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Milk VFX’s work on Heads of State opens with a high‑octane “La Tomatina” sequence dominated by CG mayhem. VFX Supervisor David Sadler‑Coppard – IMDb | LinkedIn led his team through a shoot‑interruption due to strikes, transforming a modest placeholder‑tomato setup into an extensive, fully digital fruit fight.
In this interview, Sadler‑Coppard walks us through every detail: from roto challenges and wetness shaders to full‑scale simulations, crowd integration, and the demanding safe‑house claymore explosion—all the way to his personal favourite moment. Originally planned for July to November, the sequence delivered 239 tomato‑fuelled shots by January, involving around 30 specialists at peak.
DP: So, I heard there was a Food Fight at Milk VFX …
David Sadler-Coppard: I was assigned as VFX Supervisor for Heads of State at Milk when we were first awarded the show. Initially, we were bidding on several sequences, with the La Tomatina Festival scene being relatively modest in scope. The festival is a real thing, by the way. However, after the production went on hiatus for about a year due to the strikes, we reviewed the first assemblies and quickly realised the sequence needed far more work.
We were basically briefed to replace all of the tomato ‘matts’ practical placeholder red matts used on set which didn’t really hold up in camera with CG tomatoes, tomato pulp and tomato liquid, also to add additional flying tomatoes and tomato splats and additional texture to walls/buildings as needed. While there was other work in the Tomatina sequence, the tomatoes were the star, and they had to be convincing without distracting from the action, especially since this was the film’s opening scene.
What began as a seemingly simple brief grew into a complex undertaking as post progressed, from intricate simulations and crowd integration to the careful management of ongoing feedback. We had a schedule from around July to November, which ended up extending into January. At peak I think we were around 30 artists.
DP: The Tomatina sequence is a tomato lover’s nightmare and a VFX artist’s dream (or possibly the other way around). What were your first thoughts when you saw the plates?
David Sadler-Coppard: It became clear very quickly that La Tomatina needed a lot of help from VFX. Almost every shot had either a few red matts on the ground or nothing at all and thus required tomatoes. There was also lots of stunt, rig and wire work that needed to be brought together and integrated well. For me seeing some of the wide shots with hundreds of people running around on an empty plaza and being briefed to add tomatoes underneath them.. That was quite a challenge.
DP: What were the plates from the set like? Was it at least wet and glistening, or did they just throw around some red fabric?
David Sadler-Coppard: The production was very organised and Milk was provided with plenty of shoot information such as clean plates, HDRIS, Lidar and 3D assets if applicable and anything we needed really to get things going.
Some shots featured placeholder tomato matts on the ground, though these often caused more problems than they solved, as they tended to “slide” and interfere with shadows or contact points with the crowd. Other shots had nothing at all, while certain close-ups included a scattering of real tomatoes. In the end, we often replaced even the practical ones, as it was ultimately easier and gave us more control over consistency and integration.
A lot of the stunts and setpieces were filmed or partially filmed practically like the explosions and Milk usually just ‘enhanced’ or extended and further integrated these set pieces together. Originally the crowd work was larger in scope and we had bid to do more 3d crowd extension work but in the end we only ended up using them in a few shots, it’s just how the edit came out. They were only meant to be used to fill out the background.
DP: So, roto must have been a nightmare?
David Sadler-Coppard: Roto and paint was certainly a challenge but managed brilliantly by Ben Thomas (HOD Roto/prep –find him on LinkedIn | IMDB ). As well as all the actors and props, we also had to roto all the shadows on the ground, which we couldn’t key properly in some cases (sometimes due to the matts), to ensure seamless CG integration.
DP: Since no tomatoes were harmed in the making of this scene, you had to create them digitally. What were the big technical hurdles in making thousands of CGI tomatoes fly, splat, and interact with actors and the environment?
David Sadler-Coppard: As we had a fixed region with the Plaza we opted to create a large environment pass scattering all the pre-made CG tomato chunks, liquid and pulp everywhere. This was masterminded by the very talented Charles- Henri Vidaud, our Head of Environments (Find hiim on IMDb | LinkedIn).
