Brandon Fayette

Brandon Fayette
Role	Digital Effects Supervisor
Date of birth	March 20, 1982
Place of birth	New Orleans, Louisiana
External Links

Brilliantly talented.— Seth MacFarlane, on Brandon Fayette

Brandon Fayette is a visual effects supervisor for Season 3 of The Orville. He was digital effects supervisor for Seasons 1 and 2.

Showrunner Seth MacFarlane later said Fayette and co-producer Tom Costantino were "two formidable talents. Whenever you see a big visual effects, heavy action sequence on the show, their hand is generally pretty heavy in it."

Background

Fayette started his career in 2007 as a previs artist with Halon Entertainment (which also works as a production company on The Orville) on the movie Evan Almighty. He soon became a visual effects consultant on movies and films, including on 2009's Star Trek. He later worked as an animator on Star Trek: Into Darkness, a computer graphics supervisor on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and a digital artist on Star Trek: Beyond.

The Orville

Brandon Fayette eventually left Halon and began working alone on projects like Patriot's Day. Meanwhile, The Orville had been picked up by 20th Century Studios for its first season. Luke McDonald, the show's new visual effects supervisor, reached out to Fayette and offered him a job to work on "a Seth MacFarlane project." Fayette had worked on many science-fiction movies, so he was excited to leave science fiction for what he assumed would be a real-world comedy feature. McDonald then said it was a science-fiction show; Fayette took a deep breathe and said, "...Okay."

Season 1

Fayette joined the show during production of the pilot, Old Wounds, working on spaceships with Kit Stølen. His first, and perhaps most memorable, creation was the Krill destroyer, which he modeled off of the Krill shuttlecraft. "No one else had been able to crack it," he recalled. An existing model of the destroyer already existed but Fayette replaced it with a version that would better parallel the Krill's oppressive and spartan architecture. He worked with production designer Stephen J. Lineweaver and fellow artist Kit Stølen on the Krill bridge.

After the pilot was finished, Fayette took a more central role in production thanks to his on-set experience. Fayette quickly became one of the most important artists during Season 1, as he designed many of the most crucial ships, including:

• Krill and Moclan fleets
• Janisi ships (the Janisi were ultimately not used, but a ship stand-off was later mentioned in passing by Talla Keyali in All the World is Birthday Cake)
• Pria Lavesque's mining ship, the Horizon
• Union cruisers
• The Bio-ship

Fayette designed most of the futuristic world of New York City in the 25th century, making the city a melange of old and new buildings and resplendent gardens. He envisioned the air to be filled with Lineweaver's commuter pods and a vast monorail (designed with visual effects supervisor Luke McDonald).

We pitched this idea of doing gardens everywhere and in the opening shot from the pilot we do that. I pitched starting with the Statue of Liberty and Luke wanted to add a monorail, and as the pod is going through New York the sun is starting to set and it's always about clean buildings. Since the Union Fleet has ships that are very organic, we can't just have buildings that are squared off, so we took a mix of old brownstones and old New York buildings and mixed them in with new buildings like space needle buildings that were more curved.

Fayette also designed the Benzian species and Doctor Jorvik, both based on original sketches by creator Seth MacFarlane.

Season 2

For Season 2, Fayette adopted a goal to tell a visual "story" for the audience to understand.

Season 3

Fayette was made visual effects supervisor while in pre-production for Season 3.

He redesigned the Planetary Union's shuttles, which he had not designed in Season 1, to make them sleeker.

Awards

For their work on Identity, Pt. 2, the Emmy Awards announced that Fayette; visual effects supervisors Luke McDonald, Tommy Tran, Kevin Lingenfelser, and Nhat Phong Tran; visual effects producers Brooke Noska and Melissa Delong; computer graphics supervisor Matt Von Brock; and compositing supervisor Joseph Vincent Pike would be collectively nominated for Outstanding Visual Effects.

For that same episode, the Hollywood Professional Association Awards awarded Fayette, Noska, Tran, Lingenfelser, and digital effects supervisor Joseph Vincent Pike with Outstanding Visual Effects - Episodic (Over 13 Episodes).

Trivia

• Fayette makes a sneak cameo as a party guest in Laura Huggins house in the episode Lasting Impressions.
• Fayette's work often overlaps all visual effects despite Fayette's position being "digital effects." In reality, his job requirements cover all effects but, for legal purposes, could not share McDonald's title of visual effects supervisor.
• Fayette and Kit Stølen were the first production staff members back on set for the show after the Covid-19 pandemic.

See also

• The World of the Orville, pages 11-12, 21, 68-69, 82, 84, 88, 101, 103, 114, 117, 142, 151-53