Based on the extraordinary true story of wellness influencer Belle Gibson, who built a global self-care empire while falsely claiming to have healed herself of terminal cancer through diet and alternative medicine. The series is a sharp, disturbing portrait of modern wellness culture and the dangers of unchecked influence.
Produced for Netflix and shot in Australia, Apple Cider Vinegar stars Kaitlyn Dever and garnered significant international attention upon its release.
Future Associate delivered VFX across the series, with our central contribution being Lucy's drug trip sequence in Episode 4: leeches, body decomposition and a full CG plant growth scene built from scratch.
/ Lucy's Drug Trip — Episode 4
Our work centred on Lucy's drug trip in Episode 4 — a sequence that builds from unease into full hallucination, ending in leeches, decomposition and the rapid growth of plant life from a skeletal body.
Cleanup and costume fixes across the sequence were handled using Nuke's CopyCat machine learning function. We trained a network to absorb the repetitive, high-volume work, freeing our artists to focus on the more complex elements.
The leeches and body decomposition were a combination of rotomation and Houdini simulation. Houdini's procedural toolkit handled the placement of the leech population across the body, with specific hero leeches animated individually where the camera demanded it. The decomposition — the body wasting away — was also Houdini-driven, a large sim built to sell the progression convincingly.
The final portion of the sequence — the skeletal body and the growing plants — was a full CG scene, with the original plates used for lighting reference and backgrounds. The rapid plant growth was driven by Houdini, with real-world time-lapse and documentary footage referenced throughout to give the acceleration a genuine physical logic. A fern of the same species appearing in the shots was procured and used as direct reference by our FX team. It now lives in the studio.