True Detective – Night Country

The fourth season of True Detective, an American anthology crime drama television series, premiered in January 2024 on HBO. The season is set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, and follows the investigation into the disappearance of eight men from a research station. It stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as Detectives Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro. 

The Goodbye Kansas team provided CG amputated fingers to a central character who was an integral story point of the series. The matchmove and animation departments spent considerable time accurately animating the very subtle movements in a real human hand. The character of Lund also required CG injuries, including leg and arm amputations that were bandaged.

The team also added different snow levels to key sequences across all six episodes, ranging from light flurries to intense blizzards. Various FX sims (fast snow, snow blowing up from the ground and off roofs, and atmospheric haze) were created, and all layers were combined to enhance the overall effect of characters, environments and vehicles in the centre of these snowstorms.

DMP set extensions were added to several environments across all episodes, including snow added to filmed buildings, building a hospital exterior, fishing cabin, ice fields and creating mountain ranges.

Goodbye Kansas were also asked to recreate the Northern Lights, which play a vital role in a sequence from episode six and star fields to the night skies in these sequences.

View our VFX breakdown above to see the work created by our team on this project.