when you're starting out into the league and it was really great.

[00:59:32] Jeremy Hindle: Did you make him sign a waiver before?

[00:59:37] Jenny Ely: That's so much different than when I was a kid, when it was like, we're gonna throw things at your face so you learn

[00:59:43] Eric Leven: Yes. Yeah, it's a.

[00:59:44] Jeremy Hindle: truth. It doesn't hurt as much as you think. Yeah, it does. No, it doesn't.

[00:59:48] Jenny Ely: Yeah.

[00:59:48] Rob Bredow: That's it. same waiver that Adam Scott had to sign before you had to send the rover, the, the robot around his head. so my martini for today is right on brand. It's the Severance [01:00:00] podcast, um, hosted by Ben Stiller and Adam Scott. They do episode by episode breakdown. They're designed to be watched right after seeing the episode.

So if you've already seen all the shows, watch the shows again and listen to the podcast afterwards. I got to listen to this podcast in prepping for this, and it's so well done. Uh, they dive into the craft, they dive into the details. they talk about many of the same people, uh, you're hearing today. Uh, Dan Erickson, the writer, uh, Jessica, the dp, Jeff Richmond is on one of the episodes who's the editor. Um, it's, it's really well done. They also have some of the cast on, and they have some other big stars on, uh, on some of the episodes as well. So I think you'll love, if you want to dive deeper into severance, like I enjoy doing, um, I recommend it highly.

Outro

[01:00:43] Rob Bredow: So I wanna thank you so much, Jeremy. I wanna thank you so much, Eric for joining us.

This is a fantastic episode, and as you can tell, we love your show, so brilliant, brilliant work. So

[01:00:53] Eric Leven: Thank you.

[01:00:54] Rob Bredow: And next episode is episode 20, our final episode for season one. It is the lens [01:01:00] flare extravaganza. So if you wanna get really geeky with, uh, John Knoll, a legendary visual effects supervisor and creative director at ILM, um, Shannon Tindle, uh, producer, director, uh, writer. Uh, and Todd Vaziri and I, I chip in a couple things, but honestly, those, the three of 'em, the three of 'em are just gonna run with all the lens flare geekiness. It's so much fun to talk about lenses and all the fun with that. So, uh, look forward to episode 20 in two weeks.

So thank you for listening to The Lighter Darker Podcast.

If you've got a question for us or you want to reach out, reach out to us at LighterDarker@ilm.com. You can also reach out to us on social media. Our links are gonna be in the show notes. You can find those at ilm.com/lighterdarker. That's where the transcripts are gonna be found as well. If you like the show, like, subscribe, tell your friends, leave a comment on YouTube or review on Apple Podcasts.

And we wanna thank Industrial Light and Magic for hosting the Lighter Darker Podcast. The show is produced by Jenny Ely and myself, Rob Bredow. [01:02:00] Today's episode has been edited by David Dovell and we wanna thank ILM's PR team, uh, led by Greg Grusby, who work behind the scenes to make all this happen. So thank you for listening to The Lighter Darker Podcast. And until next time, may your pixels be both lighter and darker.