Umthetho
Netflix
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The latest gripping South African crime drama series from Netflix features a 7-episodes first season and was created by Black Brain Pictures. The series was adapted from the popular Brazilian Netflix series Brotherhood (Irmandade).
We are incredibly proud to have partnered with Black Brain Pictures to bring this gritty, high-stakes world to life, delivering over 223 visual effects shots that helped shape its cinematic feel from start to finish.
Our work spanned the kind of effects you’re not meant to notice: set extensions, explosions, gun fights augmentations, SFX enhancements, digital clean-ups, green screen compositing, screen replacements and motion graphics that slot in naturally into the live-action footage. It’s the quiet craft that holds a scene together. For the prison environment, our artists built out digital matte paintings and set extensions, giving key locations a bigger, more grounded sense of scale.
And when it came to the series’ action sequences, the team leaned into the enhancement and finishing work, such as wound effects, 3D smoke simulations layered within 3D scenes, muzzle flashes, continuity work, as well as fire and explosion work all built to sit convincingly inside the real footage, not on top of it.
Get ready for Umthetho – now streaming on Netflix.
Client: Black Brain Production
Production Company: Black Brain Production
Executive Producers: Mandla Ngcongwane, Mpumelelo Nhlapo
Directors: Mandla Ngcongwane, Johnny Barbuzano, Jono Hall
Producers: Mpumelelo Nhlapo, Annelie van Rooyen, Zikona Debese & Melissa Nayimuli
Post Production: Chocolate Tribe
Executive Producer: Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt
VFX Supervisor / Head of Production: Rob van den Bragt
Lead Technical Director: Tiaan Franken
Senior VFX Producer: Tracey-lee Portnoi
VFX Producers: Nikki Maistry, Simphiwe Mnculwane
On-set VFX Supervisors Pascal Martin, Johan Wentzel, Jean du Plessis
Lead Compositor: Johan Wentzel
Compostors: Jean Du Plessis, Alistair Johnson, Sven Hohmeier, Jaco Kraamwinkel
Junior Compositor: Thabang Mashalane
Matte Painting: Michael Howard
Accountant: Mookho Motshwane
Legal & Business Affairs Manager: Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt