4. The Black Cat

Real cat? Digital cat? Or... puppet cat??? This week, Stacey and Lindsay sat down with Visual Effects Superviser Bret Culp and Visual Effects Producer Krista Allain to talk about the amazing amount of detail and skill that went into creating the visual feast that is The Fall of the House of Usher.

Tune in next time for more Poe, more interviews, and more deep dives!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Straw Media. Hi, I'm Stacyand I and I'm Lindsay Jones. Welcome
to episode four of Psychoanalyzing the Fallof the House of Usher. We are
so excited today. Our guests areKrista Elaine and Brett Kulp. They are
special effects people for the show andwe learned some fascinating things, one of

(00:26):
which is you can train a cat. How about that? So, Lindsay,
our session starts now. Okay,here we are episode four, known
as the Black Cat. As always, we're about to give you a recap
of what happened in this week's episode. If for some reason, you have

(00:48):
not yet watched episode four, TheBlack Cat of the Fall of the House
of Usher, What are you doing? What are you doing? Get yourself
together? Hit stop on this rightnow, go watch it on your Devisive
choice, and then come back andlisten to the rest of this episode so
we don't accidentally spoil something. Thisis the recaf of episode four. In
a flashback, Rodrick meets Jupan duringthe drug trial investigation, where he discovers

(01:11):
his signature has been forged by someoneat the Fortunado company. Madeline continues to
tell him to remain on Fortunado untilthey can take it over as their birthright.
Back in the present, Leo adoptsa black cat resembling Pluto. He
gets it from an animal shelter thatseems to be run by a woman who

(01:32):
strangely looks exactly like Verna, whoI would not take a cat from.
So Leo is adopting this cat becausethe cat was somehow accidentally murdered who knows
during some sort of drug bridge thathappened, and he wants to make sure
that his boyfriend Julius doesn't figure itout, so he gets this new cat.
Camille's death triggers a family crisis.Rodrick Madeleine and Pim identify Verna as

(01:57):
the culprit from security footage from thedeath of Camille, so they start trying
to figure out how they can findthis person. Madeline recalls meeting her in
nineteen eighty. They're starting to makethe connection that this is the Verna from
nineteen eighty. Roderick confronts Victorine aboutCamille's presence in her lab, and she

(02:19):
confirms upcoming human trials. Unaware ofher father's condition, Tam sees Verna with
Bill, causing friction Rodrick confides inMadeline about his diagnosis, which is similar
to their mothers. The new Plutocat, which is nothing like the old
Pluto cat tormentalo like clawing him,driving him crazy, leading to gruesome acts

(02:42):
amidst Julia's concerns over Leo's drug louse. Leo then hires the suspicious looking cat
dealer Verna to come back in.I don't know why you'd call this person
who was sketchy in the first place, but let's bring her in now to
help her figure out where the catis. But in a scuffle, Leo
gouges Pluto's eye, with Verna showingthe same injuries like her eye gets poked

(03:06):
out too. Somehow, Julius returnshome to see Leo trashing their apartment walls
trying to find Pluto the cat.The cat is some sort of amazing like
burrowing genius, being able to getall around the house without ever being troubled,
despite the fact that Leo is usingThor's hammer, which, by the
way, I'm not sure how Leohas Thor's hammer, but anyway, he's

(03:27):
rich with all it being Leo's hallucination. Meanwhile, the cat sneaks out onto
the balcony railing of Leo's apartment.Leo, in a fit of mad frenzy,
rushes at the cat off the balcony, and Missus goes directly over the
balcony and falls to his death.And the last vision we see is of

(03:51):
the cat formerly known as Pluto orPluto's double or Verna or who knows,
walking over Leo's body and heading offto uh cause more trouble. And that
is what happened at the end ofepisode four. It's outrageous, dude,
simply outrageous. I don't even knowhow to process it. I have a

(04:12):
cat and now I'm suspicious of them. Like I literally like I can't look
at my cat anymore without being like, what's what's really happening? You know?
I mean I've never, you know, like been able to look at
a cat without wondering what was reallyhappening. But that's that's the story for
another day. But I mean,this cat, the cat is Verna,
and vernas the cat, right,the same with the cat as the chimp

(04:35):
and the chimp. No, thejimp is Verna and vern is the chimp
right like she she is channeling theanimals, becoming the animals, you know,
like you said, like he pokedout the eye, and Verna's eye
was out, Like if you weren'tthinking that Verna was the animal before that,

(04:55):
it was pretty hard to miss thistime. It's true. It's like
I'm still trying to understand Verna sortof placing all of this because Verna is
the embodiment of the victims of thingsthat happen, right, Verna seems to
frequently take on the guise of peoplewho have been the victims, but also

(05:17):
Vernon is a facilitator. Frequently,Verna is a person who seems to show
up and say, here's the catright here for you, buddy, Why
don't you just buy this cat?You know. So like Verna is sort
of everywhere, but then and themoments of their worst moments, like you

(05:39):
know, let's go back to thedeath of Camille for example. I mean,
Verna is absolutely the executioner of Camille. Yes, And so it's like
I'm trying to understand, like tryingto make a connection. This is where
I need your psychoanalysis help, doctorStacy and I which is are we a

(06:03):
victim of our own desires and worstinstincts? Is that what we're trying to
tell us the fact that we're takingadvantage of people are the fact that we
make people victims the thing that ultimatelycomes back in the end to destroy us.
Is that what it's trying to tellus. I don't know, Well,
it's very interesting you say that,because Verna really whoever and whatever she

(06:29):
is, and I know whoever andwhatever she is, but I'm not going
to comment on that. Okay,she's mad at the Ushers, right,
she doesn't like them, she doesn'tlike she made that comment to Camille,
like, is there anything you can'tthat you touch that doesn't like destroy something?
So she definitely is taking out revenge. And I hadn't thought of it

(06:51):
that she's often portrayed as whoever orwhatever's the victim. Not in Perry's episode,
but certainly, you know, inthese these last couple of episodes,
she is most definitely and you cansee her gearing up also to be in
Victorine's episode, as you know,the woman you know, who's who's going

(07:13):
to be the victim. Right,That's right. So that's a really interesting
interesting point that I think she maybejust like seems to put herself in situations
where she's certainly going to be takenadvantage of, and then she can.
She feels really justified in exacting herrevenge. Yes, and it's gruesome.
She's not just shooting someone, youknow, it's people are dying horrifyingly grisly

(07:39):
deaths, Yes, that are usuallyincredibly frightening and terrifying. Yeah. Absolutely,
Yes, I'm still grappling with whatI'm supposed to learn psychologically from this
show. But I'm just I'm goingto be nice to everybody from now on.
That's my plan. That's what thisshow has really taught me. Be
nice. To just be nice toeveryone. Don't have any drinks and strange

(08:01):
bars with bartenders who say weird things, you know, who seem to like
know who you are before you knowwho you are, and you know,
and if you're gonna like be ina family that has a lot of money,
like you know, donate the moneyto good causes, don't don't hide

(08:22):
your toxic waste, and you know, like have human subjects before you're ready
and all of those things. Imean, just be like be a mensch,
you know, be a mench,Be a mensch, went in doubt,
be a menh right, And youknow, I honestly, you know
who I'm going to be the nicestto from now on, Like if I'm
really going to make a resolution tobe nice to people from now and you

(08:43):
know who's at the top of mylist. Kat No Digital effects supervisors and
digital effects producers like the people wehave on today. Stacy tell us a
little bit about our guests joining ustoday. Well, today we have on
both Krista Elaine, who was avisual effects and VFX producer. She is

(09:05):
known for numerous films like RoboCop,Mister and Missus, Smith, Drag Me
to Hell, and one of myfavorites, Stranger Than Fiction. Brett Culp
is an award winning visual effects supervisorand he has contributed to over sixty feature
films, several in collaboration with Christaand Mike Flanagan, such as Oculus,

(09:26):
Gerald's Game, and now Fall ofthe House of Usher. Welcome Christa and
Brett. Hello, Christa and Brett. It's so wonderful to have you on
the show today. Thank you somuch for joining us. Hi, thanks
for having us. It's our pleasure. Absolutely, we are super excited to

(09:50):
talk to you. I wanted toask you all first if you could just
sort of lay out for us,what are visual effects? Like? Can
you just sort of help us toget a groundwork into that. I mean,
as a I feel like I'm anabove average film goer, But to
me, at one point, itfeels like Star Wars was being made with
like models and fluorescent light bulbs oneday, and then suddenly it was digital

(10:15):
effects the next day. And Iknow that's not really what happened, but
that's my perception sometimes of like whenI see things, I just automatically assume,
oh, that's something really cool,it's digital effects, but I don't
actually even know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Basically, visual effects is
anything any effect that's been created ina computer for film or television show,

(10:37):
and the scope of the visual effectsvaries drastically. There's the obvious ones,
like you know in Jurassic Park withthe digital dinosaurs and stuff. Those are
the ones that everyone thinks about.When you say a visual effects, you
think is something obvious, like aCG character, But it can be very

(10:58):
small too, like painting out asign in the background that you don't want
in the scene, or if afly is flying around one of the actors,
you would we would paint the flyout. So honestly, the scope of
visual effects can vary quite drastically interms of the complexity cost. But I

(11:20):
will say that in every single televisionshow and movie in today's day and age,
there are visual effects. Whether youcan see them or not, they're
always there. Wow. So evenon shows where you wouldn't expect it necessarily
correct, they're there. Yeah.Yeah, I mean one of the things
that we could talk about as weget into it, maybe is part of

(11:43):
what we do because you know,when choosing or deciding, you know,
how to achieve something is figure outwhat is the most cost effective way to
achieve the vision on the screen.And sometimes that's practical work like special effects
x is like explosions and things thatare real that are you know, and

(12:05):
sometimes they're us and sometimes there areother options. But I also will add
that visual effects are essentially everything thatwent into making films in those using models
like the Star Wars. Yeah,all of that still kind of it's it's
exactly the same, only it's adigital version of it. So we still
make a model, but we makeit in the computer. We we you

(12:28):
know, texture it, we paintit, we do all of that work.
But it's in the computer. It'svirtual. We light it when we
get you know, in the scene, we light it. So we have
experts who are you know, inall of those fields the same way that
that the special effects guys did itin, you know, when they do
something practically. You know, wehave animators who are who are amazing at

(12:52):
what they do, and we havepeople who put it all together called compositors.
So it's kind of there's a wholecrew of people that are specialized in
the virtual realm that do kind ofsimilar jobs to what would happen in the
past, primarily but not you know, sometimes we still do again when it's
more efficient, you know, wemight build something or you know, that's

(13:16):
great. Thank you so much fortelling me us this, because it is
easy to get lost in what thesethings are. So I really appreciate this
explanation. And is there a differencebetween visual effects and VFX, because I
saw both of those labels used atthe same time. It's just an abbreviation,
So v effects is an abbreviation ofvisual effects. The question we're usually

(13:39):
asked is what's the difference between VFXand special effects? Right, because people
tend to mix those up a lotand I mentioned earlier, but special effects
are the practical effects that happen.Usually they're on on set when we shoot
things, and you know, areresponsible. They have a hard job because
they are like a performance crew memberas well. They have to you know,

(14:00):
they have to perform. We canactually work on something over and over
again until we get it right.I see, right, yeah, because
you have the ability to change yourreality, whereas what's filmed is what's filmed,
and that's basically right. Yeah,And we might get to try it
well as long as it takes.It might be twenty times. Hopefully not,

(14:20):
but it could be. You're notgoing to do it twenty times on
set, right, So, Imean in a lot of ways, that's
one of the benefits of visual effectsis that you can hone something in a
way that you just don't have timeto do when you're shooting. The train
needs to keep running. I willsay also, just to add to that
that we work very closely with allthe other departments, special effects in particular,

(14:43):
so we're none of us work ina vacuum, and it's very much
collaborative and a lot of what wedo is built on what someone else does
and vice versa. And it's very, very very collaborative, and we're always
working together as a big team tofigure out the best way to achieve something.

(15:03):
So, for instance, if weneed to float someone in the air,
that would be stunts. We wouldrig them up and fly them in
the air and then visual effects wouldpaint out the wires. That's just one
example of many where we're all workingtogether to our strengths in our individual departments.
But even in that example, sometimesthe floating can't be achieved. Chris

(15:24):
and I did a show for manyyears that had a lot of floating,
and sometimes you can't achieve it evenpractically. Oh and so you go to
digital doubles and you know you cando you know, different kinds of stunts
and things like that. But youknow, to Chris's point, we are
one of the departments on a filmcrew, and we work together like any

(15:46):
other department. So for example,we spoke to Azi yesterday and he was
telling us about the like the chimpanzeein episode three and how part of it
was a pop bit and that hewas manning actually and part of it was
some digital effects for you know,the eyes. At times, I might

(16:08):
be confusing the puppet. Then inthe I think you might be confusing it
with the cat. Oh with thecat? Oh? Okay, Well there
was a puppet component for the chimpin the surgery scene, so he may
have been referring to the surgery scene, right, And were you working together
like visual effects plus the puppet atthe same time, right? Did I
make that up? No? Imean you're right, and christ the thanks

(16:33):
for reminding me. But we didhave, you know, a physical chimp,
but we used it in really onlyin a couple scenes, the surgery
scenes. But that whole scene youguys have seen now where you know Camille
goes into the into the room andall that craziness. Those are all digital.
But what's interesting about how we didthat is that a large portion of

(16:53):
that was done with motion capture.So we used motion capture artists. And
his name is Terry Notary and hehas done this a lot. He's like
kind of the industry expert on monkeysand chimps and things like that. Wow.
And so we went to a motioncapture facility and we took that data,

(17:14):
even some of the data for thefacial actions, and then we applied
it to a very detailed digital model. In fact, we made six different
chimps. They all have they alllook very different. There have different fur,
different eyes, different everything, aschimps do. And then the hero
chimp. And then we applied thatmotion capture information and used it you know

(17:37):
a lot of the time. Sometimeswe had to do something that was outside
of his performance, so we augmentedit. But that's a really good example
of using human performance and the digitalelement. Wow, that's so fascinating.
So there's just a guy whose primaryjob is to emulate monkeys, and then
you use his studies and material tofigure out how to make your characters based

(18:04):
on that. We actually capture thedata, so he's got you know,
sensors. That was all visual capture, but it was that data. It
was real data that was then usedto move the limbs, the head,
the body of the digital chimp gotit. Okay, So thinking about episode

(18:25):
four for a moment with the blackcat, which I from what again,
from what we When we talked toAlsiavarez yesterday, he mentioned that some of
that is poppetry and some of thatis digital effects, and I'm just curious,
like, okay, just stepping backfor a second before we get into
the real nuts and balls of howthat whole thing worked, because I'm fascinated

(18:47):
by it. But I would justlove to understand when you guys are at
the initial stages of your project andyou're sitting down with all the other teams
that are involved, right, howhow do you divide up the division of
labor between let's say, visual facts, makeup design, and production design,

(19:10):
Like where's the places where you guyssort of feel like these are our boundaries
and these are things that someone elseshould do or is there such a thing.
Well, there are boundaries, forsure. There's certainly things that we're
limited in our ability to do,and other departments are limited in their ability
to do, and there's certain thingsthat are within different departments wheelhouses. So

(19:32):
it's just it's a constant discussion.There's lots and lots of meetings that we
have, and we're always talking toeach department and primarily to the showrunner and
directors and trying to figure out whatis their vision, what do they want
for this scene or sequence. Alot of the times we'll have storyboards and
that's kind of where we begin withmost stuff. Talking about it is one

(19:56):
thing, but being able to visualizelike, okay, where's a camera in
this scene? What are we actuallyseeing in this shot? Okay, the
camera's going to be on Leo's back, We're going to see some pause flying
around like, we won't really seemuch of the cat. Leo's going to
be in the way. Okay,So does that make sense more to be

(20:17):
Ozzy with his puppet or should wetake over and do it digitally? Most
in most cases for the fight betweenthe cat and the puppet just based on
the storyboards, and well, wewere limited with storyboards with this show.
However, through our discussions, itjust it made sense that it's going to
be a very fast, frenetic sequence. We can get away with a lot

(20:41):
of practical stuff because he's he's goingto actually need to be interacting with something
that always looks the most real whenan actor is actually interacting with something real,
which in this case is a isa puppet? Is that correct?
Exactly is a puppet in this case? So Ozzy and his team created a
puppet version of the cat which lookedgreat, and so for the fight sequence

(21:06):
with Leo, he was fighting witha puppet. And then once the sequence
was edited, it was always discussedthat there may be some instances where we
would need to enhance the puppet tomake it look a little more real,
like twitching the tail to make surethat it to keep it alive, and
like maybe moving the pause around tomake it look like it's trying to claw
him, just to enhance the realityof it. So once they edited it

(21:33):
together, we went through each shotand decided, you know what, this
shot could benefit from some tail movement, and then so we would erase the
real tail or take it over digitallyand add some movement to it. So,
you know, it's a lot ofdiscussions and a lot of back and
forth, a lot of trying tounderstand what the vision is, and then

(21:56):
a lot of adjustments too, becauselots of original plans maybe don't work,
and so it's like, okay,well that didn't work, how do we
adjust and make it better. Iwould say for the cat, it was
interesting because we had three different elements. We had two real live cats that
we used whenever we could. Obviouslywe don't ever want to hurt anything actors,