It took many rounds of feedback and notes to get the overall ‘layout’ approved, essentially the coverage and boundary of the whole tomato area. Luckily shoot continuity was quite good so once all the cameras were conformed the layout was more or less in place quite quickly, although some shots had additional custom tomatoes added. For the final section where Priyanka slides through the tomatoes on her back, we created a custom hero section with extra detail to hold up close to camera.
We also created additional texture passes across the plaza, tyre tracks, footprints, extra stains, and even a depth pass isolating the plaza’s pebble mortar, to capture the effect of tomato juice seeping into every crack and crevice. These IDs were rendered alongside the other CG passes, giving comp a safety net in case the CG alone didn’t fully achieve the desired look.
With regard to the simulations it was quite time consuming. Obviously we could not matchmove every single foot in every shot so we had to pick the ‘best’ ones that we felt would help sell interactions the best. The tomato layout area was then isolated around those feet and passed to FX where just that patch was simulated and then pass back and merged with the lighting scene.
For hero simulations like people sliding around in the tomatoes we did full body tracking not just for the sim but also for shadow casting back onto the tomatoes. Getting that interaction working really helped sell the CG for me and our HOD Andres Tollar oversaw all that team and their work.
The flying tomatoes consisted of simulated chunks and liquid that was randomly emitting across the whole plaza and could be enabled or disabled depending on the notes as the directive was usually to just add into the background of shot for extra chaos as needed. The shot specifically where Priyanka slides and comes to a stop in the tomato goo took about 40 versions to get just the right consistency and behaviour approved.
DP: And why were no real tomatoes used in that scene? They could have collected the pulp and put it in barrels labelled “Artisanal Ketchup”—the hipsters would buy that…
David Sadler-Coppard: As with these large vfx tasks we started simple and just grew it organically. We thought we might be able to tackle the ground tomatoes with a procedural setup which looked good but was not very directable. We ended up creating several tomato chunks of different sizes and scattering them with some logic to that as well as a general ‘pulpy’ layer which was essentially large patches of displaced geo, randomly scattered around to fill out the square.
The advantage of this is we had lots of flexibility to move things around and generate IDs for comp, but it was very heavy to work with. We also used the lidar to hold out sections of the tomatoes to help them feel more embedded into the ground.
From there it was really nailing down the shading of everything. We did lots of work on the ‘wetness’ and spent a long time really pushing the liquid feel as much as we could not just in the lighting but well into the compositing as well. Specifically in comp, our Lead Emily Vaillincourt (find her on IMDb | LinkedIn) built a whole fake reflection system using the data passes and roto to help create the wet feeling as it was a common note and a tricky one to address.
The client was also keen on having tomatoes smushed into the cracks and gathering in corners and this is where the texture passes in comp really helped as the CG didn’t always fit exactly.
We did pick several ‘key’ shots across all the different angles and lighting conditions and worked these up first to try and find the look the director was happy with. We did have some issues getting a consistent look across all the shots, as not only did the lighting change quite significantly, we would receive quite specific notes on singular shots, and had to constantly extrapolate them across the sequence.
Creatively we found that if we had enough variation and breakup across the shots especially the wide shots within the lighting then the shots usually looked successful. We did research on the actual Tomatina Festival and the whole plaza quickly turns into a very uniform pulp which, if we had recreated perfectly, probably wouldn’t have looked as interesting compared to what we ended up with. So I suppose there was a small element of stylisation to our tomatina.
DP: There are a lot of people in that square. How did you handle the crowds?
David Sadler-Coppard: Honestly, the CG crowd component was significantly reduced in the final film so there isn’t a huge amount to talk about. Production did manage to shoot with a very large amount of SA’s and several larger shots used tiled plates or element plates to help fill out the square. O
ur biggest crowd shot was the drone shot showing the entire square and festival from the air and that used a crowd system within houdini using animated caches, some made in house and some using stock animations, with some logic on the layout and animations themselves. We had to match the overall density and look for the crowd with surrounding real plates so that was a little tough.
