As the sole VFX studio on Cobra, BlueBolt created a dramatic body of work, providing all 350 VFX shots across the entire series for the Sky original production for New Pictures.

The high-stakes six-part British drama, set in the heart of government during a major crisis, stars Robert Carlyle and Victoria Hamilton.

BlueBolt created a wide range of VFX including a fully CG plane crash together with the surrounding environment. We also cast London into darkness as power goes out across the country, extended motorway sets and brought them to life with gridlocked traffic and enhanced the number of people in various crowd and riot scenes. In the final episode an overpass needed to collapse under the weight of a huge transformer, which we created by rebuilding the road surfaces in 3D and simulating the massive destruction.

The plane crash was one of the most complex sequences and was originally conceived based on the ability to shoot drone plates. When it transpired this wasn’t going to be possible we were forced to build the entire environment. Despite increasing the VFX workload, this gave us more freedom and control of the shots.

We simulated the entire plane crash and then positioned virtual cameras to capture the action, rather than animating shot by shot. This allowed us a much faster turnaround time for the shots, and we ended up with an approach that was based on real-world physics.