Soho-based studio Rumble VFX has delivered 100 visual effects shots for Season 2 of Pennyworth for Warner Horizon Television. Set a year after the events of the first season, England is in the face of a civil war, with Lord Harwood’s Raven Union threatening to control the entire country. Resistance holdouts remain in the West End Neutral Zone, where Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon) uses his training with the SAS to fight for justice. The story takes place decades before Alfred serves as Bruce Wayne’s loyal butler.
VFX supervisor Max Wright led the Rumble team on this project, working with the show’s overall VFX supervisor, Rob Delicata, on episodes 7, 9 and 10. Due to the fast turnaround, the main challenge for Rumble was getting all the shots out in a relatively short period of time. Shoot attendance and main turnover were just before Christmas 2020 with VFX starting the first week of January. Rumble VFX delivered its final shots in March 2021.
“They did a brilliant nightclub scene that Max supervised; it went really smoothly, and as a result, we awarded them two more sequences in the final episodes,” reports Delicata. This intensive sequence for Episode 7, directed by Catherine Morshead, was meant to be shot inside a nightclub. However, “due to the pandemic and social distancing, it did not look as busy as it should have,” explains Wright. “Rumble was tasked with adding background figures across the sequence, adding people in booths, to the bar and across the upstairs balcony.”
Multiple background actors were shot against a greenscreen and later composited back into the final shots. Wright was required on-set to supervise the greenscreen extras shoot. “As there were over 40 shots in the sequence, we came up with a detailed list of camera angles, heights and any specific actions that needed capturing to match the background plates.”
Rumble also created landscape and sky backgrounds for several scenes set high-up in the fascist Raven Society HQ in the final two episodes. The on-set windows were fitted with frosted glass. Rumble’s challenge was inserting an expansive horizon — made up from drone footage and panoramic skies. The skies were tweaked between episodes to reflect the mood of the scene. They also replaced the wheels on Arthur Pennyworth’s wheelchair for some shiny, new CG ones.
Rumble VFX used Foundry Nuke, SideFX Houdini and The Pixel Farm’s PFTrack.
Since its launch at the end of 2019, Rumble VFX has completed visual effects for TV productions including A Christmas Carol (BBC, 2019), Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic, 2020), Season 4 of The Crown (Netflix/Sony Pictures, 2020), Alien Worlds (Netflix, 2020) and the Super Bowl-timed first trailer for the upcoming James Bond movie No Time to Die (Universal Pictures, 2020).
