The Polygamist
When family dynamics are this tangled, every frame carries weight. Over the final stretch of The Polygamist, Jonasi’s health fails. The story needed his face to tell that slowly across more than 100 shots with a bit of help from VFX.
We started with a 3D scan of Sdumo Mtshali’s face and built a CG replica which we used to sculpt the stages of his decline. On every shot we object tracked his face, then used blendshapes to move him from healthy Jonasi toward sick Jonasi. Care was taken to dial in the progression scene by scene to keep everything believable.
The SFX makeup team gave us a strong foundation of textures and shadowing on set, and we built on that in comp to take his deterioration further than makeup alone could go. Because we were changing the actual silhouette of his face, shots required reconstructing the background behind him.
The Polygamist reached No. 2 on Netflix globally, hit No. 1 in 16 countries, and by its second week was in the top 10 in 63 countries including the US. In early July it was the most watched non-English series in the world.
Seeing a South African story land like this, and knowing our small Cape Town team is part of it, means a great deal to us. Huge respect to Sdumo Mtshali, whose performance carried all of this, and to the SFX makeup department and the team at Stained Glass Productions and Beverly Toweett from Netflix for the collaboration. And also Post Production Supervisor, Aldine Bronkhorst.
Trailer
Credits
- Visual Effects Supervisor Wicus Labuschagne
- Visual Effects Producer Megan Portnoi
- On-Set VFX Supervisor André Eksteen
- Compositor Andrew Meyer
- Mohamed Umer Sungay
- Dries du Preez
- Megan Bagshaw
- Raymond Ernst Volker
- Paige Rybko