Building the Tunnel of Memories

Netflix MLB Opening Night: Crafting an Immersive Gateway

To kick off MLB Opening Night, Netflix wanted a high-impact, emotionally resonant opening sequence. The creative vision featured a family walking through a dramatic stadium tunnel where the walls come alive with the history, passion, and legacy of baseball. The challenge was executing this entirely on a bluescreen stage, requiring a heavy, dynamic CG environment to be built and integrated seamlessly around the talent.

Because we were brought in to consult during the pre-production phase, we were able to engineer the post-production pipeline before the cameras even rolled. By advising on proper bluescreen setup, tracking marker placement, and matching the practical on-set lighting to our planned CG tunnel, we eliminated the usual friction of keying and integration. This "measure twice, cut once" intuition ensured the final composite felt completely physical and grounded.

To turn a blank blue stage into a nostalgic journey into the stadium, our team handled a complex, multi-layered pipeline:

• CG Environment Design: Building a photorealistic concrete stadium tunnel from scratch, complete with accurate textures, scale, and atmospheric depth.
• Complex Screen Integration: Tracking, warping, and compositing dozens of individual video feeds and images along the curved walls of the tunnel to create the "living memory" effect.
• Atmospheric Lighting: Enhancing the plate with volumetric light rays, haze, and bounce lighting from the digital screens to marry the actors to their new environment.
• Flawless Extraction: Precision keying of hair and fine details against the bluescreen to ensure the illusion of the dark tunnel was never broken.

The Invisible Art of Winterization

Hallmark’s "Snow Must Go On": Crafting Winter in Any Season

Hallmark productions rely heavily on a specific, cozy seasonal aesthetic. For Snow Must Go On, the production faced a classic challenge: shooting a winter movie during the autumn months. HumTum was brought in to seamlessly transform brown, bare environments into a lush, believable winter wonderland, alongside executing extensive environmental enhancements.

Winterization is much more than just "painting things white." It requires an intuitive understanding of how cold light interacts with an environment, how frost settles, and how to maintain the warmth of the story underneath the digital snow. By approaching the project with this physical intuition, we were able to overhaul entire locations—handling massive volumes of set extensions and cleanups—without ever breaking the audience's immersion.

To deliver the scale of the director's vision, our work went far beyond adding snow. We handled a heavy pipeline of invisible environmental VFX:

• Full-Scale Winterization: Digitally converting autumn grass, bare trees, and warm lighting into a cohesive, frosty winter environment.
• Set Extensions & Building Augmentations: Expanding the physical sets to create a grander, more cinematic town center, building out structures that didn't exist on location.
• Sign Replacements & Modern Cleanups: Seamlessly updating location branding and removing modern eyesores (wires, poles, out-of-period elements) to protect the film's specific aesthetic.
• High-Volume Delivery: Executing these heavy environmental changes across multiple sequences while adhering to the strict delivery schedules of television production.

Scaling Vision for the World’s Largest Screen

Delta Centennial: A Legacy in Motion at the Las Vegas Sphere

To celebrate Delta’s centennial at CES 2025, client envisioned a cinematic anthem narrated by Viola Davis and scored by Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers. The challenge was immense: create 8K immersive environments and futuristic AI-integrated visuals designed specifically for the highly complex, curved geometry of the Las Vegas Sphere.

As the lead VFX partner, HumTum was embedded in the project from day one. By joining the client team during pre-production, on-set in Los Angeles, and through post-production, we bypassed traditional "vendor" friction. We understood the spatial requirements of the Sphere instinctively, allowing us to build environments and assets that translated perfectly from a standard monitor to the world’s most immersive stage, without the need for endless corrective cycles.

To deliver on this massive scale, our pipeline had to be flawless from the live-action set to the final screen. We handled:

• On-Set Supervision: Ensuring spatial accuracy and projection-mapping requirements were captured perfectly during the Los Angeles shoot.
• 8K Environment Design: Crafting vast, immersive landscapes tuned specifically for the Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot interior display.
• AI & Asset Integration: Designing and integrating futuristic aircraft and custom 3D "Butterfly Drones" seamlessly into the high-resolution plates.
• Precision Compositing: Extensive plate cleanup and invisible VFX to ensure a flawless experience on a screen where every single detail is magnified.