Chris MacLean (‘Foundation’ visual effects supervisor): ‘I always think about how we can push the limits’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I always think about how we can push the limits of what we’re showing people,” declares visual effects supervisor Chris MacLean about giving audiences something ambitious and audacious on epic space opera “Foundation.” For our recent webchat he adds, “a lot of the time, we end up wanting to rest on our laurels a little bit. I’m always trying to push the envelope just a little bit more to try to get things get things a little bit different, a little bit more visceral, a little bit more relatable to the audience, as well as keeping it awe inspiring.” Watch our exclusive video interview above
SEE dozens of interviews with 2024 Oscar contenders
“Foundation” is based on the series of short stories and novels by acclaimed author Isaac Asimov, and is created by David S. Goyer (“The Dark Knight”) and Josh Friedman (“Avatar 2”). After premiering on the streamer last fall, Apple was so confident about its future that it renewed the show for a second season before the first season concluded. The series stars Emmy nominees Lee Pace (“Pushing Daisies”) and Jared Harris (“Mad Men” and “Chernobyl”), alongside a huge ensemble cast including Lou Llobell, Leah Harvey, Laura Birn, Terrence Mann and Cassian Bilton. It chronicles the thousand year saga of a band of exiles and a Galactic Empire in decline, across an expansive universe of civilizations. Its ten-episode second season concluded last September on Apple TV+, with fans eagerly awaiting a third season renewal from the streamer.
MacLean, an Emmy nominee for the impressive visual effects from the show’s first season, built on the groundbreaking world-building effects of season one, serving up breathtaking planetary battles, the multi-dimensional Prime Radiant orb, beautiful space vistas and alien “bishop’s claw” beasts. But perhaps one of the crowning visual achievements of the season was the jump-scare partial decapitation of ethereal android Demerzel (Birn) and the regenerative surgery she performs on herself after literally almost losing her head. “It’s kind of like a magic trick. We add a little bit of extra business to make it feel like, ‘how did they do that kind of thing?’” he explains about the sequence from the season 2 premiere. “Her head gets sliced off, and then she’s got to fight. She’s got to do all this work, and then she’s got to go back to her quarters and fix her head with her tools,” MacLean says incredulously. “What we did with the prosthetics team was that they gave us a nice thin slice or an edge where we were going to cut her based off the concept art that we had done, and then we put a black sock on her head, gave her a little eyeball so she could see, and then we shot her doing all of that.”
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions