THE DAWN OF EVE
Part survival drama, part coming-of-age mystery, Amazon original The Wilds tells the story of a group of teenage girls fighting for survival after a plane crash leaves them stranded on a deserted island, unaware they are the subjects of a social experiment.
Filmed almost entirely in the Auckland region, the rugged black sand West Coast beaches of Te Henga Bethells Beach play a central role in this ominous, dystopian series.
THE WILDS
BREAKDOWN
A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT LIKE NO OTHER
Cause and FX provided primary visual effects supervision and VFX vendor services for the pilot and the next nine episodes, when principal photography for the season resumed.
Cause worked closely with the show’s LA-based post producers to design and guide the VFX approach for both the raw location shoots and the studio filming. The Cause team created an open ocean water environment for the series-opening plane crash sequences, collaborating with production designers and the DOP to devise an intricate blue screen shoot, utilising an outdoor water park for hero plates.
CREATING THE ISLAND PRISON
Drones captured extensive reference imagery and photogrammetry of the shoot location from which detailed CG replicas of the beach and geography were created.
Using a mixture of stills and photogrammetry allowed for absolute photo-real recreation of the landscape, skies and coverage for all angles. The wild, crashing ocean waves were created as full dynamic Houdini simulations. A variety of VFX solutions were used by the Cause team to support the story and reinforce the key VFX scene of the night-time beach storm. These included set extensions, CG water, sand treatments, day for night, prosthetic augmentation and crowd duplication.
