Cinesite Wins BAFTA for The Witcher Second Season Visual Effects
Cinesite is extremely proud to have won the BAFTA in Special, Visual and Graphic Effects for its work on The Witcher S2 at the 2022 British Academy Television Craft Awards.
At yesterday’s awards ceremony in London, Cinesite’s series VFX Supervisor Aleksandar Pejic accepted the award along-side VFX Supervisor Dadi Einarsson, Producer Gavin Round, One of Us VFX Supervisor Oliver Cubbage, SFX Supervisor Stefano Pepin & Editor Jet Omoshebi. Dadi thanked Cinesite along with the rest of the team as well as the series show runner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich. The Award was won for the series’ first episode, “A Grain of Truth”.
Having recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, Cinesite has previously contributed visual effects to 19 BAFTA nominated productions and two visual effects winners: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and The Golden Compass.
“This is fantastic news for everyone at Cinesite who worked so hard across the entire second series,” Cinesite’s London GM Joce Capper remarks. “The complex environments and challenging creatures created by our team are representative of the world-class visual effects being created right now in London. Cinesite has a long-standing, trusted relationship with Netflix and we’re thrilled to have stepped up to the mark for them.”
The winning first episode of the second season opens with a long, sweeping aerial shot showing the aftermath of the devastating battle from the end of the first season. The shot was created by Cinesite using a combination of drone photography with an entirely CG forest, CG soldiers and reprojections with a full 3D terrain.
Cinesite contributed many of the other visual effects in the winning episode, as well as environments, creatures and other key sequences throughout the entire series. Cinesite’s terrifying Basilisk monsters also feature in the season’s exciting final climax, neatly book-ending the company’s visual effects across the series.
Explore The Witcher S2 VFX in more depth here.