(22:21):
cats, chips, anything like that, but when it was safe to
do so, again, the mostefficient way to get a cat walking across
the room is that's a very veryexpensive CG shot. For example, the
shot where the cat walks across Leoat the very end with the body on
the pavement. Yeah, so that'sa digital cat because there was no way

(22:42):
out on the street a very cold, very cold night was snowing for a
bunch of the time. I mean, kind of crazy story. We had
to heat the sidewalk up with theblowtorch what so that Leo could lay down
and not freeze. Oh my god. And then we had to fix it
so that it looked like and wecouldn't put any blood on him or anything
because of the cold. So weadded all that digitally. So this is

(23:03):
kind of our world, right,But we did use real cats, two
real cats that look the same.One of them caught COVID during this thing.
The cats, oh no, Yeah, so that was kind of crazy
and we all learned that cats couldget COVID at that point. And then
and then the puppa cat. Weknew we needed it. As christ has

(23:26):
said, to interact because I wouldn'tsay the hardest, the most expensive and
really expensive visual effects really means howmuch time does it take to do it
and with how many people? Soit doesn't necessarily mean that it's the hardest
thing. Although that is challenging,it just means that it's gonna that it's
ours that you put on something,and it's more like days and weeks to

(23:48):
do this stuff wow and more sometimes. But one of the challenging things with
the digital stuff is the interaction.You know, when he's thrashing around with
it and it's on him. Soas Christa said, we used a puff
for that, but we always knewthat we were going to do. As
christ Is said, replace the tail, make him thrash his pause. There
are though many shots where it's jumpingfrom a ledge or leaping at him or

(24:11):
that kind of thing fully digital,because you can't it's dangerous to the actor
and the animal. And you know, we all know cats they may or
may not do right. Usually theydidn't do. This is what I was
about to say, which is likewhen you're saying how difficult it is to
get a digital performance of a catto be completely realistic, in my mind,
I'm also thinking, well, Ihave a cat. I can't get

(24:33):
him to do anything, so,like I know, to actually get a
real cat to do something on commandis almost is more impossible than anything else.
Yeah, So I mean you bringhim on set and you hope for
the best and then and we didthat. We had the cat. We
actually did have the cat on setto walk across Liao's body, but it
wouldn't do it, so not unexpectedly, but it was worth a try,

(24:55):
you know, to the animal trainer'scredit though, like he the other piece
of it. You can train theseanimals to do it, but it also
takes a lot of time and advance. It's like, okay, what is
the movement? And each animal canonly learn a very specific, small action,
right, So it's like, okay, you have to train this animal

(25:17):
for several weeks in advance of thisone very specific motion that's very small,
and it's always a question on theday whether they'll actually be able to do
it. So a lot of timesthey'll go digital just as as kind of
just a certainty that you know,you'll look at the performance that you know
you'll want and it'll save time onset as well. And that's not to

(25:40):
disparage the animal trainers at all.They they these animals are amazing and what
they do is amazing, but youknow there's a chaos element on set that
you just you can't train an animalstanding around with lights and yeah, loud
noises and things too. One smallexample to Chris's point, I didn't expect

(26:00):
that we would be able to getthe cat on the rail right before Leo
goes over, and it did.It went on the rail and it walked,
So that's a real cat. Weadded though, to its eye,
the dangly eye. We added that, and I think we stabilized it a
couple of times and a couple ofshots, so we did some augmentation to
it. But I was amazed thatthe cat would even jump up there with

(26:22):
all of us around and stay thereand then walk away. And I was
just going to say, if yousay to me I'm a professional cat trainer,
you have my most respect. Seriously, you have committed yourself to a
life of hardship and I admire youfrom that point forward. Yeah, and
that sounds expensive, you know,like the professional you know, the training
of the cat and trying to getthe cat to do something. You know,

(26:47):
I don't know which is more expensive, but it all sounds expensive,
right. All take sounds like alot of time. Even blow torching the
sidewalk doesn't sound cheap. If youask me and the listeners will want to
know that the cat who got COVIDis okay. Oh yeah, great recovery.
Even if the cat wasn't okay,I'm glad that you said that he
was sticking to Yeah right, No, it's just picturing a cat in bed

(27:10):
eating trick and soup trying to recoverwork. Dang wow. Okay, So
now I feel like I'm enlightened andyet more confused at the same time because
when I was watching the episode andthe cat is sitting perfectly on the rail,
you know, just so perfectly setthere, I'm like, ah,

(27:30):
that's a beautiful digital creation of acat, because certainly no cat would ever
sit on the rail like that.And now you guys are here to tell
me, no, no, that'stotally a real cat. But we did
all of the complicated stuff. Soit really is almost like shot by shot,
you guys are figuring out like,okay, real cat, puppet cat,
our cat, yep. Yeah,and you're modifying your approach on the

(27:53):
fly on the day while you're shootingit. So, which is why part
of why it's important that we're thereat that stage as well, so we're
not just the post production end ofthings. We actually come on in pre
production and start figuring out how todo all this and putting numbers to things
and all of that, and thenwe're there for the shoot to make sure
that we capture all the data thatwe need to and inform and see everything

(28:18):
that needs to be captured, andthen we see it through to the end.
So together Chris and I were onthe house of Usher for a year
and a half. Wow, mygoodness, that is really shocking, because
I think of your job as acompletely just post production type thing, but

(28:40):
it really isn't at all, notat all. We're in fact, we're
one of the very few departments thatis on a show from pre production to
the very end when it's delivered forfinal. That's just because, like Brett
said, we need to be therefrom the beginning to help plan for it
and then to shoot top all thedata and then in post when our I

(29:03):
guess sometimes I say that's when ourreal work begins, because that's when we're
we're actually doing the visual effect work, and then it's all delivered towards the
end of the process and kind ofput together for final. So yeah,
we're one of the very few departmentsthat's there from the very very beginning to
the very very end, which isnice. I really like that about our

