How CSI: NY Stands Out From Its Siblings

When one of television’s hottest shows, CSI, decided to open up a New York franchise, visual effects supervisor Cathy Siegel of Brickyard VFX, the sole effects vendor on the show, faced several new challenges. "We wanted to create a sibling that isn’t a clone of the Miami or Vegas shows," she says, "so right from the start we went for a much darker palette – lots of blues and blacks and heavy contrasts that match the gritty urban feel of the city, while Vegas is green and Miami has a lot of warm orange colors.

"But the main challenge has been creating full-CG scenes that the other shows don’t do so much of, and we have to come up with a lot more than you’d think," she adds. For one episode, Brickyard’s Santa Monica team – which includes lead CG artist Rusty Ippolito and CG producer Valerie Delahaye – had to create some 40 effects shots (both CG and 2D).

A tight post schedule has increased the pressure. "Because we’re new, we don’t have the time and access to the same equipment," she notes. "The other shows have established schedules for motion control and effects shoots, which we don’t yet. So instead of maybe getting a shot in-camera like them, we’ve picked it up in full CG."

Depending on what each show needs, Siegel’s CG team varies from two to four members, while the compositing team led by Mandy Sorenson varies from three to five. "And we’ve used just about every program out there in 3D, from Softimage to Maya, because we approach each individual shot in the best way to handle its particular requirements," she says. All compositing is Discreet-based.

"A lot of shots are ones you wouldn’t really notice," says Siegel. "We’ll do touch-ups to prosthetics and makeup, but then we also do a lot of crash zooms and push zooms." These signature POV moves occur when one of the characters recognizes a clue. "They’re slightly different treatments," she says. "We create the crash zoom movement, while the push zooms tend to be a digital enhancement of an in-camera zoom."

The "slightly gentler" approach of the push zoom technique also helps differentiate CSI: NY from its siblings, she says. "It still gives the audience the same information and the same chance to see what the characters are seeing, but in a slightly different way."