Elvis

Our primary environment task was building the MGM Studios back lot as it existed in the 1960s — the complex now known as Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. Production supplied us with period footage of Elvis at the studios, and we analysed it in forensic detail: the fixtures and fittings, the shapes of the drains, the trees, the gates, the buildings, the types of vehicles on the lot, the window styles, the signage. Every period detail that would make the environment historically credible was logged and referenced.

The scene required populating the lot with period-accurate vehicles. We chose to license stock 3D models wherever possible — working efficiently and directing our asset energy toward the things we couldn't source. There's a dedicated community of car enthusiasts producing high-quality period vehicle models, and with enough searching you can find assets that genuinely do justice to the originals. One asset we did have to build from scratch was Elvis's tour bus — based on stock photography reference. Production had constructed a partial practical set focused on the interior and facade, so we built the full bus digitally to align with that set piece and extend the roof and rear beyond what the physical build covered.

Production also supplied all of the period movie posters that we dressed onto the studio walls behind Elvis and his team. Beyond their historical accuracy, the posters do real compositional work — planting Elvis firmly in this movie studio world and adding visual interest to what would otherwise be a flat concrete backdrop.

The MGM back lot asset was built for two distinct lighting conditions. Its first appearance is at golden hour — the sun just setting on the horizon, casting long dramatic shadows across the lot. The live action component of the scene was shot inside the studio, with the action set in the shade of one of the buildings. We embraced the light direction established on set and placed reflective surfaces — windows, specifically — to create visual interest with sunlight catching behind the shaded characters. It's the kind of considered placement that makes an environment feel designed rather than assembled.

The keying on this sequence presented a particular challenge: Elvis is wearing a blue costume and was shot on a blue screen. Pulling a clean key from a blue subject on a blue backing required careful, precise work to preserve costume detail without losing edge quality.

The opening shot is a dramatic camera move flying down the water tower — very much in the tradition of Baz Luhrmann's work on Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby, where the camera sweeps through a world and lands on the action. We animated a camera through the CG environment and then applied that same motion to a locked-off live action plate, creating a seamless join between the two. To bridge the handoff from CG to plate, we built digital doubles of two characters in a golf buggy — CG from the beginning of the shot all the way through to the moment the live action takes over.

The transition itself is disguised by a Statue of Liberty set piece passing through frame. This is historically grounded: Planet of the Apes was being constructed at MGM around the same period Elvis was working at the studios, and the partially built Statue of Liberty prop was a period-accurate wipe that conceals the CG-to-plate cut entirely. If you look closely, you can see plaster and paint being applied to it.

The same back lot asset was relit for the night sequences. We did significant grading work on the foreground plates to integrate the two, pushing into cooler tones throughout. Subtle uplighting was applied to the period posters on the studio walls, and the illuminated Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio sign — placed high on a tower — anchors a tilt-down camera move that opens the sequence. The night shots came out well. The cooler grade, the warm accents on the signage and posters, and the scale of the environment combine into something that feels genuinely cinematic.

The RCA Studios sequence was shot on a partial set with strong atmospherics — dramatic lighting and haze already baked into the plates. Our task was to extend that set, including laying down the iconic checkerboard floor that is inseparable from the visual identity of RCA Studios. Production had built an Unreal asset used during the shoot, and we were handed that asset as a starting point. We brought it into Maya for additional modelling, handled materials in Substance Painter, and prepared it for rendering in Redshift.

The sequence required substantial rotoscoping — Elvis, his shadow, the band, the microphone, and a number of minor set pieces all needed to be isolated. Despite the drama of the environment, the compositing approach was deliberately restrained. This is a low-contrast scene, and the priority was keeping the audience's focus on Elvis. The environment is a supporting element, not the hero — even in the sequence's centrepiece shot, which opens wide on Elvis and sweeps dramatically past him up to the RCA sign above.

A dance number set inside the tour bus required a long camera move — starting deep inside the bus and pulling back through the front windscreen. The shot was captured without the windscreen in place, and we match moved the CG bus to the plate. Stock footage of the Las Vegas Strip at night was sourced and reflected across every metallic and stainless steel surface on the bus — the windscreen, the studs, the body panels. Elvis's tour bus is covered in the stuff, and getting the reflections to read correctly across every surface type as the camera pulled back was careful, detailed work. Signage was added to the top of the bus, setting the destination as Las Vegas.

For the sequence where Elvis departs for military service, we built the USS Randall — the troop transport ship that carried him to Germany. We were provided with a stock plate of a vessel sailing through calm ocean, tracked and painted out the original ship, and placed the Randall over the top. The practical wake from the stock footage — front and rear — was retained, giving us the ocean interaction for free. Effect smoke was added from the funnels, and CG crew were placed on deck to establish the ship's scale against the water. A small detail, but without figures on deck a ship at sea reads as a model.

A sequence showing Elvis's rise to fame called for animated newspapers — Elvis on the front page, editions stacking on top of each other in rapid succession. The newspapers were modelled and textured in Maya, run through Houdini for the paper bending and flex simulation, rendered in Redshift, and composited in Nuke. The stacking repetition effect was built entirely in Nuke from a small number of renders out of Houdini — an efficient pipeline that gave the compositors enough raw material to build the full sequence in post.

A number of shots required screen replacements on 1960s televisions — a mix of colour and black and white CRT sets. CRT screens have specific visual characteristics that separate them from modern displays, and we researched those carefully: the way light bounces from the screen surface onto the bezel surrounding it, the bloom, the scan lines, the particular quality of the image on a cathode ray tube. Getting those characteristics right is what makes a period TV read as the real thing rather than a modern screen with a grade applied.

The final shot in the reel required a TV to be switched off. We created a CRT power-down effect that mimics exactly how those screens die — the image contracting to a bright horizontal line before collapsing to a point and fading. It's a carefully crafted moment that we fully embraced. That specific visual is something audiences who grew up with CRTs will recognise immediately, and getting it right is a small but satisfying finishing detail on a production this steeped in a specific era.