Visual effects on Caprica: Interview with Gary Hutzel

SCI FI Wire has a new interview with Caprica's VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel. The article is here. It contains some vague spoilers.

Hutzel previewed the upcoming episodes in the press room at the Visual Effects Society Awards, where he won for the model work on Battlestar Galactica.

"When we first see Gemenon and we're within a cathedral, we want that to feel very natural to the audience," Hutzel said in an exclusive interview last weekend in Century City, Calif. "That cathedral will probably draw very little attention aside from the fact that it'll look like a terrific location. Other than that, I don't think people will say, 'I've been transported away out of the show.' I think instead they'll say, 'This is a dark place,' which is correct for the tone of the scene. This is a dark place where bad things could happen."

The point is to make the audience believe that this is the real world we arrive at just before our demise and not some robot fantasy. "My goal always is to make my storytelling, the visual-effects storytelling, a part of the natural flow of the story," Hutzel said. "I never want to do anything that is jarring or will take the audience out of the show. I never want the audience to stop and say, 'We've gone to a fantasy world.' Caprica, like Battlestar, is not a fantasy world. It's a real place. What I need to do is always maintain that framework so we never break that window for the audience. They never feel like they're in a fantasy show."