DP: Any unexpected “aha!” moments?
David Sadler-Coppard: We had several concepts for key shots in the film that were approved on the first or second pass, which was a pleasant surprise — normally there’s a lot more back-and-forth. I suppose we got a bit lucky!
One memorable moment came when we delivered a nearly final version of a huge, complex building destruction shot, fire, smoke, the works. That’s when the VFX Supervisor told us it needed to be in HFR, meaning we had to re-simulate all the fire and smoke. The team had to find a way to preserve the overall fire composition while adjusting the frame rate, and they pulled it off brilliantly.
It wasn’t exactly an “aha” moment, but getting our first big tomato shots approved was a real relief. That was when we knew our quality level was locked in, and the finish line was in sight.
We faced plenty of technical challenges internally, though most were to do with pipeline and rendering, not the most glamorous side of VFX. Working with heavy deep passes and at native 4K anamorphic meant we had to be extremely optimised and rely on well-structured templates in comp to keep things running smoothly.
DP: About that scene in the safe house: How many iterations on the exploding door/Claymore?
David Sadler-Coppard: We were given an offline temp for the beat of the exploded safehouse door. The concept made sense in principle, but it got me thinking about how to make it work in reality. We explored a range of angles and animation tests with our animation team and client editorial, fine-tuning timings and composition until we had approval.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the corridor needed to be built in CG, but it became obvious once we considered the specific lenses and angles the client wanted — it just wasn’t feasible to shoot practically. The exact moment when the claymore is triggered took some back-and-forth. In the end, we decided to create a proximity sensor in our CG claymore, complete with a blinking light, to guide the audience through the action.
The final version ended up quite different from v1. Initially, we worked over the supplied plates, which featured simpler camera moves. The door animation itself remained largely the same, but the cameras evolved into something far more dynamic.
DP: And, after running that through sim: Would that actually work? Or is it complete Hollywood Physics?
David Sadler-Coppard: It was a combination of research and references. The client had mentioned the Matrix elevator fire shot which was a good reference and we started with that. Essentially the explosions were all smoke simulations with a fire shader applied to them which gave us these nice undulating rolling fire shapes. We didn’t have any practical fire in camera in any shots so we were free to design it as needed.
During the initial explosion simulations, it quickly became clear they needed a fair amount of direction in terms of scale and timing to keep the action readable. The client was also keen to make them all feel very “dirty”, full of texture and detail, even though, in reality, the blast would probably just blow out the sensor completely.
And as for the flying door… I’m almost certain it would never bounce back and forth so cleanly, but that’s Hollywood for you. We did experiment with it ricocheting around the corridor or shattering into dented fragments with a lot more impact, but it never quite looked right, and the director wasn’t a fan of those versions anyway.
DP: The shot with the two characters in the VERY small lift: Was that the easiest shot ever? Or am I missing something?
David Sadler-Coppard: This was one of the first shots we started on, and, as often happens, it became one of the last to final. The client had a clear vision for a dynamic raking light-and-shadow effect playing across the wall behind the characters, so we built the entire environment in CG to give full control. We carefully layered in details, mortar, texture, even cobwebs, to give the space a gritty, lived-in feel.
Later, we explored adding subtle camera shake and sway to enhance the sense of atmosphere and movement. After refining it together through multiple iterations, we reached a version everyone loved, approved towards the end of the show.
DP: And, of all the 239 shots – what is your personal favourite shot?
David Sadler-Coppard: I’m incredibly proud of all the Tomatina work, and of the entire team who brought it to life. It was an emotional journey with plenty of late nights, but seeing it come together was worth every moment. Let’s just say I’ll never look at a bottle of Heinz quite the same way again.
DP: And finally, what’s next for you and the Milk team? Are you staying out of food fights for a while?
David Sadler-Coppard: Milk has several exciting projects coming up and I am nearly wrapped on The Witcher Season 4 myself. It’s an exciting, if slightly nerve-wracking time in the industry right now, but working with a talented, passionate, artistic team on such a tough but rewarding job reminds you why you love VFX in the first place.
