VFX

RTS London heard how the visual effects were created for The Crown over six series of the landmark Netflix drama – everything from recreating Buckingham Palace to real-life incidents such as the death of Princess Diana in Paris, the Aberfan disaster and the fire at Windsor Castle.

“[As] a historical drama, there are things that we have to… recreate, so we needed visual effects to be able to bring those stories to life,” explained Reece Ewing, VFX (visual effects) producer and post-production supervisor, who joined the drama in series three.

Emma Kolasinska, an executive producer at Moonraker VFX who recently worked on Netflix wildlife series Night on Earth, started out as a receptionist at an editing facility, before moving into producing. The key to getting on, she said, is “working hard, not pretending to know everything but finding out quite quickly”.

Junior compositor Michael Vodden said: “Take opportunities and run with them – you never know where [they will lead]… a job can come out of everywhere.”

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“It’s a growth industry – there should be lots of jobs to go around,” argued Louise Hastings, VFX producer at Milk Visual Effects, whose credits include BBC One’s Doctor Who and ITV historical drama Victoria.

“Netflix and Amazon are creating more and more content with bigger and bigger budgets – we can’t keep up with the amount of work we’re asked to bid for at the moment,” she continued.

“TV is going to keep Soho very busy. We’re also getting a lot of the American films [shooting] at [Warner Bros, Studios] Leavesden, like Fantastic Beasts.”

A panel of experts in the field were on hand to show and talk about their work, as well as to offer advice on finding work in the competitive VFX and animation industry.

“As creatives, we’re all striving to come up with original, brilliant ideas and then realising them in animation,” said UKTV head of design Peter Allinson.