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How VFX studio Lux Aeterna delivered high-end visual effects in keeping with the ‘80s cinematic atmosphere of the Netflix series.
Over the course of three episodes, Netflix’s The Manhattan Alien Abduction tells the story of Linda Napolitano, a New York City housewife who claimed to have been abducted by aliens from her 12th floor Manhattan apartment in November, 1989. Multiple eyewitnesses claim to have seen Linda float out of her window and ascend into a UFO. To this day, Linda remains convinced her experience was real. The retro-futuristic series covering the events was released on Netflix on the eve of Halloween, to uncover the true story behind one of the UFO community's greatest mysteries.
“The story is less about the paranormal and more about the belief system surrounding it,” comments series director, Dan Vernon, “the aim is to explore human interest stories, focussing on people whose lives have been changed by these beliefs, not conspiracies.”
From VFX builds of the spaceship to dreamy sequences of Linda ascending to the UFO, VFX studio Lux Aeterna was brought in to deliver high-end visual effects that remained in keeping with the ‘80s cinematic atmosphere of the series. To support this vision, Lux Aeterna held a VFX masterclass with the entire team at Story Films at the start of the project, empowering them with the insights needed to make informed VFX decisions throughout filming and the edit process.
Retro-futuristic VFX
Under the guidance of Story Films Executive Producer, Peter Beard, and Director Dan Vernon, the Lux Aeterna team showcased its expertise in producing Hollywood-level visual effects on a streaming budget. “The event the series is based on occurred in the late 1980s, a period dominated by Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi style, which used in-camera techniques and cloud tanks to create a retro-futuristic effect,” notes Vernon.
Lux Aeterna’s work on the abduction shots took place in two parts: firstly, a set shoot where Linda was suspended on wires using a crane, with wire removal taking place on-set. Secondly, there was a blue-screen shoot, involving a techno crane that was suspended to produce downward-looking shots. These shots of Linda’s abduction were then integrated with backplates provided to the Lux Aeterna team, which had been shot around Linda’s apartment building in New York, using a drone directed remotely from London.
Rob Hifle, CEO and Creative Director, and Tav Flett, Compositing Supervisor, served as on-set VFX supervisors for the Black Island Studios shoot. Due to being on-set for the shoot, Lux Aeterna was able to identify issues before moving into post-production, comments Flett, “Rob and myself were able to catch a lot of the issues onset before they were committed to film – having supervisors on-set is invaluable for these types of shoots, as they can end up saving the production a lot of money and enables the compositing team to be most efficient.”
To produce the footage of Linda being beamed up through the clouds, Lux Aeterna adopted 80s-style cloud tank volumetric effects that were replicated in Houdini. Renowned stereographer Chris Parks’ cloud tank volumetric effects were licensed and used to create textures that were then integrated with the shots of Linda suspended above the Manhattan skyline, grounding the series further within the sci-fi realm.
Lux Aeterna provided half a dozen shots of the reported UFO, and VFX Director Paul Silcox took charge of the process of building the spacecraft. The CG process took many iterations and three mood board stages, until an interview where a witness described the ship as ‘classic UFO shape’ entirely changed the approach and resulted in the team settling on the perfect look.
Saving render times
Using innovative machine learning techniques, Lux Aeterna was able to save 60–70% on the render time. Complex cloud scenes were rendered in Solaris XPU at 8K with 40+ volume bounces and significantly lower stochastic samples than is usually acceptable. The individual AOVs and light groups were then denoised using Intel's AI algorithm before being recombined and scaled back to 4K. This more efficient pipeline greatly reduced the studio’s carbon footprint due to shorter render time, part of a larger push towards more sustainable practices in VFX.
Netflix wanted The Manhattan Alien Abduction to have the feel of a drama and the grand cinematic atmosphere of an ‘80s blockbuster film. Director of Photography Tim Cragg used the ARRI Mini LF and Cooke FF anamorphic lenses to produce the desired aesthetic. “This series needed an epic, cinematic composition and look,” states Cragg, “I felt that combination of lens and camera is great to help achieve that.” Taking inspiration from iconic shots like the spaceship over Manhattan in Independence Day, Lux Aeterna endeavoured to permeate its work with the filmmaking style of the time, while simultaneously reinventing it to keep the series contemporary. This 80s aesthetic is most evident in the dream sequences that the team produced, which were heavily stylised to match the filmmaking style of the era.
A balance had to be struck between science fiction and the realism of a documentary. Cragg used a docu-drama interview style to ground the series in reality – employing a hyper-real, archival lighting style throughout these shots. “Tim’s lighting style brought the series to life”, comments Hifle, and Lux Aeterna drew inspiration from the lighting aesthetic and saturated colour palette of these scenes, applying it throughout the series, from the studio shots to the typography style and graphics like maps of Manhattan and newspaper clippings.
On-set data
To retain the aesthetic of the principal photography, the Lux Aeterna team utilised the data from the cameras on-shoot–this was invaluable for the compositing process. “We captured lens grids for the entire lens kit , as well as bokeh and lens flare references”, explains Flett. “As the whole show was shot anamorphic on the ARRI Alexa Mini and Alexa LF, using Cooke anamorphic primes, it was important to maintain these characteristics.”
Next, Flett and the compositing team created custom lens gizmos modelled on the falloff, softness, and chromatic aberrations of the Cooke lenses to aid with integrating elements into the principal photography. Lens flares were also created to replicate those achieved onset.
“There is a love of sci-fi amongst the team,” notes Hifle about the team’s attitudes towards The Manhattan Alien Abduction, “so it was a dream project to come through the door.” Throughout the production, Vernon was in close communication with Lux Aeterna, allowing for a lot of creative freedom and ideation. This level of trust in the studio’s creative vision and space for flexing imagination made the project a joy to work on for the whole team.
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