Netflix
The Adam Project
VFX Concept Development
Our team worked with Netflix and Director Shawn Levy to visualize key effects for The Adam Project. The film deals heavily with theories of time travel and instability in the fabric of time. Heady stuff…and a ton of fun to conceptualize!
Year
2021
Client
Netflix
Concept development for films and visual effects can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a bit challenging. Director Shawn Levy and the VFX team on Netflix’s The Adam Project brought us on board early in their pre-production the help build out the world they were creating.
In concept development scopes the initial brief is typically made up of some ideas and script pages. As a Producer, scoping these engagements requires you to have a good grasp on the concepts, an understanding of the expected outcomes, and the experience to apply the proper team and time to fill in the white space between those cornerstones.
For The Adam Project, we worked alongside legendary VFX Supervisor Erik Nash to design concepts for two key effects within the film:
The Mag Cyl (magnetic cylinder) weapon design
The BYE Effect which was as effect tied to several weapons in the film that could disintegrate people within the fabric of time
And with that, we dove right in!
The Mag Cyl Weapon
The parameters for this weapon that we first discussed with Erik Nash were that it needed to be believably telescopic and emit some sort of visible magnetic field so the audience could understand it’s complexity a bit. (but NOT a light saber!)
We began with some research in magnetic fields and visualizations before starting with with the industrial design of the weapon some concepts for how its magnetic intensity could look within the film.
The BYE Effect
This effect is tied to the Mag Cyl and some of the other weaponry in the film. The underlying principle we were exploring was that these weapons would cause instability in time and cause their targets to disintegrate or fragment within the fabric of time. Approaching this effect was really interesting and needed a lot of exploration and experimentation.
I worked with our team to build a process of Research, Low-Fi Experimentation, and simple Motion Studies. My approach to these scopes is to have the team work at a lower fidelity so that the ideas are tested, not necessarily our ability to render beautiful pixels. If the idea is solid, beauty can come later.
Research
Still Frame Explorations
Motion Studies
It’s always fun to see where the effect ends up months or even years after initially exploring it. You can definitely see some DNA of our initial tests in the beautiful final effect in the film.
Studio : Perception
Chief Creative: John LePore
Art Director: Seiji Anderson
Head of Operations: Kris Barone
Producer: Eric Daly
Artists: Peter Eszenyi, Dave Weinstock
"Thanks so much for the great work!"
— Adam LaGuttuta, VFX Producer