Fox Tv Bones

THE RATINGS RACE: Week 31

LOOK FX on Fox Television's Bones. - CGSociety - Bones

Look FX is situated deep in the heart of Hollywood. It seems only natural for a high-rating Fox Television show to have its VFX produced out of this facility. Christian Cardona is the VFX Supervisor at LOOK FX and oversaw the VFX pipeline for the series of 'Bones' just completed.

"'Bones' creatives allow us to be really deeply involved in the process with them," explains Cardona. "This allows for new ideas and approaches to come to the table and we feel that we can really contribute to the story telling.
This is important for LOOK FX to be involved." Before any storyboards were done, the LOOK FX leads had an initial concept meeting with the creatives, to go through the screenplay ideas. This is to flush out what exactly happens in the script, action-wise and within the story. Based on those solutions and the approach, Cardona creates a simple animatic, suggesting camera movement, composition and angle of a particular shot. "A lot of times, the scenes are opened up or closed, using VFX of some description," explains Cardona. "Sometimes, the Fox team love our animatic and go with our initial ideas, which is great."

LOOK FX do a lot of set extensions, and gore enhancement in the Bones series, but as an example of some of the challenges, the script for one particular episode called for a scene at a butterfly sanctuary. "It's the kind of place that butterflies can fly freely, and people can go a watch butterflies. The Fox crew hear the word 'butterflies' and immediately look over to us," said Cardona. "There are budget considerations of course, and they want to know how far they could push LOOK FX." So Cardona suggests the scene starts off on a butterfly, similar to the opening of Forest Gump with the white feather floating down.

In this instance, the butterfly takes the viewer to the main characters, to open the scene. "Every episode, the writers come up with new ways to challenge us. But we're able to input ways to make the story visually exciting. They encourage us to do that, which is different to some other studios. Most definitely collaborative. So the work is always interesting, fun, and fresh."
Producing the Bones show, the most difficult thing is the schedule. "It's pretty brutal, in fact," Cardona corrects. "We usually have to deliver ten days before air date, which leaves us about 5-8 days to deliver all of our VFX from start to finish.

Billboard

TV Year, Volume 1, The Prime Time 2005-2006 Season

Spider Bones

How to Build Stronger Bones and Live Longer, With Dr. Susan Brown, Author of "Better Bones Better Body"

The Hollywood reporter