Chernobyl

One of the world’s worst man-made catastrophes

Credits

Directors

Johan Renck

Executive Producers

Craig Mazin, Jane Featherstone, Carolyn Strauss

Production Companies

HBO, Sky Television

Distributor

HBO, Sky

DNEG VFX Supervisor

Max Dennison

DNEG VFX Producer

Paul Jones

Release Date

6 May 2019

Synopsis

‘Chernobyl’, a five-part miniseries co-production from HBO and Sky, dramatizes the story of the 1986 nuclear accident, one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history — and of the sacrifices made to save Europe from unimaginable disaster. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, Soviet Union suffered a massive explosion that released radioactive material across Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and as far as Scandinavia and western Europe.

DNEG’s VFX work

‘Chernobyl’ was never about telling the story through gratuitous, scary visuals with the intention to shock. Instead it was to be completely story driven where VFX would provide support for the drama in every shot. Any VFX had to feel and look authentic and ultimately – plausible. While many VFX shots had live action plate integration, there were also many full CG shots which also had to seamlessly match the tone, style and feel of the surrounding drama shots.

Overall the team delivered about 550 shots for the series, designing the reactor #4 building inside and out, developing complex destruction and smoke simulations, creating CG vehicles like cars and helicopters, animating crowd, etc.

'Chernobyl, first-look review: Sky's new drama about the power plant explosion is mesmerising – and utterly horrifying.'THE TELEGRAPH