The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards wrapped Sunday night at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The visual effects trophies, though, were already spoken for. Those went out a week earlier at the Creative Arts ceremonies on September 5 and 6, same venue, smaller crowd, better parking.
Two winners this year. Spider-Noir took Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Single Episode. Stranger Things closed out its run with Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Season Or A Movie. Here is who actually built the work, plus the full nominee list for both categories.
Spider-Noir wins Single Episode
The winning episode is “Nightmare On A Gurney,” from the MGM+ and Prime Video series starring Nicolas Cage as a 1930s private detective in a mask. Production VFX supervisor Hnedel Maximore and VFX producer Brooke Noska led a show that ran roughly 3,200 visual effects shots across eight episodes.
The hard part was not the spider powers. It was the delivery. Every shot had to exist in three versions: raw, a full color “True-Hue” pass, and an authentic black and white pass, so colorists could build two separate timelines from the same material. Noska has said nobody had really attempted a dual-delivery series at this scale before. On top of that, modern Los Angeles had to read as 1933 Manhattan in nearly every exterior.
Eyeline published a breakdown of its contribution:
VFX studios that worked on Spider-Noir
- Industrial Light & Magic (VFX supervisor: Cameron Neilson)
- Eyeline (VFX supervisor: Adam Balentine)
- Cinesite (VFX supervisor: Suzie Askham)
- Barnstorm VFX (VFX supervisor: Tommy Tran)
- CoSA VFX (VFX supervisor: Sebastiano D’Aprile)
- Ingenuity Studios
- Alchemy 24
- BOT VFX
- Version Zero
- Torchlight (previs)
Worth noting: Prime Video cancelled the show after one season. Deadline reported it on September 5, the same weekend the Creative Arts Emmys began. Strong reviews, respectable viewership, expensive period production. The math did not work.
Stranger Things wins Season Or Movie
The final season was always going to be the big swing, and it was Netflix’s only nomination in either VFX category this year. Production VFX supervisor Betsy Paterson led the show, with VFX art director Michael Maher, additional supervisors Sean Ames and Craig Seitz, and special effects supervisor Mark Hawker.
Weta FX was the lead vendor, delivering more than 1,100 shots across all eight episodes under senior VFX supervisor Martin Hill and VFX producer Richard Thwaites. That work covered the arachnid Mind Flayer, the expanded Abyss environment, large-scale destruction, and the fire and atmospheric simulations that go with it.
VFX studios that worked on Stranger Things season 5
- Weta FX (senior VFX supervisor: Martin Hill)
- Industrial Light & Magic (VFX supervisor: Bill Georgiou)
- Rodeo FX
- Eyeline
- The Yard VFX
- BigHugFX
- Accenture Song
Eyeline turns up on both winners, which is a decent illustration of how thin the line between these shows has become at the vendor level.
Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Single Episode: all nominees
- Spider-Noir, “Nightmare On A Gurney” (MGM+ / Prime Video) WINNER
- Gen V, “New Year, New U” (Prime Video). Karen Heston, Sean Tompkins, Clara Hill, Dane Collier, Andrew Simmonds and team
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “In The Name Of The Mother” (HBO Max). Arron Roebuck, Paul Russo, Luke Dhand, Angel Rico Riesgo and team
- Paradise, “Exodus” (Hulu). John Weckworth, John Stewart, Chapel Folger, John Brennick and team
- The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, “Costa Da Morte” (AMC). Jao M’Changama, Justine Paynat-Sautivet, Sébastien Voisin and team
Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Season Or A Movie: all nominees
- Stranger Things (Netflix) WINNER
- Alien: Earth (FX / Hulu). Jonathan Rothbart leading, with Untold Studios, UPP, Zoic Studios, FIN VFX, Pixomondo and Crafty Apes
- Foundation (Apple TV). Chris MacLean leading a nine-supervisor roster
- IT: Welcome to Derry (HBO Max). Daryl Sawchuk leading, with Pier Lefebvre, Jordan Schilling and team
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV). Sean Konrad leading, with Bryan Hirota and Pier Lefebvre
- Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age (Apple TV). Russell Dodgson leading, with animation director Andrew R. Jones
What the category looked like this year
Apple TV took three of the six season slots. FX/Hulu, HBO Max and Netflix split the rest. Genre spread was wider than usual too: creature horror, prestige fantasy, dystopian sci-fi, zombie drama and a natural history series built entirely in CG.
The other pattern is vendor sprawl. Every nominee in both categories credits somewhere between six and a dozen supervisors across multiple facilities. Episodic VFX now runs on feature-scale pipelines with television delivery dates stapled to them, and the Emmy credit lists have started to look like it.
Leave a Reply