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00:00 Created by Emmy-nominated screenwriter Graham Yost
00:03 and starring and executive produced by Rebecca Ferguson,
00:07 "Silo" is the story of the last 10,000 people on Earth
00:11 whose mild deep home protects them from the toxic
00:14 and deadly world outside.
00:16 However, no one knows when or why the silo was built
00:21 and anyone who tries to find out faces fatal consequences.
00:26 Season one is available to watch now.
00:28 Let's welcome to the stage "Silo" VFX supervisor,
00:32 Daniel Rochwerger, whose credits include
00:35 "Wonder Woman" franchise, "Inception",
00:37 "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" part two.
00:40 Hello, how are you?
00:41 Good, so this show is a massive undertaking.
00:46 Tell us about what the VFX vision was for "Silo"
00:51 and what were some of the challenges?
00:54 So the first thing that happened when I joined the show,
00:57 I was told we have a character in the show, that's the silo.
01:00 We need to treat it like an actor,
01:02 we need to treat it like one of the characters in the show.
01:05 So we had to build a massive space
01:09 when 10,000 people have to live.
01:11 And one of the main thing that was presented to us
01:14 as a challenge is that the design was of one open space.
01:19 So very quickly we had to treat it as one room.
01:24 Every time you look up, down or sideways,
01:26 you will see the next room up, the next room down,
01:30 and you will see the same people
01:32 continually going up, down, living their life.
01:35 And one of the main things that became a challenge for us
01:38 is bringing all those people to life,
01:41 all the people that are not the main cast,
01:43 but are just living there, doing what people do in a city.
01:47 And then tell us about that more though,
01:52 in terms of building the actual silo
01:55 and the whole vertical and horizontal of it.
01:58 - So the silo is a massive spiral staircase
02:03 that guides you up and down.
02:06 We were obviously limited by space,
02:08 even though it's something the production designer said
02:11 you will not be limited by.
02:12 You open the silo, we have farm levels
02:18 that are horizontally open,
02:19 we have alleyways leading all the way
02:21 to the outer walls of the silo,
02:24 and we have continuity of floors traveling vertically.
02:29 So one of the main things we had to think of
02:32 is how do we create it in a way
02:33 that can play in one sequence and then the next sequence
02:38 and always have lived the history
02:42 of what just happened in the silo
02:44 as we progress down or up the silo.
02:47 If you haven't seen the show, we see it on the screen.
02:50 So we're stitching very similar environments
02:54 that look quite different.
02:55 So we didn't really have a choice
02:58 but to build something that we can work on,
03:02 what we call the lush world
03:03 and the wasteland that you see at the end,
03:07 but still have visual cues that guide the audience
03:10 through those elements
03:12 so that you can ask yourself the question,
03:15 is it real, what's real?
03:17 (audience applauding)
03:21 - Now, can you talk about your inspiration here?
03:25 Did you guys take a lot from the author, Hugh Howey?
03:28 - Yes, so Hugh Howey was very involved
03:32 in the creation of the show.
03:33 He came to set to visit us.
03:35 He was involved in the writing.
03:37 There's a few changes that had to happen to the show
03:40 because of just how they play on TV versus the book.
03:45 He was involved in approving
03:48 and writing those solutions with Graham.
03:50 And he allowed us quite a lot of creative freedom
03:55 to create it.
03:56 Obviously, when you take a book
03:57 and you make it into a show,
03:58 you deal with the questions of,
04:00 oh, how does that actually work?
04:02 And sometimes it's a line in the book
04:04 that we suddenly have to go, okay, it's a new asset.
04:07 We have to build this thing and somehow show it.
04:10 How does it play?
04:11 How does it work?
04:13 So yeah, he was quite involved.
04:15 That's the reason we changed the stairs
04:16 from metal into concrete.
04:18 One of those things that's in the book,
04:21 everyone, we can't hear enough about it
04:24 from fans of the book.
04:26 But the stairs were written as metal,
04:30 but obviously because of sound and visual strength,
04:34 we went with concrete that kind of played nicely.
04:38 - It has a very gorgeous Ralph McQuarrie look to it.
04:43 - The design of it, and Gavin, our production designer,
04:52 we've been to quite a few turns and spins
04:56 into what would be the look of this creature,
04:59 of that kind of silo.
05:01 And you can kind of notice there's a lot of lines
05:04 of things that are a bit of art deco kind of.
05:07 And with the way it was lensed
05:10 and the way it was played by the directors,
05:13 one of the things that pushed it to that look
05:16 was kind of a very weird decision
05:19 that the silo has to be in focus,
05:21 which from VFX point of view, not always helpful,
05:25 but that was a decision on the lensing
05:29 and to create it in a way that we can always see it,
05:31 we can always have it on wide lenses,
05:33 very anamorphic lenses and create that look
05:38 that really takes you in there
05:40 and kind of sells this dystopian look,
05:43 which also kind of plays nicely
05:46 into the vertical moving the silo.
05:48 One of the main things we had to create
05:49 is that travel between the top,
05:52 that's well-maintained, quite clear, quite pristine.
05:57 And as you travel down to the silo,
05:59 you go deeper and darker, more grime, more dirt.
