Flipbook Studio has released its VFX breakdown reel for Maintenance Required, the new 2025 romantic comedy starring Madelaine Petsch and Jacob Scipio, written and directed by Lacey Uhlemeyer and produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Future Artists Entertainment.
The film, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, follows Charlie, who while reassessing her all-female mechanic shop, unknowingly forms an online connection with Beau, a real-life rival business owner.
The production filmed between San Francisco and Leeds, with significant set work constructed at the new Versa Studios in Leeds, where a full San Francisco street scene was built practically. Flipbook Studio was brought on to supervise the shoot and to enhance,
extend and augment these sets to create a fully convincing San Francisco environment from UK-based shoots, blending plate photography from the US with studio and location work captured in Leeds and other areas of the UK.
Led by VFX Supervisor Ben Haworth, Flipbook’s work focused on invisible VFX craftsmanship, the kind designed not to be noticed. The studio delivered digital matte painting, skyline augmentation, CG set extensions, sky replacements, signage and traffic integration, texture cleanup, specular adjustments and atmospheric layering to replicate the light quality and environmental depth of the Bay Area. The team adopted a modular environmental workflow, creating CGI set builds and matching lens characteristics, light falloff and matte projections through Nuke to ensure a cohesive geographical feel across sequences.
Ben Haworth: “We weren’t chasing spectacle with this production, our job was to make Leeds and other locations in the UK genuinely pass for San Francisco and the Bay area, without the audience ever thinking about the digital work, ensuring the romantic tone of the
film took centre stage.”
Maintenance Required forms part of Flipbook Studio’s expanding feature film and Episodic TV slate, following recent work on Kandahar, Robin and The Hoods, Archie, BBC’s Black Ops and ahead of their upcoming feature Tinsel Town, starring Kiefer Sutherland, Rebel Wilson and Danny Dyer.
The VFX breakdown reel for Maintenance Required showcases before-and-after comparisons that reveal just how much of the final San Francisco world was digitally crafted.
Pippa Considine
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