How the ‘I’m a Virgo’ VFX Team Made Jharrel Jerome a Giant

Shunning the Spielbergian practice of withholding a titanic presence from the audience (à la “Jaws” or “Jurassic Park”), Prime Video’s “I’m a Virgo” shows you its titan, a massive baby named Cootie, in the opening seconds of this surrealist series from creator Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”).

We then see Cootie progress into adulthood, as a 19-year old, 13-foot tall young man (played by Emmy winner Jharrel Jerome) confined to a guest house, shielded from California society by his protective guardians (Mike Epps and Carmen Ejogo) until Cootie gets curious, and a “Twamp Monster” (his newly minted Oakland moniker) is introduced into society.

This remarkable effect is a shrewd combination of practical effects, puppetry, some CGI and whole lot of forced perspective. And if the seams show, that’s even better, since that’s precisely what Riley and his VFX team want you to see.

“It was driven by Boots’ aesthetic,” said visual effects supervisor Todd Perry, who has worked on everything from Marvel films to horror features to Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which is often cited as a landmark for the use of forced perspective. “Boots wanted to make it feel like it was made in the ’80s, maybe the ’70s. And he was willing to live with the restrictions that we had, because in the techniques that we’re using, we weren’t taking steps forward, necessarily. We were just learning from the people who did it before us: Randall Cook and Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett and all those guys.”

The filmmakers ran tests to make sure that Cootie always felt ensconced in surroundings in just the right way, whether he was sitting in a car, grabbing a burger at his local fast food joint or enlisting the help of locals who have shrunk (this series is chockablock with visual surprises) to protest a flying billionaire superhero (Walton Goggins) with dubious motives.

“There were cardboard placements of scenes,” Perry said, noting they would paint out aspects in post if the character did not clear certain height parameters. “They were just these mock-up sets to show the studio that this is an effective technique and we can do this. We were able to set up a camera that would be able to pivot and tilt and pan, so we can still follow Jharrel around and keep some life in the camera without actually doing dolly moves or stuff that would break the perspective.”

“Virgo” may be rooted in a different era but it always feels cutting-edge, mainly because it harkens back to a time when props and setups and hands-on craftsmanship were more important than letting technology accomplish all the goals of an effects team. And Perry thinks there’s a reason for that.

“We’re kind of seeing a reactive response to CG where people say, ‘We’re not going to do any CG!,’” he said. “That is effectively a lie, because they all use it in some capacity. But we had to go through a learning process where it looked like shit at first because nobody knew how to use the tools. The people who used it effectively did so because they were coming from practical backgrounds. Those guys who were using CG for “Terminator 2” or “Jurassic Park,” they knew what looked correct.”

Perry recalled a recent conversation with “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig about how their projects employ a similar philosophy on world-building. “There is a ton of CGI in “Barbie,” it’s just made to look fabricated,” Perry said. “She used the term ‘authentically artificial’ and that is a perfect reflection of what Boots was going for. He wanted to show that it has been created by human hands and it is physically there. So that is what we leaned into.”

This story first ran in the Comedy Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

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