(29:25):
jobs. And we're still just talkingabout the cat, right, We're not
even talking about every other every otherthing that you had to work on during
that episode or the whole show.Yeah, it can be a lot of
work. Yeah, since we're talkingabout the idea of pre planning, which
I think is fascinating, the ideathat you guys come on at the very

(29:45):
beginning and really plan everything out,and then, as you said, you
get to the film shoot and thingshappen right that you that no one can
control, you know, maybe theshot doesn't work, or the light isn't
right or whatever. Is it possiblefor you to give a percentage of how
much in your in the final scopeof your work, how much of it

(30:07):
is the stuff you plan for versushow much of it is the stuff that
is the corrective, the things thatyou guys have to go to later and
be like, well, this didn'twork, so now we're going to try
this. Well. Each shows alittle different, but there for sure is
a percentage of growth that happens throughoutthe shooting process. It varies per show,

(30:30):
but it can be significant and sometimesup to like twenty five percent an
increase, you know, and that'sa rough estimate. Yeah, yeah,
but it can be quite significant.And it's very rare that our our scope
of work gets smaller. It almostalways gets larger, right, you know,

(30:52):
but that's part of the that's thejob, right and where we're there
to help when things don't go right, and it's never an emergency, almost
never emergencies. Always like, okay, so our plan changed, here,
what's the new plan, you know, And it's an always evolving thing.
Nothing ever stays the same. That'swhat I've learned over the years. It's
like our you get your best laidplans. It's not that they fail,

(31:15):
but they're always going to inevitably change. Tied to that is that we know
that's going to happen. Yeah,so it's not a surprise when it happens,
and we tend to plan for thathappening. You can't plan for the
specifics, but you know, weusually put contingencies in for things, and
it just we know we've done thislong enough that we know that it's going

(31:37):
to happen. Everybody knows. Butit is also important that we discuss it
as it happens, so that it'svery important that there are no bad surprises
down the line. So you definitelylet you know the producers, and we
do daily production reports for VFX aswell, and so there's no surprises.

(31:59):
I'll take all the good surprises,but no bad surprises, is the way
I put it. Yeah, what'sa good surprise? Can you give us
an example of that amazing lighting happeningor the you know, the cat goes
on the rail and you didn't thinkit would and it saves you, you
know, a huge amount of money, tens of thousands of dollars and you
know, I mean it could bea lot of things. There are lots
of good surprises too, or ormy very favorite thing. Part of what

(32:22):
Chris and I do as hired bythe production is that we then figure out
who the best companies, the effectscompanies, the vendors we call them,
are to do the work. Andit's a combination of who has skill at
what, who has availability, andwho's good at what. We work with
a pretty wide group of people orcompanies, and we tend to kind of

(32:45):
know who's more expensive for what,or who does water really well, or
who does you know, creatures reallywell, that kind of thing, and
then we bit it out and thenwe decide, you know, with production,
but it's really our suggestion that theytypically go with who does what work,
and then we manage that group ofvendors through to the end. And

(33:05):
so there might be even though ourlittle department, you know, there might
be six or seven of us Christand myself, maybe some a data wrangler
or two on set or technician,the effects editor may be, you know,
coordinator to help us with all theyou know, that kind of thing
on the post side. That's apretty small group for a department. But

(33:28):
then we will manage four hundred andsix hundred people sort of through the different
companies. You know, they allhave their management too, but ultimately we're
directing them. Like that's part ofmy job is to direct them. I
get the direction from the director,from the showrunner, and then I direct
our vendors. But to your originalquestion, one of my favorite things is

(33:50):
when you ask a vendor to doan effect or shot or whatever and they
they do something way better than youimagine. Oh wow, So that is
my favorite thing in the business,you know, and they get written on
this show because of Mike Flanagan's pedigreeand and the work that he's done in
the past. And this is actuallythe fifth project I've done with Mike and

(34:12):
the Gang. Mike's writing is sogood, Oh my god, Like,
not only does it come out theway it comes out the writing on the
page. The very first script Idid, Oculus was the first film I
did with him. Yes, itjust it was a kind of a complicated
you know that we were shuffling betweentime storyline times in that film as well,
and it was just so easy tofollow that can be very complicated,

(34:37):
just on the on the page,it was so easy to follow and so
easy to read. And I knowhow hard making something that is easy to
read or easy to watch, howmuch you've struggled to make that happen.
So the vendors were as enthusiastic aboutthe show as we were, and so
it was very easy to get themto go the extra mile. Yeah,
In preparation for these conversations that we'rehaving with you and with other sort of

(35:00):
visual people who are working on theshow, the production designer, the makeup
designer and things like that, I'vebeen really trying to pay extra attention to
the enormous detail that has gone intothis show, and it really is a
visual feast. I mean, likethe lighting is blowing my mind on the

(35:20):
show consistently, and the mood andthe intensity of it. It's incredibly stylish
and very well thought out in away that you know your average sitcom,
for example, is not. There'sa real design aesthetic that seems to be

(35:42):
very prevalent throughout this entire show.Since you've worked with Mike several times five
times now, is that really drivenfrom him? How much of that is,
how much of that comes from thetop, and how much of that
is your input or the people aroundyou input in terms of making that style.
I think a lot of it isMike, and I think a lot

(36:02):
of it is Michael Femeniori, whois the other director and cinematographer. He
hasn't been on every show that I'veworked on with Mike, but he's been
on most of them. And thoseguys are amazing to watch work together.
They're kind of Krista and I jokeabout each of us are like half a
person together we make a package,right, But I think that is the

(36:24):
case with Mike and Michael, andthey've worked together and they're so close they
read each other's minds, which sometimesmakes it challenging for the rest of us
who have to because part of myjob is to extract what is in their
minds if it's not obvious. Yeah, almost always have to do some amount

(36:44):
of that. But once I'm intheir heads, then I can run with
it. I mean, those guysreally know what they want it really,
it's all on the page. AndKrista had mentioned that they didn't we didn't
have any storyboards for this show.But what they do do is go through
every shot and they make a shotwith an overhead plan where the camera is,

(37:05):
where the set is, all ofthat. So you can look at
that and that's just the way theywork and you can get a really good
idea of you know, what they'reafter as well. But as far as
like the vision and the lighting andall that, that's Mike and Michael.
Yeah, and I'm not even sureto be honest, like where the influences
come from. They are just anentity. We're addressing your relationship between you,

(37:27):
Brett and Christa, Like how doyou guys divvy up what you do,
Like if you're each of you havea specialty or are there things that
you sort of lay into like whatdo you think? Yeah, So my
title is Visual Sex Producer and Brett'stitle is Visual Sex Supervisor. So the
difference between us is that Brett's responsibilitiesare primarily creative, right, so he

(37:53):
needs to, like he said,get into the showrunner director's head and understand
creatively what the vision is, Understandhow best to execute that in terms of
visual effects, and then disseminate thatinformation to all the visual effects houses and
artists and then guide them to afinished product. My main responsibility is primarily

(38:20):
budget and schedule. I'm much moreon the managerial side. It's about logistics
and okay, so here's what weneed to achieve, how do we achieve
it? And even though on paperthe division of tasks seems very discreete,
there's a lot of overlap between whatBrett and I do, and really it's

(38:43):
a marriage and I can't do whatI do without him, and he can't
do what he does without me.So we first met on a show called
The Expanse several years ago, andhonestly, from that point on it was
like, I don't want to workwith anyone else this guy. I get

(39:04):
him you know, he gets melike it's just a perfect marriage really,
and that's that's he's he's my workhusband essentially. But we're like we're in
each other's head in a way thatyou know, we work so closely together.
It's so important to have am likethat simpatico with your partner, and

(39:27):
you know, I have it withBrett. So that's so nice that I
feel the same way, the samething. Yeah, lindsay, I feel
that way about you too. Yeah, yeah, we're well totally we haven't
worked as long together, but youknow, totally in each other's heads.
And yeah, not that we doanything near as complicated as you either,

(39:49):
but no, not at all.It really helps to know that the other
person always has your back, andI mean that's a huge like there's a
comfort and a safety in that aswell. Not only do we sink together
perfectly, but it's just you know, implicit trust that's super important, I'm
sure. And we have a verysimilar outlook on how we deal with challenges

(40:12):
and how we like to direct ourteams. So it's just we're just very
very similar outlooks on how to conductourselves in our you know, day to
day with our work and our teams. So it's just it's a really good
working relationship. Yeah, so we'rea package now, we are one.

(40:32):
So all of that work with Mikehas been you know, in this particular
genre of you know, horror basically, And would you say that is that
your favorite genre to work in?Are there other kinds of genres you also?
Like? I'm not partial to anygenre really. I mean, the
expense was six years of sci fi, but it was very, very creative,

(40:54):
and we had a huge part ofthat. I mean about a third
of the show is completely digital,so it was just us running with it
with when we get inside the showrunner'shead. Yeah, so once you do
that and we did you know,all that kind of stuff. So I
really enjoy that. It really dependson the work that we're doing in the
quality of the story. It's astorytelling and for me, the specific genre

(41:17):
doesn't matter as much if it's agreat story and the work that we need
to do is challenging and creative.To me, that's the most important thing.
I don't know, christ if youfeel the same way. Yeah,
No, I totally feel the sameway. I don't know if I'd want
to do all the bloody stuff forever. Yeah, it gets you know,

(41:40):
you become desensitized to it a bit, just because it's your day to day
life. But you know, Idon't think i'd want to do it indefinitely.
It's a fun genre, though Ireally enjoy the horror genre is just
to work on it every day.I'm going to be honest. I enjoy
working on it more than I enjoywatching it. I can't understan that because

(42:00):
it's not scary at all when you'reworking on it. Sure, yeah,
and you know, I many yearsago did Saw too, so that's you
know, pretty pretty extreme stuff totally. And you know, I remember watching
the Saw one to try to getwrap my head around what it is that
we're doing, and I'm like closingmy eyes and squinting, squinting through it

(42:22):
and stuff. But when you're doingit, it's everybody's laughing and having fun
and and you know, it's atotally different thing, right of course.
So christ when you were talking aboutcoordinating with special effects houses for different effects,
it's my understanding that those effects housesare they're around the world, right,

(42:44):
Like they're all over the all overthe world. They're not like I
know, you guys are Canada based, but these places could be in other
countries and other continents and other timezones. When you guys are on a
deadline and you're working with all ofthese different vendors who are in all of
these different time zones, how complicatedis that? How difficult is it to

(43:07):
get everybody on the same page andkeep everybody on the same page so that
you're able to deliver things when theyhave to be turned in. Yeah,
it is a challenge, for sure. Time zones can be challenging, but
technology these days has made things alot easier. When I first started out,
it used to be that you hadto physically go to these vendors places,

(43:30):
You had to visit them physically.You have to go physically to the
post house to see what your worklooked like on the big screen because it
was all film and stuff. Butas technology has evolved over the years,
really it's made the world smaller.We can have vendors. We had a
vendor in India on this show CoolAnd you know, it's still challenging,

(43:53):
but you find a time, justa little window of time where you're all
in the office together and that's whereyou have your zoom calls or whatever platform
you're using. It's all digital now, so yeah, I think it is
a little bit more challenging with thetime zones, but you make it work.
And technology is advanced enough that it'smade the world a lot smaller,

(44:15):
so that's so great. We useYeah, as christ has said, we
have some really great software that weuse, like there. The vendors will
upload their work as it's ready,and I will make notes on it as
soon as it comes in if I'mawake, and depending on where it comes
from, and but I'll make thenotes right away and then we either they

(44:37):
or we usually we will determine ifwe need to do a sync a vis
a video like if the if ifmy notes aren't clear enough, and I
spend in posts most of my dayswriting notes, and you learn to be
very try to be as clear aspossible so that you know something that in
speaking you might be able to toto to tease out what is being asked

