Siren Lab, led by veteran VFX supervisor and flame artist Karen Heston, produced the majority of the VFX shots used in Beasts of No Nation. According to Heston, it was Fukunaga’s earlier film, Sin Nombre, that sparked her desire to work with the director, whom she described as “very supportive and open to new solutions that might save time.” Heston, who devised the unique technique of stationing VFX right next to the edit bay on Beasts, emphasized that, “Cary likes to push the VFX to their limits, not only making the final product more clear to his vision upon completion, but trying a few avenues along the way to ensure the best outcome.”
During her decade-plus career, Heston has worked on commercial and music video projects at a variety of VFX companies, including Framestore, Mass Market, Rhino FX, Charlex and directly for major brands such as Google, Kohl’s, Macy’s Visa, GE, AT&T and L’Oreal.
Heston was inspired to start Siren Lab “to do what I love and what interests me in finding adaptive and unique VFX solutions that are custom tailored to the needs of each individual project.”
