NEW WORLD BUILDING

VFX producer Brooke Noska on new horizons

Episode one starts big – how long does it take to create those effects?

It usually takes, on a normal television schedule for a network, about eight to 10 weeks. For our new streaming Hulu experience, we’ve dedicated about 20 to 24 weeks per episode. Normally, if there wasn’t a pandemic in the middle of it…

Why was the decision taken this year to go bigger and bolder?

I guess, in a sense, why not? We made the leap to streaming and it would have hindered the vision of the show and the direction that it was going if we would have just done the same thing as we did previously. So we all, as a crew, cast writers, producers, wanted to take this to the next level, dare I say a new horizon. We just wanted to see how bold we can take it. We definitely have taken every minuscule bit of time that it could possibly take to make this look awesome.

The ship itself gets a new look…

The Orville is an extra character of the ensemble – because all of these stories and all these experiences are happening on this ship, in the world that is within and around the ship. So we wanted to beef up our character as well in visual effects, because all these other storylines and characters – new and old – are being introduced with new details. We wanted to be able to incorporate some new details into our little part of the show as well.

We gather there are some incredible creatures this season.

We definitely get to dip our toes into a little bit more creature development than we have in previous seasons, which is awesome. Every visual effects team wants to get their hands on a creature. So we do dabble in those throughout the season. Even if they’re not huge, big, sexy, scary. We have some cute little guys that get to come up and around throughout the season as well.

What do you hope fans take from season three?

It took us three years to get here. Hopefully everybody talks about it for just as long because it looks great, the stories are great and it’s just a great show. We wanted to make sure that we were still true to ourselves and the show and made sure that it was worth the wait. And through all the difficult times that you have this shining light. Which is what The Orville embodies – we’re a shining light of hope.