Imagining a 1920’s Atlantic City: VFX in Boardwalk Empire

Posted on by msmlska

Scorsese’s new HBO series strategically incorporates VFX 3D animation into its big budget set design of Boardwalk Empire.

VFX is used to stand in for things like buildings, deer, billboard ads, window reflections and scenic shots of the beach’s horizon from the boardwalk.  Months of work/research/design.

In a clip on the show’s website, VFX producer Dave Taritero says their biggest challenge was “keeping the seasons correct.”  Shooting the pilot during the summer, when the plot has the scene set in the dead of winter, meant turning green trees into a bare snow speckled forest.

From NY Daily News online:

“Instead of using traditional paintings for the backgrounds, Brainstorm is using the latest software to create 3-D models of the hotels, piers and mansions of Atlantic City. Those models can be rotated and repositioned to allow for trickier camera shots – unlike 2-D paintings, which only work with a fixed camera angle.” Read more from NY DAily News…

As far as more “traditional” set design goes, the production reportedly put $5M and 150 tons of steel into recreating the boardwalk.  Read more from WSJ…

The blue-hughed half of this photo is the VFX half…

Very cool interactive feature to explore the Boardwalk Empire set…

Leave a comment

Published by msmlska

Born in Kailua, Hawai`i during a nurses strike in February of 1984, Micah, a bald new born with slight 'dumbo' ears, was called a "potato head" by the first man to set eyes on her: her doctor. This set into motion insecurities that would last well into puberty, highlighted by a year of wearing her hair down over the two flapjacks upon each side of her not so potato-like head. In perhaps an attempt to compensate for the lack of hospital staff, Micah's parents felt it necessary to overcompensate in names on her birth certificate. In the end, 34 letters and a hyphen would make up her full name, requiring more space than is available on class rosters and leaving professors guessing at her name. Micah, the daughter of a hustling Jewish father and a Dharma School teaching Buddhist mother, was promptly put into a Catholic school (complete with nuns, priests, and rulers). At age 9, she received a 35mm SLR camera. Eventually, she assimilated into public school and attended the oldest school west of the Mississippi River: Lahainaluna High School, est. 1831. This period of Micah's life is hazy. In 2002, shortly after her 18th birthday, Micah became violently ill with island fever and moved to Los Angeles. With nothing else to do, she did what all the other kids were doing, and enrolled in a college (one that didn't require an essay or any plan in general). After spending 3 years at a 2 year college, Micah felt that it may have been time to move on and transferred to USC. The next 3 years were full of photos, writings, delayed bus transfers, and some mean spills while trying to navigate her longboard around the fractured sidewalks of downtown. Eventually, Micah got a BA degree and left her name on the wall in the library at USC. Across the Pacific, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Micah watched TV for her Masters, thanks to a Fulbright Grant. She then wrote a paper on connecting through popular media, aided by new media.