Interview: Inside the VFX of Netflix’s ‘The Umbrella Academy’ With Folks Laurent Spillemaecker

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Welcome to a new Geektown Behind The Scenes podcast. This week I’m chatting with Laurent Spillemaecker, VFX Supervisor for VFX company FOLKS about their work on the fourth and final season of the Netflix hit show ‘The Umbrella Academy’.

The final season sees our dysfunctional family of heroes, consisting of Luther (Tom Hopper), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Diego (David Castañeda), Viktor (Elliot Page) and Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), trying to avert yet another apocalypse. Warning, there are SPOILERS below, and in the interview itself, so if you haven’t seen the final season yet, go and watch!..

Still here?

Okay, so if you remember the end of Season 3, the gang were left in a new reality, but also powerless. Whilst they do find a way to get their powers back, they also discover, they are the problem… After various, very "Umbrella Academy" type things happen, Ben, and his new girlfriend Jen, end up merging into a giant blob monster which threatens to destroy the Earth… And that’s where Laurent and his team at FOLKS come in...

FOLKS have been involved with 'The Umbrella Academy' since season one, but for the final season, the team received its most significant mandate yet. They were responsible for conceptual pre-production work to establish the creatures' identities, post-viz, final elaboration of complex shots, and creation of character and environment assets, animation, simulation, and compositing.

Along with creating the monstrous version of Ben and Jen, they also enhanced the environment for a Christmas-themed sequence, adding crowd characters, vendors, snow, and more. Plus they picked up some other shots, such as Five’s “blinking”, some of the laser eyes FX, and other superpowers and background work.

Outside of ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Laurent has previously worked on a huge range of projects including Sin City, 300, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Blade Runner 2049, Thor: Ragnarok, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and lots more.

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