《The Number One Diplomat》(The Diplomat)'s visual effects are best invisible.

English manor, seasonal changes, aircraft carriers at sea, there are many scenes in "The Diplomat" that have been processed by visual effects.In an interview with What’s on Netflix, Tiffany Smith Llorens, who participated in the production of the show, said that the visual effects of the show must be natural and unobtrusive: the protagonist is the story, and the visual effects are responsible for supporting the story.

Llorens, currently a senior executive producer at Framestore, previously worked as a visual effects supervisor at Netflix, where he was responsible for projects such as The Boroughs, Wednesday, Ripley and Vikings: Valhalla.Going forward, her film credits include Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Titanic, Mission: Impossible II, Deep Blue Sea, Midnight Meat Train, Reign of Fire and Road toPerdition).

Her recurring obsessions as a child were The Goonies, The NeverEnding Story, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Gremlins.However, she initially had no intention of turning movies into a career.After moving out of home at the age of 17, she studied at California State University, Northridge, while working as an assistant on independent production and music video sets to first pay for her own living expenses.

In 1996, a friend told her that Cinesite Hollywood was hiring.She joined the company and drove film between studios in her own orange Beetle.The earliest projects I came into contact with were Space Jam and Titanic. At that time, Waterworld was also finishing.She thought work in Hollywood was always like this, until she realized she had a rare start.

The day I joined was April Fool's Day 1996.When Cinesite closed its Hollywood branch, her last day working there happened to be Friday the 13th, and the movie she was working on was Freddy vs. Jason.She and the interviewer couldn't help but laugh when talking about the scene in the film where Freddie transforms into a caterpillar.

What really made her feel that this path was worth pursuing was a class speech.When participating in Air Force One, she printed the blue screen scene of Harrison Ford preparing to jump out of the plane and the clouds on a slide, took it to school, and used a projector to demonstrate how to combine the two layers of material into one shot.The whole class was surprised, and she seriously thought for the first time: She might have her own business here.She originally wanted to study economics and black history, and film was just an after-school job. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she stayed in this field.Thirty years later, many of the colleagues who were exploring visual effects together are still friends who trust each other and help each other.

Llorens, who took over the show from Season 2 - The Diplomat - while working at Netflix, worked with Framestore.At the time, she was also responsible for large-scale spectacle projects like Wednesday's One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender, with varying budgets and visual effects prominence.《The number one diplomat》I always have to consider first how to save the budget and still get the story right.Sometimes just changing the shooting direction can avoid the environment that originally had to be made up in post-production.

The second season also encountered changes in shooting schedules caused by the strike: the seasons that were supposed to be shown in the show did not match the appearance of the trees when filming was actually started.The team needs to adjust the season traces, and the workload is not small, but in the end the changes cannot be noticed by the audience.

She describes the visual effects team’s job as taking care of the work for the storyteller.For many creators, it takes years to get a project greenlit, but there are always surprises in production: someone blows the budget early, misses a shooting day, or a wind picks up and blows sand into the camera.These things cannot all be solved by planning in advance.What she wants to provide is a few executable methods to make the picture as good as possible in the remaining time and funds.As for whether there should be limits on production, she answered simply: Of course, otherwise the project will go on forever and the film will not be delivered.

It was difficult to simulate seawater in the 1990s. The water droplets and white foam that flew away when the waves hit us seemed natural, but it was full of difficulties when doing it.She recalled a test in which Mark Wahlberg appeared in the sea, and the interviewer added the title of the film - The Perfect Storm; today's water effects can be done quite beautifully.

The hair and clothes also changed.In the past, hair was easily like a helmet buckled on the head, but now in animations such as Moana, the hair and clothing materials can change with movement.Rotography once required casting film onto glass and tracing outlines frame by frame on paper. Later, it was moved to computers, and now machine learning has accelerated the process.She remembers that when the industry was talking about digitalization in the 1990s, some people refused to change and eventually fell behind.Her attitude is to let artists learn new tools: what style the film needs, how to tell the story, and how to use these tools.

When it comes to real shooting and digital production, Llorens first said that he prefers real shooting, because it has a soul“.But the choice cannot be based solely on preference.Bringing a complete team to the location may cost $200,000 per day; if you only need one or two shots and complete them in the studio with visual effects, it may only cost a portion of that cost.Cameras, boats, crew, and set construction all have to be factored in, and one has to ask whether this expenditure actually helps the story.

If it's a whole scene and the scene is really spectacular, she will support real shooting.The emotions of an actor standing in a real environment are different from those when facing a green screen.In turn, real shooting does not hinder post-processing: the sky can be replaced, and the aircraft carrier shots of the number one diplomat put characters and other elements shot on the street into a complete CG aircraft carrier environment.Done well enough, the audience won't stop and wonder how it's done.

After establishing trust, the crew will ask her to find a solution together.For example, if she wanted to shoot a scene in New York that takes place in London, she would have to evaluate how much of the scene would be stretched in different shooting directions and how much it would cost.Sometimes you can make a panoramic view of the environment first, and place the rest of the shots on the set, adding extensions only when necessary.Whether the studio monitor should be turned on or off, and whether the content should be played directly into the shot, should also be discussed together.She prefers to get as much real footage as possible, even if it ends up being used as a reference; if it's going to hurt someone, it's not worth the risk.

Fantasy projects gave her another kind of fun.Walking into Wednesday's set, the wallpapers, clothing, and various designs in the room already made her feel the creation of the art team, and the visual effects complemented the background.The ship of One Piece can be built to a certain height, and the upper part can be extended later; the creatures of Avatar: The Last Airbender will remind her of the feeling of watching Demon Realm in her childhood.

The interviewer mentioned the emotion with which Framestore's Ross Wilkinson made the flying bison Appa.Llorens said that artists need to deeply study the skeleton, muscles and movement patterns of living things, and first build out the skeleton and muscle system. Even if the hair is not covered temporarily, reasonable movement should be visible, and the hair will make it natural.As she talked, she felt that these colleagues were like a group of ”little scientists%.Of course, sometimes real biology has to be put aside when a creator insists that a creature whose wings aren't big enough needs to fly.

She still treasures the days when everyone was figuring things out together during Freddy vs. Jason.When filming Tyrant, the camera kept needing to explode, and there was a lack of material, so a few people went to the back to set up a green screen and shoot the explosions.She even wrapped her son in a costume and had him run across a green screen, becoming a tiny running figure in the background.When I couldn't find ready-made elements, I discussed whether I could make them myself, even if I tried throwing paint on the wall.

Producers are pushing things forward every day, but these moments of solving problems together bring the team together.She said that when the work appears on the screen for the first time, everyone celebrates more than just completing a task: “The relationships built in this industry are very important.They remember how people feel when we care for their beloved creations.”