Episode 207 of “Legends of Tomorrow,” aptly named ‘Invasion!,’ pits the legends (with some help from The Flash and Supergirl) against creepy aliens out to annihilate Earth.
VFX for “Legends of Tomorrow” are created by Deluxe’s Encore, and supervised by Armen Kevorkian. Six times Emmy nominated and winner for ‘Banshee’, VFX supervisor Armen Kevorkian has long credit list in television VFX on shows such as ‘Star Trek: Voyager’, ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’, ‘Homeland’, ‘The Newsroom’ , ‘Hawaii Five-0’ and currently he oversees at Deluxe’s Encore VFX for the DC comics superheroes: ‘The Flash’, ‘Supergirl’ and ‘Legends of Tomorrow’. A show such as ‘The Flash’ typically runs 23 episodes.
All the work for the show was completed in LA at Encore’s Burbank office. “Our team is about 150 people, with about 40 people working on one episode”, commented Kevorkian. Encore has long been known for it’s episodic workflows and vfx work, the company is a cornerstone of Hollywood since 1985. Encore has an enormous infrastructure to cater to the demands of both TV’s high volume and complex scheduling. For example, in this DC world alone, “between prep, shooting and post across three series, sometimes we are working on more than nine episodes simultaneously” commented Kevorkian, who is officially Executive Creative Director and Senior VFX Supervisor.
Encore offers file-based post production services, including HDR mastering, 4K workflows and near-set dailies, along with high caliber visual effects. Kevorkian explains “we primarily use Max, Maya, NUKE, SythEyes, Phoenix and render everything in V-Ray” .
Legends of Tomorrow was shot in Vancouver entirely on Alexa. Given the nature of the program, in addition to explosions, set extensions and green screen, digital doubles are required for the super heroes as they are thrown off buildings or fly through the skies. “Gentle Giant did our initial scanning for Firestorm, Ray Palmer and Supergirl for this episode” Kevorkian outlines. “A company in Vancouver called IPV VFX does a lot of our regular scanning”.
This VFX breakdown video reveals how the extraterrestrial showdown was brought to life: