After seven seasons, the popular drama The 100 concluded its journey on The CW, and this last season of episodes gave CoSA VFX our biggest responsibility on the series, working on the anomaly effects in many situations. These anomalies often paired with other visual effects such as new terrains or the addition of other assets, such as early in the finale episode, when Jordan Green (Shannon Kook) comes through a green anomaly and then we see enemy soldiers popping in across the battlefield.
“This was a climactic moment and this revealed the overwhelming forces that were ready to fight,” CoSA VFX Supervisor Nick Lund-Ulrich explained when talking about the shot. “We had to find a look for the EMP wave, which was supposed to be subtle, but still register as a force that is revealing the soldiers. In addition to the wave, we had to design a reveal effect that corresponded with the wave’s motion but was also random to account for the suits shorting out differently.”
In creating the red anomaly effect for Raven (Lindsey Morgan) to interact with, CoSA VFX was told that it should look similar to the various other anomalies we had done previously, but additionally, it should have characteristics of a red pulsar. “[The 100 VFX Supervisor] Michael Cliett supplied CoSA with a number of reference images which gave us a great place to start and from there we came up with a few looks to try and hit on the right one. We played around with a number of different shades of red to really find the perfect one,” Nick said. “Red can be a tricky color to represent on screen so it was really helpful that we had a number of images of the tones that were needed as a good starting place to shift the anomaly into the red spectrum.”
“One of the best things about working on The 100 was the unpredictability of how the anomaly would be seen in any given episode,” Lund-Ulrich said of the experience of working on the series’ final season. “Normally when you are doing an effect across a season it can become repetitive, but due to the changing nature of the anomaly and how it interacted with the characters it was really exciting and a challenge to figure it out each episode.”
“The biggest challenge, but also the most rewarding, was figuring out the best way to create an asset, in this case the anomaly, and have that asset be flexible enough to be used across a wide variety of shots and situations, without having to completely go back to square one and rethink how we are executing it,” Nick says of what we were able to create for the show. “We feel that we were very successful and that the anomaly really worked well across the season in all its permutations.”
Finally, Nick has praise for the whole team at The 100. “Michael Cliett was always excellent about giving us great suggestions and a defined direction as a starting place for the VFX, but also allowed us to make suggestions and be part of the team to help come up with something that really helped to tell the story. Also we want to say thank you to Co-EP Tim Scanlan and Post Supervisor Emanuel Fidalgo for being excellent folks to work with,” he said, adding praise for his compatriots at CoSA as well. “Jason Spratt was our producer and an essential part of the team and lastly, I just want to thank CoSA’s Compositing Supervisor on the show, Subodh Singh, for being a great collaborative partner and essential in creating the work that CoSA did.”
ABOUT CoSA VFX
Founded in 2009, CoSA VFX has grown from a small boutique into a thriving visual effects studio with offices in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Vancouver. The CoSA VFX team has received Emmy nominations and wins for their work on TV series including Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Almost Human, Revolution, and Gotham, and currently provides visual effects for multiple studios, networks and streaming television services.
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