(45:00):
for. But when it's just words, typed words, you have to be
very clear about what isn't working andwhat is working and where you need it
to go. And sometimes when itbecomes too challenging, we do these sinks
and we you know, load upthe full res material and the vendors are
on and we use like kind oflike a zoom or a Google Meet is

(45:22):
what we use a lot and differenttools, and we either can see each
other or just hear the audio.But really what we're looking at is the
screen, and I'm circling things andsaying there's a problem here, or this
pops here, or the black levelsare too red here and they need to
be greener to match the plate andboosting the brightness up and the mid tones
to show them and all that kindof stuff that scrutiny that every single shot

(45:45):
goes through before I approve it.And then when we do get something that
meets my approval, I will thenshow Mike and the team and he'll you
know, hopefully approve it as well. But really the final approval is everything
is shipped to what's called the digitalintermediate or color timing session. Yeah,
and so everything comes together there visuallyand they you know, even out everything

(46:09):
so that it has a certain look. So some of the look that you're
talking about and the visual quality thatactually a lot of that was in camera,
but a lot of it also wassort of a look that they came
up with in the color sessions.Okay, I have a question based on
that. There's one super tiny effectthat happens in episode four that I'm fascinated

(46:30):
to know who did it because Ican't tell if it's a lighting trick or
if it's a digital trick. Andthat is it's the bar in nineteen eighty
nineteen seventy nine going into eighty right, and Madeline and Verna are sitting at
the bar together and Madeline is fullylit and Verna is almost in total darkness,

(46:52):
and they get close enough to eachother to kiss. Basically, is
that lighting? That's real? That'sreal, that's all lighting. Wow.
Okay, I'm super impressed. ButI thought you were going to talk about
there's a shot where we pull outit. It's the shot Chris, that
where we pull out of the bar. As you look at it, you
see the bar from nineteen seventy nine, and then we pull back and you

(47:16):
see it now and it's like theywalk out of it. Yeah, And
that was what was fun about thatshot is that on the set they had
a flat of the contemporary sort ofthe boarded up version that they moved out
of the way right so that anyway, it was a fun shot. So
it was like a bunch of people. As the camera just you know,

(47:37):
turned away for a minute, therewas like thirty crew members lifting this thing
up and running it across across theparking lot, across the street. I
mean, like, you guys areamazing. The digital tricks that you guys
do can do are incredible. Butthere's also something that's so charming to me
about thirty construction people picking up aflat and running away with it, and

(47:58):
like that old magic trick is stillsuper effective. It's all about what is
the most efficient way to get itand if you can do it that way.
I'm always saying, if you canget it for real, do it
for real. Why not. Wow? I have such admiration for the digital
effects part, but I also feellike I I'll never I guess that's the
whole point, right, is thatI'm never able to fully know what's digital

(48:21):
and what's not digital, and I'mjust supposed to focus on the visuals themselves.
I would think that's the art,right, If we've done our job
right, you won't know. Likethat's the point is that you don't know
when you look at something if it'sdigital or real, and hopefully you just
think everything's real, then we've doneour job right. Well. It is

(48:43):
a true testament to your your hardwork and dedication to this show that it
is. It's such a beautiful pieceof work, and we're having such an
amazing time watching it and really admiringit. And I know I'm admiring it
literally frame by frame in terms ofwhat you know, sort of visual feast
it is for the viewer. SoI'll just say that I've watched each episode

(49:06):
at least three times now, andit just keeps getting better. I just
keep finding things that I had missedthe first time. I'm loving it every
single time I watch it all themore, so thank you so much.
Oh that's great. One of thethings that I'm really proud of is the
fact that the Usher House and theneighborhood and the Longfellow House and the neighborhood.
I mean, we only built partof an Usher House, the first

(49:29):
floor, and that was on onesound stage, and the Longfellow House was
on another sound stage, and everythingin between, and all the storms and
all the trees and the clouds andblowing grasses and all that stuff was digital
and So what we did is wetied those two sound stages together and carried

(49:50):
Michael's lighting from from one sound stage, and then continued that through that whole
digital environment. We hooked them together. Essentially. This is a good example
of early on we were talking inpre production. There was talk about actually
building that a part of that wholeneighborhood somewhere in Vancouver, based on my
experience, and I suspect based onthe response to my recommendation, others had

(50:15):
said the same thing. So theidea was to build it outside in a
on an old street somewhere and buildall, you know, the houses.
But there is so little light inVancouver in in winter, right, and
it rains so often, and likeyou can't control anything, and it would
have been cold, and you know, all that kind of stuff, And
so the decision I remember in thatmeeting. I don't know if I was

(50:38):
the tie breaker or something, butI remember saying, my my perspective is
that we should do it in thestage, yeah, and we'll when we'll
build all of the in between,and Mike just said sold, and that
was it. This that must bevery gratifying to know that he has that
level of confidence in you all thatthat he'll and that amount of try that

(51:00):
he's like, I know these guyswill nail it. Yeah, I mean
there was never any I don't thinkthere was any concern on his part of
us being able to achieve it orpull off that look. But I also
think that it just rang true tohim. It wasn't just me suggesting it.
I think it made sense. AndI think although I hadn't been part
of that a prior I suspect otherpeople were saying something similar. But there

(51:23):
was a plan to go out andbuild. So I'm glad we didn't do
that. But when I look atthe show now, like, I'm like,
there's that's a world. That's awhole world there. It really is
quite effective, for sure, Andwe had to build it for nineteen fifties,
sixties, and then the court,the contemporary time, the dilapidated version,

(51:45):
and day and night, so there'sa lot of versions of that whole
world as well. Wow, that'sa lot for sure. Thank you so
much. We really appreciate your time. We are so grateful for you sharing
your time and expert teas with ustoday. Has been fascinating to learn from
you both. Thank you for beingwith us. Thank you with a pleasure,

