Come awards season, you probably wouldn’t think that the second season of Netflix’s Beef would be a contender for many visual-effects gongs. After all, while it is tight, tense and sublimely acted, it is ultimately a small ensemble piece grounded in some form of reality.
But you might be wrong, since it has emerged that VFX artists had to painstakingly paint out earbuds worn by Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan throughout the shoot. On a recent podcast appearance, the show’s creator, Lee Sung Jin, told Isaac and Mulligan that digitally erasing the earwigs, as they are known, “cost a fortune”.
