HBO’s “Lanterns” is a fascinating experiment in comic book storytelling. A show that billed itself as “True Detective” meets HBO’s “Watchmen,” it’s a smaller scale venture than we’re used to from the DC Universe. That also made it more of a risk, especially since it’s the first major live-action “Green Lantern” project since the disastrous Ryan Reynolds-led 2011 film of the same name. Yet, thanks to this approach, DC Studios and creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King were able to tell a more personal and intimate story with “Lanterns” than if it had been a big-budget cosmic adventure movie.
Mind you, that’s not to imply “Lanterns” was cheap, as rumor has it Season 1 cost a pretty penny to make. Moreover, it features a whole lot of VFX work, as you can see from the featurette that CoSA VFX posted to its YouTube channel. It’s not just the scenes that take place in space or feature fancy Green Lantern constructs, either. Rather, the video illustrates just how much of the everyday scenes, and especially the backgrounds, on the series required VFX to bring to life.
“We had to swap the terrain, the skies, sometimes even the quality of the light to change the West Coast into the Great Plains,” as CoSVFX Supervisor Christopher Lance explains in the video. Indeed, “Lanterns” Season 1 was mainly shot in and around Los Angeles, whereas most of the action takes place in Rushville, Nebraska.
The Lanterns reel is a reminder that a lot of VFX are ‘invisible’
According to Animation Magazine, there are 2,350 visual
According to Animation Magazine, there are “2,350 visual effects shots created for the eight episodes” which were spread across 16 VFX vendors. As visual effects supervisor Greg Steele told the outlet, “Because we shot everything in Los Angeles, there was a massive amount of augmentation needed to look like the correct part of the country. Almost every exterior location that is supposed to take place in Nebraska was touched.”
That’s a lot of VFX work that most viewers would never notice, but it’s essential to making “Lanterns” look the way it does. It wasn’t just backgrounds, as even the cast’s hair and makeup were sometimes altered with VFX. During the CoSA reel, Christopher Lance reveals that John Stewart’s (Aaron Pierre) beard in the flashbacks of his mission in Kamchatka was similarly a digital creation:
“There were a lot of discussions about marking the passage of time, and the determination was that we needed to show Jon’s hair and beard growth during his extended mission. So, we were really fortunate to have the scans of Pierre’s face so we could generate the right hair length onto his precise geometry.”
The sheer amount of VFX work done to make certain details “invisible” here is reminiscent of how the “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” VFX team turned Scotland into New York City during post-production on that film. What’s more, the not-yet-confirmed “Lanterns” Season 2 could be even heavier on the VFX, assuming it delivers on the most intriguing setup from the Season 1 finale (namely, the one involving a certain disgraced Lantern). But until that’s official, you can revisit the show’s first season on HBO Max to better appreciate all the effort its creatives poured into it.
