Interview with Lawson Deming from Barnstorm VFX the team behind The Man in the High Castle

Barnstorm VFX is the company behind popular shows like Silicon Valley, Outlander, Fargo, and Lost. The company co-founder, Lawson Deming, spoke with Hidden Remote about his work on Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle.

Do you watch the making-of documentaries behind your favorite movies and television shows? Do you find it interesting to learn what went into the world-building of your favorite series? I’ve always found myself fascinated by the behind-the-scenes process of filmmaking and I was delighted to get the opportunity to speak with Lawson Deming, the co-founder of Barnstorm VFX about his work on Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle and on title credits for shows like The Good Fight and Strange Angel.

Hidden Remote: Did you want to start by talking a little about The Man in the High Castle? Can you talk a little about the process of working on the show?

Lawson Deming: There is a lot of world-building and VFX on The Man in the High Castle. Whenever possible, we’ll do things practically but there are certain situations where things need to be re-imagined as a visual effect. Sometimes it just means augmenting something, we work with a really great art department on The Man in the High Castle who build all of the sets and everything the actors interact with generally.

But they can only build things so big, so we have to craft what you see in the distance and the city. The Man in the High Castle is shot in Vancouver, British Columbia and Vancouver has to stand in for New York City, San Francisco, and in seasons three and four, it also has to stand in for Denver, Colorado and in some cases it even has to stand in for Berlin.

There are scenes where you do create something totally visually and there’s usually a lot of planning going into that. We plan out the camera movements in advance, storyboard, discussions about what we would see and where. So usually by the time we get on set it’s not just this idea we’re shooting into nothingness. Our production designer sketches and illustrates a lot of concept work that we can build off of. Because again, so much of it becomes the basis for our CG stuff. There’s a lot that goes into it.

HR: I used to think VFX was just the flashy stuff but a lot of times you don’t even realize something you’re seeing has been manufactured.

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LD: Only the obvious ones are obvious. There is so much you don’t see because you’re not looking for it. There is no such thing as a non-VFX show nowadays. Even a half hour network comedy will have n handful of VFX per episode.

HR: And you guys have worked on so many different genres so I was wondering if your approach changes at all based on genre or is it really dependent on the story?

LD: It’s really dependent on the style that determines what the VFX needs to be for that show and that doesn’t necessarily mean realistic but that it’s believable for the world of that show.

You’re often considering how to shoot an effect, how would the cinematographer would shoot this? How can we build this prop like the prop master would? How can we build a CG set the way production design would? In that sense we do change our style for each show.

HR: Do you prefer working on more realistic shows or the fantastical ones?

LD: I think variety is fun. We are only in this business because we like to use our imaginations. Doing the same thing every day can get boring. As long as things are interesting and different, it makes working on different shows gratifying. I really like it when we make something no one would even assume is VFX. Sometimes the best compliment you can get as a VFX artist is for no one to say anything.

HR: Is there anything in VFX you find really tricky?

LD: I think, often times, the trickiest things to do are things that aren’t inherently believable. Often the reason people resort to VFX is because they can’t do a certain thing practically. As a result you get asked to make things move in unrealistic ways and people ask, “Why does this look weird?” Because it wouldn’t do that normally.

It is funny to say because it’s VFX, so a lot of what we do is fantastical and unbelievable, conceptually, which can be very difficult to express. You always want to ground it in something realistic. You want your unreal things to evoke a memory in your audience, or a sensation, of something they do know in order to sell it to them.