PRODUCTION. THE DEVIL’S PROMISE
PICTURE THE SCENE Shooting on location all over Cairo left Teague and his team with no shortage of amazing sets and backdrops
“After the war began, our VFX team was dispersed into Poland, Norway and various countries”
was particularly hard emotionally for everyone involved.” It was obvious that Terminal was going to need some help, so some of the VFX work was passed to another company. “The problem was, Terminal couldn’t even use its own server, so they had to access one in the cloud and that reduces capacity. Plus there’s a cost involved,” explains Teague. “So, we all did what we could to help them out because we could see it was going to be tough. We took all the clean-up work and gave it to Hula Hoop in India. Lots of productions have clean-up work now – like adding more blood in a sequence. The move
manipulated the plates to make them look like burning sand.” Loman Field explains how the introduction of these techniques means writers can approach projects differently to the past. “Colin gave me carte blanche to plunge into the wildest depths of my imaginings,” she says. “Not all my ideas ended up in the shooting scripts, though many did – these techniques enable us to visualise totally freely.” Teague and his team took the decision to use green screen, as the material was easier to source. The set had a huge 270° of on-camera angles, which was used to shoot all the scenes and sequences. However, VFX deployment wasn’t without its problems. The invasion of Ukraine meant there were complications ahead after the series had wrapped. “You can imagine the issues we had in post after the war began – the whole team was dispersed into Poland, Norway and various countries,” Teague says. “The managing director went to Canada, while several artists stayed in Kyiv. Some were even enlisted to fight for the Ukrainian army. The team did an incredible job in very tough conditions – sometimes it
meant Terminal could focus on the big 3D models and animation.” Several months were spent on perfecting the look of the jinn and the Iblis world, and Teague knew he had a big project on his hands. “The war coming along just meant there was a race to the finish line,” he says. “It created more pressure at the back end because of the CGI-heavy effects in later episodes. So, as we built up to the climax, it was all hands on deck as we tried to negotiate the number of shots. When you consider 200-250 shots, with over 1200 visual effects within the series, it’s not a small job.”
TOMB RAIDERS This mystical drama series draws on Egyptian and Arabic mythology, directed with Colin Teague’s characteristic flair and charm
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