For RHI Ent.’s new miniseries, Marco Polo, Anthem Visual Effects completed more than 100 visual effects shots to help tell the epic story of one of history’s most famous and enigmatic explorers. Shot entirely on location in China, the three-hour television event makes its U.S. network debut on Saturday, June 2, on the Hallmark Channel and will air internationally in various countries.
Marco Polo stars Ian Somerhalder from TV’s Lost as the 13th Century Venetian trader who was enlisted to accompany a pair of priests to the court of the fabled Mongol warlord and despot of the mysterious East, Kublai Khan, played by Brian Dennehy (Cocoon, Our Fathers). The miniseries is directed by Kevin Connor (Blackbeard) and written by Ron Hutchinson (The Ten Commandments). Exec producers include the Dinotopia team of Robert Halmi Sr. and Robert Halmi Jr., who previously brought us Dinotopia and are currently spearheading the upcoming SCI FI channel miniseries Tin Man, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz.
Anthem created matte paintings and removed anachronistic elements for cities and settings that no longer exist in the present day China, or have developed into modern landscapes. Settings include old Beijing surrounding the Forbidden City, the coast of China (complete with pirate ships) and the Mongolian countryside awash with army encampments. Anthem also created a realistic CG pirate ship for a battle sequence and performed crowd replication for a land battle scene and events at the Khan’s compound in the Forbidden City. To portray the massive army of the Kublai Khan, Anthem cloned 60 extras and inserted the multiple clone passes into the wide plate shots to create a crowd of thousands on the march.
Other tasks performed by Anthem include relighting greenscreen shots of the streets of Venice and designing the maps of Polo’s journey. The studio recently completed effects work for RHI’s 2008 miniseries Son of the Dragon, starring David Caradine, and handled more than 130 effects for the third installment in director Dario Argento’s horror trilogy The Third Mother. Anthem is currently creating more than 1,000 vfx shots for Tin Man.
