1899

From the creators of Netflix’s cult classic ‘Dark’, ‘1899’ tells the story of a migrant steamship travelling from London to New York. The passengers are caught up in an epic mystery when they discover a second, long-lost, migrant ship in the open seas.

DNEG was proud to deliver over 380 shots across all 8 episodes of the series, contributing beautiful and haunting visuals for some of the show’s key sequences.

Our VFX team created several CG assets for the series, including a fully CG Rose Chafer bug. The Rose Chafer asset was used throughout the story as a device to help the characters transport across locations. It needed to move in both natural and hyper-realistic ways, occasionally with a mechanical edge to indicate to the audience that something is not quite as it seems.

A particularly challenging sequence for our teams was the ‘Bullet Freeze’. For the transition from real-time to frozen-time, we used a combination of stereo and compositing techniques to create a ‘wave’ effect. We also added set extension, a CG bullet asset, and FX sparks, ejection flash, and air disturbance as the bullet is fired and travels through the air in slow motion. The actors frozen in place were all shot practically on set and supported with stands, then our paint and compositing teams added further stillness in post. Finally, when the lead character plucks the bullet out of the air, we took the last position of the FX elements and created a slight disturbance based on the actor’s matchmoved fingers.

We also delivered multiple additional FX elements, including storm rain, mist, lightning, water bubbles, and the ever-mysterious fog; as well as smoke, fire and ash simulations for the manor house fire sequence, for which we also rebuilt the entire manor house in full CG.

FROM THE CREATORS OF DARK, A NEW STORY IS FOUND

1899 | VFX Breakdown

1899 | Trailer

Netflix’s ground-breaking drama

We all wear masks

while we try to hide who we are.

We all made 
it happen

An Inside Look at Netflix’s '1899' with DNEG

'1899': DNEG provides VFX for Netflix’s eight-episode drama

'1899': Chris Nokes – VFX Supervisor – DNEG