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Exclusive: Behind the scenes of Fringe - Page 3 of 6 - SciFiNow

Exclusive: Behind the scenes of Fringe

Joe Nazzaro takes us through the paranormal world of Fringe with Mastersfx.

Another successful collaboration between MFX and Zoic were the parasites from ‘Snakehead,’ which required a significant contribution from both companies. “We have a good relationship with Jay’s team,” says Masters. “It makes the job a lot easier to do – especially with these rushed schedules – and a lot more fun too. It also allows some freedom to try things.

“On ‘Snakehead’, we created most of the shots with practical puppets, traditional, through-the- table tricks, or up Walter’s sleeve or cables down Astrid’s smock – wherever we could hide stuff – but the swimming parasites were digital.

“Because the stories on Fringe are a bit out there, we aim for a real feeling of ‘believability’. We want the audience to really believe what’s going on, to really feel our weird stuff. CG can sometimes just looks like ‘magic’, without any physical rules, not affecting the environment around it. To be fair, practical has its disadvantages too, so in many cases, a mix of the two mediums works great.”

Another example of that mix was ‘Grey Matter’, where digital and practical effects were used to create a gruesome shot of a man’s exposed brain. “That’s a perfect example,” agrees Masters. “We built a back of head, including layers of flesh, skull, tissue and of course brain. The digital elements were supervised by Bob Habros, effects supervisor on District 9, and composited well by Zoic. It looks real because it is, and you believe it because you see it with your own eyes, so those were well-played tricks by everyone involved.”

Creating an entire town of disfigured residents is no easy task for any shop, but that’s what MFX had to do with the episode ‘Johari Window’. “In a case like that,” notes Masters, “it was really nice to have two talented shops at the ready. In addition to the main boy character, we needed five ‘hero’ close-up characters and ten background characters, with six or seven days to do it all.

“I think it’s easy to go too far with mutant characters and since we were telling a bit of the story, we went with something a bit more down to earth than some of the sci-fi mutants we had done in the past. We needed an audience connection, plus a bit of repulsion – always a tough line to find in design, especially on a tight schedule.

“The Vancouver shop took on the ‘Family’: the boy, Ma, Pa and Uncle, while Dan in LA did the Sheriff, who I really wish we saw more of. We also dug into the archives for some of the background characters, which were barely seen in the final cut. We had several background masks dusted off (and repainted and tweaked) from shows like Masters Of Science Fiction and Stargate.”

Next: Cleft pallets and rejuvenating John Noble.