Working on all episodes of this beautiful auteur series our incredible team at One of Us delivered around 400 visual effects shots, most of which dealt with the environment of the base and the surrounding Veneto marshland.

Extending the limited set of buildings on location required the use of CG architecture, roads, street furniture, trees and plants. Guadagnino was very sensitive to urban planning, and only signed off our extension when the street plans had what he termed “architectural movement” - the sense of a lived space.

Seasonal adjustments to trees, skies and weather were also required. This is the kind of visual effects work which, if done well, is invisible, and at the same time integral to the storytelling. We see the juxtaposition of the regimented artificiality of the American military base enclosed by the wild beauty of the Italian countryside; and this echoes the contrast between the order of military life and the turmoil of teenage emotions.

Luca Guadagnino's “We Are Who We Are” is a coming-of-age story of American teenagers on a U.S. military base in Italy, dealing with friendship, love and identity against a backdrop of the war in Afghanistan and the 2016 election. It is an HBO/Sky Atlantic copro, comprising eight hour-long episodes.

The VFX work was supervised by myself and Jacobo Landi. Guillaume Menard was our 2D supervisor and Mark Webb, Giovanni Di Giulio and Sheila Da Silveira our incredible production team!