EDI Effetti Digitali Italiani wins an Emmy Award for vfx in Netflix series ‘Ripley’

The team at EDI worked on more than 100 scenes, including set extensions, CGI and historical reconstructions.

The Netflix series ‘Ripley’ directed by Steven Zaillian has captured the interest of millions of viewers worldwide with its refined and elegant story set in a picture-postcard Italy. In more than 100 scenes, spread over 6 of the 8 total episodes, there was the artistic intervention of the visual effects of EDI – Effetti Digitali Italiani.

A project that engaged the team, under the supervision of Gaia Bussolati, for a period of 4 years, starting from the first reading of the scripts up to the delivery of the work, which earned a nomination at the 2024 Emmy Awards in the category “Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Single Episode” together with other international suppliers including Weta. A nomination that the visual effects studio has already received twice before for the series ‘The Nevers’ in the first and second season.

It is precisely the third episode ‘Il sommerso’, the one that brought victory at the Emmys, in which EDI took care of the set extension work, recreating the Sanremo landscape that provides the backdrop for one of the story’s most pivotal moments. In the same episode, the scene of the bathers playing on the shore was originally shot at Anzio, the lighthouse in the background being that of Capo d’Anzio, which was then surrounded by mountains and a Ligurian landscape .

EDI also intervened in other episodes, such as in the fourth entitledIn episode 4, “La dolce vita,” features several full CG reconstructions. These include the chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, a scene shot in Naples on green screen, and reworked based on historical research, photos and images of the paintings in the chapel including Caravaggio’s “St. Matthew and the Angel.” “It was the first scene we worked on, and it was complex to readjust the proportions of the chapel, which were not the same as the one we had to reconstruct.”

Similarly for Episode 7, “Macabre Entertainment” it was necessary to reconstruct Caravaggio’s painting “Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi” in Palermo, which was stolen in 1969. Now replaced by a digital print, it was made more authentic to the painting, by recreating the brushstrokes, tears and texture of the canvas, after thorough study of the repertoire images.

Bussolati concludes, “We worked with a passion for details and history, it was very inspiring to work on historical documents, especially the landscape, paintings and buildings such as churches. We are really happy that this series has achieved the great success it deserves all over the world”.

“We proudly export the art of visual effects made in Italy all over the world, being a constant presence in films and series of American majors, and this Emmy Award victory gives us great satisfaction that allows us to look more and more towards international projects,” said Francesco Grisi, CEO of EDI.

Starring Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn, Eliot Sumner and Italians Margherita Buy and Maurizio Lombardi, the series revives the famous character created by Patricia Highsmith’s pen, Tom Ripley, previously seen on the big screen in 1960 by Alain Delon in “Plein Soleil” and in 1999 by Matt Damon in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

Watch the VFX breakdown