No.8 Sound & Vision (formerly JAM VFX) contributed to the visual effects across three episodes of Black Mirror Season 7—Hotel Reverie, Plaything, and Bête Noire—working closely with the Black Mirror team to deliver VFX that was both creatively and technically challenging.
The most ambitious of the three was Hotel Reverie, supervised by Peter Young, which demanded simulated world-building and seamless transitions between realities. Set between a film noir-inspired past and the real world, the episode required a VFX approach that could respond to a shifting tone, style, and sense of reality.
Our team was brought on early and worked across concept development, design, and final delivery. The simulation reveal, where Brandy steps into a world that constructs itself around her in real time, was a major sequence for us—it needed to be visually striking, but also emotionally grounded within the story.No.8 delivered over 250 shots for the episode, which included full CG environments, large-scale set extensions, digital crowd enhancements, and the stabilisation of frozen characters throughout several scenes. A significant volume of work also went into the creation and integration of period-specific projector screen content that played a key role in the episode.In Plaything, the team developed a hallucinatory sequence on the Tube that visually captured Cameron’s spiralling and frenetic state of mind. This involved warping the image, retexturing the environment, and applying surreal visual treatments to heighten the intensity of this drug-induced moment.For Bête Noire, No.8 delivered subtle continuity misdirections—such as character costume swaps that would appear differently to different viewers.Across all three episodes, the VFX team at No.8 aimed to create imagery that not only served the sci-fi elements of the show but also supported the emotional and narrative arcs of each story.Black Mirror is known for pushing boundaries, and it was a pleasure to contribute to a series that embraces visual storytelling in such a bold way. We’re incredibly proud of the work and grateful to the amazing collaborators who brought us on board again.
Jon Creamer
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