Linda Napolitano is an ordinary Manhattan housewife with an extraordinary tale that has captivated UFO enthusiasts for decades. Her story was reimagined for the small screen with Netflix’s The Manhattan Alien Abduction at the end of last year–aptly released on the eve of Halloween.
Directed by Dan Vernon
(Inside the Klu Klux Clan,
House of Maxwell) and lensed by director of photography Tim Cragg
(Beckham,
Billie), the three-part documentary mini-series delves into the story surrounding Napolitano’s supposed abduction on the fateful night of November 30th, 1989. To bring the story to life, the team enlisted the support of VFX studio
Lux Aeterna
(Solar System,
The Crown,
Einstein and the Bomb)—due to its expertise in cosmos visual effects and previous collaborations with Cragg, they were well placed to bring the concept to screen.
Interestingly, the brief wasn’t wholly focused on ‘realism’—Vernon wanted the look to reflect the retro-futuristic vision of extraterrestrial life in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Inspiration was drawn from classics such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and
Independence Day—the latter of which inspired the look for the spaceship that abducted Linda.
Naturally, the spaceship was created with full CGI—lead by Lux Aeterna’s CG supervisor Timmy Wilmott and compositing supervisor Tav Flett. The team supplied six different shots of the alleged UFO, with VFX director Paul Silcox leading the charge in designing the spacecraft. The CG development went through multiple iterations and three distinct mood board phases before a pivotal interview with a witness, who described the craft as a ‘classic UFO shape.’ This revelation shifted the creative direction entirely, ultimately guiding the team toward the ideal final design.
To bring the scenes to life, Lux Aeterna drew inspiration from the lighting aesthetic and saturated color palette of Cragg’s shots—applying it throughout the series. To retain the aesthetic of the principal photography, the Lux Aeterna team utilized the data from the cameras on-shoot—this was invaluable for the compositing process. Lens grids were captured for the entire lens kit, as well as bokeh and lens flare references. The documentary was shot with anamorphic lenses on the ARRI Alex Mini and Alexa LF—using Cooke primes.
To remain consistent with the lensing, Flett and the compositing team used Nuke to create the custom lens gizmos modeled on the falloff, softness, and chromatic aberrations of the Cooke lenses to aid with integrating elements into the principal photography. Lens flares were also created to replicate those achieved onset.
The rendering of the spaceship made use of light groups to give the team maximum control of integration within the composites. They also saved time and simplified the process by only rendering one set of global AOV's which were able to be subtracted from specific light groups to enable control over the material properties in compositing. This vastly reduced the number of layers needed to work with and was wrapped into a gizmo for easier use for the compositing artists.
On reflecting on the atmospherics that the VFX brought to the series, Vernon commented, “The goal was to evoke the old science fiction movie flavor, particularly using Houdini for VFX. The visual of the spacecraft was deliberately elusive, as ‘cliche’ UFOs needed to be avoided. The spacecraft was metaphysical but physically built in VFX to enable authentic environmental effects, such as clouds moving. VFX enables the unbelievable to become believable by adding subtle nuances to make the visual more authentic.”
The Manhattan Alien Abduction is available to watch on Netflix worldwide.