Rodeo FX, from the basement in Canada to the underworld of Stranger Things

Created 20 years ago in a dark basement in Vieux-Montréal, the studioRodeo FXhas carved out a space for itself among the big names in the furniture industryspecial effectsand he edited those of the last season of ‘Stranger Things’. “Over time we grew,” Ara Khanikian, executive supervisor of thevisual effectsfrom the offices with brick walls and elegant wood paneling in the district of Old Port of Montreal. “At the beginning, however, it really all started in the basement of the building next door,” he adds, smiling.

Today the studio, born inQuébechas offices in Toronto, Los Angeles and Paris and is making its way into a sector dominated by companies linked to large conglomerates such as Disney, Warner Bros., Universal e Paramount. The latest undertaking is seasons 4 and 5 of the seriesNetflix ‘Stranger Things’. Launched in 2016, it tells the story of teenagers in a small American town struggling withsupernatural creaturesand a parallel universe, against the backdrop of nostalgia for the Eighties.

The Creation of the Demogorgon for ‘Stranger Things’

For a year Philip Harris-Genois worked to refine the creature of theDemogorgonewith the aim of making it “even more impressive”: aagile monsterwhose face opens like a flower and reveals rows of teeth dripping saliva. The 3D modeler explains that he built it section by section, as if “he was sculpting someplasticine“, and to have been inspired by the anatomy ofleoneto obtain a more threatening posture, on tiptoe, ready to sprint.

Environmental research for ‘Dune: Prophecy’

Per ‘Dune: Prophecy’Rodeo FX looked at the geography ofMediterranean coastto build the imperial palace environment of the first season, released in 2024. “We researched thevegetationabout what types of trees exist near the coasts, on what types of rocks,” he says, to make the setting believable and make the audience believe it.

The visual effects production process

After the phaseconceptcomes modeling, animation, simulation, lighting and finally the composition of the images in the sequences already shot: along process. For example, the scene of the clash between theDemogorgoneand Jim Hopper, played by David Harbour, in a prison in season 4 took “six months to a year” from concept to editing, for less thanseven minutes of video.

The very long take in ‘Birdman’

At the work ofRodeo FXare due, among other things, to the transitions that transformedBirdman’(Oscar for best film in 2014) in a very long extraordinarysequence shotand part of the dream world of ‘Dune: Part Two’awarded the Oscar for the better visual effects.

The ‘Marvel Avengers: Doomsday’ project

Most recently, the studio earned four award nominationsVisual Effects Society Awardsthe winners of which will be announced on February 25. “There are many projects that we can’t really reveal,” they add, but among those already known are superproduction ‘Marvel Avengers: Doomsday’and the second season of ‘Monarch’.