Netflix’s 3 Body Problem shows how a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time, and into the present day. The series stars Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, Benedict Wong and Jonathan Pryce. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones) and Alexander Woo (The Terror: Infamy, True Blood) are co-creators.
Steve Kullback (pictured) served as VFX producer for the show, responsible for the overall project management of the visual effects.
“I work with the VFX supervisor in a producer-to-director relationship, as they are responsible for the creative design and execution of the work,” he explains. “I typically breakdown scripts and have a first stab at methodologies. I’ll bid the work out with vendors and manage those relationships. I hire and manage the VFX crew and work with all departments on the collaborations that occur with production design, set decor, props, makeup, prosthetics and so on. I oversee the financials and reporting of information to the production at large, post production and the studio. Naturally, all of this happens by working closely with the writers, directors and fellow producers to be sure that the work achieves the most important goal – telling the story.”
The VFX needs for 3 Body Problem presented a number of challenges.
“We have creature animation with the chimp; a rocket liftoff; satellite deployment; an oil tanker and its crew being slivered to bits in a nanofiber cheese slicer; and then there’s a subatomic particle-sized supercomputer that unfolds from 10 dimensions to cover the Earth,” he recalls. “Adding to that are the games, the headset, numerous environments, 30 million Mongol warriors going zero gravity and voilá.”
Kullback says the production considered using an LED volume as a lighting tool for the three suns that play a leading role, but opted for a “poor man’s volume” made of 1,500 sky panels fed with media to achieve the lighting effects director of photography Jonathan Freeman and director Derek Tsang wanted to achieve.
“This supported the very specific lighting challenges of speeding up time with numerous suns lighting the scene simultaneously,” he explains. “The effect is otherworldly and hyper realistic, and most importantly, tells the story.”