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The Regime is a darkly comedic six-episode series that tells the story of life within the walls of a modern authoritarian regime as it begins to unravel. Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) has grown increasingly paranoid and unstable, having not left the Palace for some time, and turns to a volatile soldier, Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), as an unlikely confidant. As Zubak’s influence over the chancellor continues to grow, Elena’s attempts to expand her power eventually result in both the palace and the country fracturing around her.

I was the department lead for the final six months of work on The Regime at Union Visual Effects. I managed the team in London and worked cross-site with the new office in Montréal, helping them get set up. During my time leading the show, I was responsible for all roto/prep bidding, briefing, and QC. The show contained large amounts of rig removal and some particularly tricky prep shots. Some of the trickiest prep shots were my responsibility.

In one shot in episode four, while Elena is participating in a meeting from her bath, she asks everyone to raise their hands. We only had two of the actors actually raising their hands in the plates. It was job to stitch the arms of these two actors onto the other actors visible in the conference call to make it look like everyone was raising their hands. This required a lot of detailed warping, grading, and animation to not only match their different suit fabrics and skin tones, but also make each hand raise look unique and natural despite the limited source material.

In another shot in episode two, Elena was holding a cup of tea, but this didn’t fit in the continuity of the cut. As a result, I was tasked with removing her whole arm holding it. This required a very delicate rebuild of the vibrant, intricate fabric of her clothing. The process was very involved, requiring me to make careful decisions about where to divide up the various patches I needed to track back in and carefully animate to fit with the surrounding fabric movements.

Read more about the project on Union’s website.