In films like Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, the natural environment plays as much of a role as any of the characters, and so the VFX needs to be invisible. The sky, the mountains, the earth, and the water ground the viewer with a strong sense of place that suspends disbelief and enables the story to unfold. It's about creating a seamless integration of visual effects that enhances the narrative without drawing attention to itself.
Watching Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, you take for granted that natural elements, such as the New Mexico hillscape and the river that winds its way through most of the plot, are real. But they're not. In real life, the giant six-mile-long river was just a small pond dug out and filled with water to serve as a reference. Principle photography took place in Utah, and the terrain was transformed in post to look like New Mexico.
These are truly invisible effects: so realistic and seamless that even as characters splash around in the water, the spell is never broken. You're never taken out of the film by lighting or physics that feels off. Creating perfect invisible VFX is crucial to maintaining the audience's immersion in the story and the world they are witnessing.
Horizon is a four-part epic Western chronicling the many conflicts between homesteaders, Native Americans, and each other during a 15-year period around the time of the Civil War. It's a passion project for Kevin Costner, first conceived of in 1988. He wrote the screenplay with Jon Baird many years after the initial idea, and now he's finally bringing it to life under his own steam as a self-funded project.
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