The DC comic character that’s been racing into our hearts with its TV series, The Flash has become one of the most watched shows on The CW network. It has also earned 98 per cent rating from Rotten Tomatoes and 8.2 on 10 on IMBd. The question lies what makes it different from other shows? The story? Yes, but along with that its visuals and action packed performances is what sets this comic show apart from the rest of the shows.
Shows like Arrow or Gotham do have a strong storyline but The Flash has opened up a whole new scenario for the TV industry. To showcase the abilities of the Scarlet Speedster and the meta humans around him, it was important to use VFX and this is exactly what has led to this show’s popularity. The show has used heavy VFX and there’s been usage of CGI throughout the series. The beauty of the VFX used is the fact that it looks realistic and not computer generated. There have been few parts where we could make out that the scene is graphical and looked animated but overall we could observe seamless visual effects. The studio behind providing the visuals for this series is Encore Hollywood which provides post production services, including 4K workflows and near-set dailies, along with high caliber visual effects. And Armen Kevorkian is the one who’s the VFX supervisor of this series.
The CW recently released a video wherein Armen explains the breakdown behind the Reverse Flash rematch. In the video he also explains how the studio achieved the desired visuals for few particular scenes; like during the ‘Storm Warning’ episode the helicopter showcased has been entirely computer generated and for the ‘Killer Convoy’, the truck’s disassembled scene could be accomplished by first doing the storyboard followed by pre visualisation and rough animation.
Earlier the studio revealed how the Flash’s super speed has been depicted in the series. They mention the usage of wide shots while showing the Flash powering through a city street or environment, completed as CG streaks by the VFX team. Next is the fast ‘in and out’ of frame shots, where they don’t need a transition between him and a CG double, but it’s not wide enough to showcase that. Then there’s transition shots, for example of Allen launching into action which then transitions into a CG double and finally completely CG double shots. For these, Encore invested significant time R&D’ing a more feature film approach to the digi-double work.
The complete breakdown of the Flash character can be seen on Encore Hollywood’s website.