JOHN GAJDECKI
We shot House of David in Greece, south of Athens, for four months in the spring and summer of 2024.
The epic battle between David and Goliath was shot over three weeks, only at magic hour, giving us the scope and beauty that Amazon was looking for
Amazon and The Wonder Project's sweeping drama of David vs Goliath.
John Gajdecki,
Senior VFX Supervisor,
Sweeping a greenscreen
stage.
Demo - The Battle, episode 1
Episode 101 opens with a tease of the David vs Goliath fight.
Demo - How to make a Giant
This demo is not ready yet.
After some of the future episodes have aired we can show you a more interesting deconstruction.
Creating Goliath was central to the story of House of David, and our goal was to avoid any of the usual VFX tricks that would give away that Goliath was created and added later. This approach made the work much harder but also much more believable.
Before and After
It's always fun ( ok, I think it's fun ) to look at what a shot looked liked BEFORE we added the VFX and AFTER we were done. Unlike a Demo Reel, we can get into more details this way.
Goliath Appears
Goliath walked through the two lines of soldiers. He is carrying the "Giant-on-a-Stick" which gave the other actors the correct eyeline.
We shot at 30 fps rather than 24, to give Goliath a greater sense of mass. We shot a ton of tests to see what the best frame rate was. The faster we shot the heavier he looked, but we wanted Goliath to be an athlete, not a lumbering monster. But also, if we shot much faster then we'd run into sound sync problems with the huge dialogue scenes in later episodes.
We normally shot him at 24 fps.
Behind the Scenes
Assorted House of David behind the Scenes images, in no particular order.