06:04 There was a lot of research we had to kind of try
06:07 and figure out how it looks when you look down in New York,
06:11 when you look down one of the boulevards, you just see it.
06:14 And you see how the city feels miles away from you
06:18 versus where it's right next to you.
06:20 And that silo is quite a long climb.
06:25 - So how long for the entire series, VFX work,
06:28 how many months?
06:31 - We started in 2021 in the middle of COVID
06:36 with less people than what was needed on set.
06:39 So obviously that forced us to do more crowd,
06:43 more buildup of people.
06:45 And then we finished, what time is it?
06:49 Yeah, it's like April last year.
06:51 - And then for you, how does this stack up
06:55 next to something like "Inception,"
06:58 which is a marvel?
06:59 - I think this was quite a different show
07:02 and that's why I was attracted to it.
07:04 When I read the script and was offered the show,
07:07 it was an opportunity to do something a bit different.
07:09 "Inception," a lot of those other movies
07:12 that I've worked on are very explosive VFX.
07:16 A lot of look development, but this had something
07:19 that if I challenge it, if I'm doing my work right,
07:24 no one will know I was there.
07:25 And that was kind of a nice, just being in the background
07:28 and going sell that illusion of a living city on the ground.
07:33 - Are you currently working on season two?
07:35 - I am.
07:36 - Can you tease anything for us?
07:38 - It's gonna be cool.
07:40 (all laughing)
07:42 I'm allowed not to say nothing.
07:45 Read the books, but it's...
07:47 (all laughing)
07:48 And then all the spoilers are there, but it's...
07:50 Yeah, we got into much better shape from season one.
07:57 We're all building our leg muscles up and down the stairs,
08:00 and it's gonna be brilliant.
08:03 It's a very good season.
08:04 - How far along are you?
08:06 Do you mark it by episodes, or do you know?
08:09 Like, do you know if you're three episodes deep,
08:11 four episodes deep?
08:13 - We cross-board our episodes, so we shoot everything.
08:17 Because of the size of our sets,
08:19 one of the things we have to do is we have to shoot
08:22 a look for the set in one go.
08:26 It takes a long time, weeks and months,
08:28 to reset a set to another look.
08:31 So we constantly move between different areas of the silo.
08:35 We build one set, a farm, work there.
08:37 In the meanwhile, they're building another set.
08:41 I nearly said something.
08:42 But... (laughs)
08:44 Constantly tell yourself, "Don't say that."
08:47 But we're building a lot of sets.
08:50 That's why we build, for season one,
08:52 we build two replicas of the set, the stair sets,
08:56 in order to be able to constantly move
08:59 and feed to different levels, and how much we could build.
09:02 - Can you tell us about the technology you're using
09:05 to do all of this?
09:07 Quite often, on certain CGI animated films,
09:11 and even some temple spectacles,
09:15 they'll invent a new technology to take on
09:18 whatever the demand is of the VFX.
09:20 - So we really use kind of, it's funny,
09:24 'cause the main thing we had to develop
09:26 is how to create our crowd captures
09:29 and behaviors for this show.
09:32 Now, there's quite a lot of techniques and ways to do it,
09:37 but one of the things we had to deal with
09:39 is really the detailing in the capture,
09:42 and learning those behaviors.
09:44 One of the things about the silo is it's round.
09:47 And when you capture a crowd,
09:49 the tendencies, they go, oh, they either walk,
09:52 move in straight lines, take corners.
09:54 There's a lot of things you can kind of break apart,
09:57 but we had to have everyone constantly walking in curves,
10:00 or on what turned out to be quite a challenge
10:03 is the spiral staircase.
10:05 So the stride you take in the middle of a spiral staircase
10:09 is very different to the stride you take
10:11 on the outer side of those stairs,
10:13 which our stairs were very different
10:16 on the outer side and the inner side,
10:17 because they were so big.
10:19 And we had to constantly have our cast
10:21 run between CG people, connected between shots,
10:25 and running on those stairs,
10:28 taking corners, going onto bridges.
10:31 And we had to really break down those behaviors
10:34 to the people on the outer balconies,
10:36 the people that walk onto the bridges,
10:38 fall off bridges, run, push each other,
10:42 how they interact, and how do you interact with someone
10:44 when you're running on a curved line,
10:47 which created quite a limit with what we could use
10:50 with volume captures and with motion control
10:55 and motion capture sets.
10:57 And one of the things we've built
10:59 is those different types of stairs
11:02 to be able to break the body movement.
11:04 So we built our staircase as straight stairs as well
11:09 for the inner stride, for the middle stride,
11:11 for the outer stride,
11:12 just to be able to capture the vertical movement.
11:15 And then we had to build captures
11:17 for the round movements separately,
11:20 and then leave it to people that are much smarter than me
11:23 to put it all together.
11:24 And then I get to sit on the back end of it
11:27 and say, "That looks right, or not."
11:29 (audience laughing)
11:30 - But they're a much more serious crowd
11:33 than the AFC Richmond Stadium in Texas.
11:36 - Very.
11:37 - Everyone, Silo VFX supervisor, Daniel Rochwerger.
11:42 (audience applauding)
11:43 [APPLAUSE]