NVIZ were tapped to work on three of the five episodes in the sixth series of Black Mirror. The work kept a team of 19 artists busy for four months, providing detailed graphics and compositing across the episodes. The NVIZ team was led internally by VFX supervisor, Agueda del Castillo, while screen graphics were supervised by Ian Sargent.
For “Loch Henry” a young couple making a wildlife documentary in a small Scottish village become embroiled in investigating an old crime. NVIZ were tasked to recreate a montage sequence portraying the actions of our protagonists as they cut together the trailer for their documentary. The documentary project was actually created in Premiere using footage and
stills provided by production and the team set about recording themselves ‘acting’ out the part, matching the reference cut. The NVIZ team worked on designing and implementing a
retro video capture software look for the old reporting on the crime, adding VHS effects on footage, recreating scanning software and replicating old tabloid newspapers. Other work
included car comps and screen inserts and the team even got to subtly modify the credits for the BBC’s iconic ’80s detective series, Bergerac.
“Demon 79” is set in northern Britain in the late 70s. More retro design was required for this episode, this time of news channel graphics which were briefed to be based on language already established in earlier seasons of Black Mirror. The news reports cover the rise of a right-wing political party and recreates iterations of that party’s logo and propaganda material across three decades. This meant indicating the change from the subtle evidence of a right wing party to the more overtly fascist presentation decades later. Finally, Mazey Day, brought together a series of story-telling graphics created and composited as computer screen inserts, sat navs, and mobile phones, as well as TV channel graphics and compositing work to recreate LA from footage shot in Malaga.
Black Mirror S6 is currently streaming on Netflix.