(52:06):
Thanks for inviting us. Well,that was amazing. Yeah, I
learned so many things. I hadno idea about all the different pieces of
special effects and what was the catand what was the real cat? And

(52:28):
what was a puppet cat? Andwhat was a digital cat? Wasn't that
like I never would have guessed.Dude, I work in film and I
didn't even know half of that stuff. So I'm very I feel like I
have a whole new understanding of whatdigital effects is and how it works now
that I didn't know. I'm sograteful we talked to them. Absolutely,
I automatically, I think want tosay, like, oh, there's something

(52:50):
impossible happening on the screen that mustbe digital effects. That's my go to
as a viewer, and I thinkI need to revise that now because clearly
there's so much going on in thisshow that is just really beautiful and not
digital effects that I need to startsharing more of the credit with the other

(53:12):
people who were involved in the filmmakingprocess, right, Like, who would
have thought that that was a realcat sitting on the ledge? Not me?
Right? Like, no, forsure not And the digital cat looked
so much like the real cat anyway, so it was, you know,
impossible to know the difference. I'mstill not one hundred percent sure I believe

(53:35):
that there actually is such a thingas a trained cat. I mean,
if I'm going to be totally reallyjust like they're like, no, we
trained the cat to do these things. I'm like, did you really or
did the cat think it was hisidea? You know what I mean?
Well, yes, that's probably thecase. Maybe that's how the training goes
with cats. You make the catthink it's their idea to do something that
must be it. It's like reversepsychology. We could have a whole show

(53:59):
just about psychoanalyzing the cat, thestunt cat. Yes, but I did
have I did have a thought theway they were talking about Mike and Mike.
Yeah, Mike and Michael. Itwas very similar to how people described
the jas, you know, howclosely they work together and how you know,
symbiotic they were. And I don'tknow, I just had that thought

(54:22):
when you know that we learned aboutyou know, the Jays when we were
doing psychoanalyzing the patient. So wehave just this this other duo. Now
hopefully we can do more of theirshows. How closely they work together,
and what a force they are welland beyond that, which I think you're
absolutely right to point that out,by the way, I think that's very

(54:43):
astute observation. But in addition tothat, what I'm really learning in interviewing
all of these people who work withthem is they seem to gravitate back to
people that they've worked with in thepast, and they sort of have like
a trusted team of people almost sothat they can really dream big in terms

(55:05):
of visuals and otherwise and then justlet these really awesome people in on their
vision and go forward with it.But yeah, I think it's something that
you know, you've got this thisreal sort of like this symbiotic brain trust
at the top of the ladder,that they're really coming up with these super

(55:27):
developed concepts and seeing them through tothe end, I think is really cool.
Yeah, And we spent all thattime just talking about the cat too,
you know, like there were probablyso many other digital you know,
or special effects in the one episode, you know, not to mention all
the other episodes. But totally Ididn't feel that bad about it, only
because the episode was named a blackCat. So I started about like listen,

(55:51):
the cat's what they came for.If you're going to do a show
about a cat, just go withoh, for sure. No. I
just meant like, there's so muchyet that we don't even probably realize,
and the time that it takes.It seems like it took so much time
just to work on the cat,and they had to do that for every
single special effect in each episode,so that again we don't even know,

(56:15):
like what we learned about Perry andyou know, he was wearing contacts and
then they had finally the contacts wereirritating his eyes and so they had to
give him you know, they didspecial effects. You know that probably happened
countless times, with lots of thingsthat we don't we can't appreciate. You're
absolutely right. And also, Ithink the other thing that we didn't really

(56:37):
get a chance to ask Kristin Brettabout, but I think is important to
note is the money that's involved inthat is also a huge thing. Like
when they said the fact that thatcat walked the rail, sat down and
sat on the edge of the raillike that that saved them tens of thousands
of dollars. That doesn't even seemthat difficult in the realm of like we
need to get a cat to walkacross the rail and sit down. So

(56:59):
like, yeah, what is thereally complicated stuff cost? And yeah,
I wonder how often and as partof these conversations that we already detailed where
people are saying, Okay, thereal cat's going to do this, the
puppet cat's going to do this,the visual effects cat is going to do
this. But we only have somuch money. So unless we get a

(57:22):
coupon for visual effects discounts, we'regoing to need to actually go back to
the real cat and maybe put outsome extra food and hope that maybe he
cuts us some feel somehow. Yeah, I didn't realize that the digital was
so much more expensive, you knowthan the real cat. I would have

(57:42):
thought differently. Yeah, And alsothough in terms of like money with the
real cat, it's not like youcan say to the cat, like,
listen, I'll give you an extrafive thousand dollars if you can help me
out here, buddy, Like thecat's gonna do what the cat's going to
do. So right, Oh,that's I mean, again, the hardest

(58:04):
job in Hollywood in my opinion,professional cat trainer. That's what I think
I really truly believe this because likesomebody's like, all right, here's ten
thousand dollars, make the cat dowhat it's supposed to do, and you,
as the cat trainer, just haveboth of your fingers crossed, like
please, please, please do whatI want please, and the cat's just
just thinking ha ha, yeah that'sright. Like there better be food at

(58:27):
the end of this, buddy,or it's over right. I'm gonna cost
you one hundred thousand dollars in post. Yeah, well, this seems like
there's no place to leave it here. Thank you so much for joining us
for this episode of Psychoanalyzing the Fallof the House of Usher. We'll see
you at our next session. Byebye. Psychoanalyzing the Fall of the House

(58:50):
of Usher is a production of strawHut Media. Your hosts are Stacy and
I and Lindsay Jones. Your produceris Maggie Bowles. Editing and sound design
by Daniel Ferrera. Theme music byAdrian Breanger, with additional music from Marco
Martini and Artie Soun. Subscribe,rate and review and come back for new
episodes every Friday and tell us whatshould we psychoanalyze next? Let us know

(59:13):
by emailing us at psychoanalyzingat strawhumedia dotcom. See you next week.