HBO’s The Regime is a darkly comedic six-episode series directed by Stephen Frears and Jess Hobbs that tells the story of life within the walls of a modern authoritarian regime as it begins to unravel. Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) has grown increasingly paranoid and unstable, having not left the Palace for some time, and turns to a volatile soldier, Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), as an unlikely confidant. As Zubak’s influence over the chancellor continues to grow, Elena’s attempts to expand her power eventually result in both the palace and the country fracturing around her.

Led by VFX Supervisor and Union co-founder Adam Gascoyne, Union’s newly established Montréal facility delivered the majority of the 700 VFX shots on the show collaborating with a smaller team at Union HQ in London.

Environments:
The main task was to expand and enhance the Chancellor’s palace and surrounding landscape to increase it’s grandeur. The team scanned the real Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, then redesigned it into a fictional, contemporary palace with grounds that were consistently featured in the series. This also included extending the landscape and creating a bespoke, breathtaking mountain backdrop in the distance.

The palace itself required a significant amount of initial groundwork, including technical location recces and evaluations during pre-production, the enhancement of the Palace design, development of a CG model, lighting and rendering of the Palace extension across different scenes, times of day, and various degrees of destruction in later episodes.

In one of the most memorable shots the the camera transitions from the palace interior through a window and into a turbulent warzone. This was achieved, using a blend of CG, DMP, and 2D elements to enhance the scene. With only balcony footage at their disposal, the team had to come up with an effective strategy to complete this seemingly simple shot. Upon review of some 2D solutions and ideas, it was evident that replacing the courtyard with a CG version was essential to uphold the parallax effect and realism. A digital matte painting was also used to merge the CG courtyard with the palace surroundings.

Environmental work was also needed to create barren and exhausted beet fields and a Beet Factory on the outskirts of the Palace grounds. This included adding mud to enhance the rugged terrain, along with pillows of CG beets.

Gore:
Some of the more absurd moments required enhancement of the Chancellor’s deceased father's body, gradually making the prosthetics and actor look more decayed as the show went on. At one point, the outlandish storyline featured a complex talking corpse sequence that involved a lot of different 2D techniques. Union collaborated closely with the clients to achieve the desired appearance and gradually adjust the level of decay. Ensuring that the enhancements matched perfectly with the actors facial expressions and muscle movements was a significant technical challenge in making the sequence believable.

Crowds and other work:
The wide and expansive crowd shots featured Elena interacting with the audience and a dynamic sequence of a rioting mob; these scenes involved seamlessly merging CG crowd, plate, and 2D elements.

Other work included some atmospheric enhancements such as adding cold breath and movement to an extreme close-up. The team also delivered graphic design and screen replacements which included the creation of various news channel graphics to be composited onto televisions throughout the episodes.