VFX Producer Lesley Robson-Foster tells Post Perspective about how the VFX behind Prime Video’s new ballet drama pushed creative and technical limits by collaborating with French studios, including The Yard.
In Étoile, the creators behind The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino, turn their attention to the rarefied world of professional ballet. Shot across Paris and New York, the series glides between countries, cultures, and complex choreography — but what viewers don’t see is the hundreds of invisible visual effects shots that made it all possible.
In her interview with Post Perspective, VFX supervisor Lesley Robson-Foster tells about the many challenges, from digital doubles to stormy seas.
When Characters Can’t Dance, VFX Does
One of the show’s most pressing creative hurdles came in the form of the choreography itself. While the leads brought emotional range and character depth, the physical demands of ballet — especially long, continuous Steadicam shots — made it necessary to bring in professional dance doubles. But for that illusion to work seamlessly, facial replacement technology had to be pushed to new levels of believability.
Robson-Foster and her team employed detailed 3D scans, multi-camera facial capture setups, and evolved their methodology mid-project thanks to a six-month production halt during the 2023 industry strikes. That pause, though unplanned, allowed face-swap tech to catch up with the show’s vision — a twist of fate that ultimately raised the bar for realism.
Approximately 100 of the show’s 800 VFX shots involved this kind of advanced face replacement, many of them requiring custom patches, 2D warping, and Nuke compositing techniques to achieve a blend so convincing, most viewers never noticed it wasn’t the actors dancing at all. These complex effects were made possible thanks to the proprietary software developed by David Gaddie and the team at Afterparty.
Set Extensions, Mirror Madness, and The Illusion of Scale
Beyond the high-profile facial work, the VFX teams also tackled an array of more traditional (but no less complex) sequences: from digital set extensions and greenscreen driving scenes to crowd duplication and removing crew reflections from mirrored studio walls. Every detail mattered.
Particularly challenging were the mirrored dance studios. With at least one mirrored wall per set, reflections were inevitable. To counter this, creative old-school tricks — like mirror boxes and dressing crew in costume — were combined with digital fixes to preserve realism without distraction.
