The best TV of 2025 and 2026 proves that no two visual effects jobs are ever alike. A VFX department can be tasked with giving an actor visible superpowers, creating horrifying backgrounds, or literally crafting the main character of a sitcom from scratch. But at IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables, we learned that no matter what the story requires, the VFX team is often the glue holding multiple departments together.

The visual effects panel, which was moderated by IndieWire’s Jim Hemphill, included VFX supervisors Betsy Paterson (“Stranger Things”), Hnedel Maximore (“Spider-Noir”), Hoyt Yeatman (“Ted”), Tara DeMarco (“The Boroughs”), and Daryl Sawchuk (“IT: Welcome to Derry”).

While audiences often think of special effects as a post-production task, the conversation revealed how early VFX teams have to come on board to help other departments figure out what to shoot.

“We’re in there very early so that we can figure out these tough sequences that are dependent on all of the departments working together and figuring out how to solve a problem,” Paterson said. “Sometimes you’re in even earlier if the directors need help solving ‘What can we actually do given our budget and our time frame?’ We get in pretty early to help figure all of that out.”

Sawchuk echoed those sentiments, explaining that VFX departments often end up doing the bulk of the coordination throughout the production process to ensure they have what they need to work with at the end.

“I think it’s pretty paramount to the success of a given sequence. A lot of us come from a storytelling background. Because you’re ultimately going to be putting everything together at the end, like Betsy mentioned, you’re having conversations with all of these relevant departments that are doing their part,” he said. “They might not necessarily know how it’s all going to come together, but you’ve got to try to orchestrate that and rally everyone to come together and do all of these extra passes.”

Watch the complete conversation from IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables in the video above.