Union VFX, which is known for its ability to seamlessly integrate realistic visual effects into live-action scenes, has done that and more with its work in The Regime, a six-episode HBO miniseries. The series focuses on a fictional authoritarian dictator whose regime is unraveling, as is she, spending significant time ruling from her opulent palace. CGI was used to augment the palace and grounds, build environments and backgrounds, generate crowds, create gruesome decay, and more.

Here in the US, we just came off a long, contentious political season in our quest to elect a new president. Despite the many battles, the situation could be considered relatively mild compared to the goings-on and political machinations occurring in a fictional country under Chancellor Elena Vernham’s authoritarian rule in the political satire The Regime.

The six-episode dark comedic HBO miniseries focuses on Vernham (Kate Winslet) and her struggle to stay in power in this Central European country. For her performance, Winslet is up for a Golden Globe, while co-star Hugh Grant, who plays the imprisoned former chancellor, has been nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award.

Vernham is a ruler who has grown increasingly paranoid, finding comfort within her palace walls as the modern authoritarian regime begins to fall apart.

Filming took place at the Schönbrunn Palace and Liechtenstein Garden Palace, as well as the Liechtenstein Museum, in Austria. However, to heighten the opulence and drama, the scenes were augmented with digital effects from Union VFX, which generated a host of realistic CGI, from digitally reimagining Schönbrunn Palace to dramatic war zone transitions, crowd scenes, CG landscapes, atmospheric effects, digital crowds, and more. See some of the work here.

Union VFX is known for creating a wide range of VFX, including those that seamlessly blend into the live action. The majority of the 700 visual effects shots in The Regime were carried out by the team at Union VFX’s new Montreal facility under the leadership of VFX Supervisor and Union co-founder Adam Gascoyne. A smaller team from Union VFX’s headquarters in London collaborated on the project.

Environments

With the palace playing such a pivotal role, it’s no wonder that Union VFX’s main task on the series entailed expanding and enhancing the chancellor’s palace and surrounding landscape to increase its grandeur. The team scanned the real Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, then redesigned it into a fictional, contemporary palace with grounds that were consistently featured in the series. This also included extending the landscape and creating a breathtaking mountain backdrop in the distance.

According to Union VFX, the palace required a significant amount of initial groundwork, including technical location recces and evaluations during pre-production, the enhancement of the palace design, development of a CG model, and lighting and rendering of the palace extension across different scenes, times of day, and various degrees of destruction in later episodes.

The studio highlights what it calls one of the most memorable shots, during which the camera transitions from the palace interior through a window and into a turbulent war zone. This was achieved using a blend of CG, digital matte painting, and 2D elements to enhance the scene, as the artists had only balcony footage at their disposal from which to work Following review of some 2D solutions and concepts, it became apparent that replacing the courtyard with a CG version was essential to uphold the parallax effect and realism, according to Union VFX. A digital matte painting was also used to merge the CG courtyard with the palace surroundings.

Environmental work was also needed to create barren and exhausted beet fields and a beet factory on the outskirts of the palace grounds. This included adding mud to enhance the rugged terrain, along with pillows of CG beets.

Gore

Some of the more absurd moments required enhancement of the chancellor’s deceased father’s body, gradually making the prosthetics and actor look more decayed as the show progressed. At one point, the storyline featured a complex talking corpse sequence that involved a lot of different 2D techniques. To accomplish this, Union VFX collaborated closely with the clients to achieve the desired appearance and gradually adjusted the level of decay accordingly.

In order for the sequence to be believable, the enhancements had to match perfectly with the actor’s facial expressions and muscle movements—no small technical challenge, the studio points out.

Crowds and other work

The wide and expansive crowd shots featured Vernham interacting with the audience and a dynamic sequence of a rioting mob—all of which involved seamlessly merging CG crowds, plates, and 2D elements.

Other work included some atmospheric enhancements, such as adding cold breath and movement to an extreme close-up shot. The team also delivered graphic design and screen replacements, which included the creation of various news channel graphics to be composited onto televisions throughout the episodes.