{"id":639276,"date":"2026-05-12T21:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/639276\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T21:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:19:10","slug":"how-euphoria-turned-sydney-sweeney-into-a-modern-day-godzilla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/639276\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018Euphoria\u2019 Turned Sydney Sweeney Into a Modern-Day Godzilla"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this week\u2019s episode of \u201cEuphoria<\/a>,\u201d Cassie (Sydney Sweeney<\/a>) comes into her own as an internet superstar who rakes in cash with her provocative, explicit posts. To convey the degree to which Cassie feels as though she\u2019s taking over the world, series creator Sam Levinson<\/a> came up with an ingenious visual metaphor: a fantasy sequence in which Cassie grows into a 50-foot woman and stomps through the streets of Los Angeles like Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo.<\/p>\n

In keeping with Levinson\u2019s omnivorous cinephilia, the sequence is audacious and innovative but looks back at earlier films for inspiration \u2014 in this case, the 1958 cult classic \u201cAttack of the 50 Foot Woman,\u201d the 1961 kaiju landmark \u201cMothra,\u201d and other sci-fi films that relied on miniatures and old-school practical effects to achieve their sense of spectacle. The set piece required close collaboration between Levinson and his department heads, including production designer Fran\u00e7ois Audouy and visual effects supervisor David Van Dyke, who worked together to create forced-perspective sets that Sydney Sweeney could stomp through with minimal digital enhancement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Japan, there\u2019s this Tokusatsu miniature tradition that started in the late 1950s with \u2018Godzilla,’\u201d Audouy told IndieWire. \u201cThey continued creating these city destruction miniatures for decades, in movie after movie, and we looked at some of those movies for inspiration.\u201d To create a miniature downtown Los Angeles for Cassie to conquer, Audouy worked with J.C. Backings to build a 90-foot Translight that would cover the entire back of the soundstage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted the whole sequence to have a twilight, pre-dusk look, so the lighting had to be very consistent,\u201d Auduoy said when explaining the purpose of the Translight. In front of the Translight were models built by John Merritt Productions, a company that has been creating miniatures and practical effects for decades; among their credits are now classic films like \u201cKill Bill,\u201d \u201cSpeed,\u201d and \u201cDick Tracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really amazing to work with a team of model builders who don\u2019t get asked to do this kind of stuff anymore,\u201d Auduoy said. \u201cThey\u2019re like the last knights of another era.\u201d Merritt and his team spent six months building structures like the Eastern Columbia Building and the Orpheum Theatre sign, the latter of which featured thousands of miniature incandescent bulbs \u2014 \u201cthe smallest incandescent bulbs that are made,\u201d according to Auduoy.<\/p>\n

The city set was built in forced perspectives, with different buildings created at different scales that required Audouy and Van Dyke to solve complicated mathematical problems to make sure everything would match the way they wanted on camera. \u201cWe built the foreground at 1\/24 scale, and then it goes to 1\/48 scale in the background buildings,\u201d Auduoy said. \u201cThen we had some close-ups that were done at 1\/12 scale. When you\u2019re mixing scales and things like that from shot to shot, it requires a lot of complicated physics.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a scene shot from inside one of the buildings, in which the giant Cassie approaches from outside while an office worker watches one of her videos on his computer, Van Dyke had to figure out how to combine disparate frame rates and camera positions to give the illusion that a giant Cassie was moving through space toward her \u201cfan.\u201d \u201cYou have two different plates lining up with each other,\u201d Van Dyke said. \u201cWe shot the foreground and the background separately.\u201d The footage of the man in the office was shot at a normal frame rate, while the plate showing Cassie was photographed at a higher frame rate to give her more weight.<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

\u2018Euphoria\u2019Eddy Chen<\/p>\n

The interaction between Cassie and the office worker then ends with Cassie pressing against the building and her giant breasts crashing through the glass \u2014 an idea Levinson and Sweeney brought to Auduoy late in the game that entailed KNB EFX Group\u2019s Mark Byers building a giant chest appliance that could push through the window. \u201cIt was built at almost the last minute, and KNB sculpted it the old-fashioned way and did a terrific job,\u201d Auduoy said. \u201cMark put the whole thing on a sled and timed it so that when the rig hit the glass, the glass was squibbed to shatter at exactly that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The set pieces for the entire sequence were built on wheels, so that when it was time to reset for new angles, the entire camera department didn\u2019t have to move \u2014 the set just had to rotate to accommodate the new setup. Auduoy described the choreography that was required of cinematographer Marcell R\u00e9v and the show\u2019s ADs as a ballet designed to capture an insane amount of shots \u2014 although the set took months to build, the actual sequence was shot in only a couple of days.<\/p>\n

Van Dyke saw his job less as someone creating CG imagery \u2014 of which there was almost none in the sequence \u2014 than as a sort of additional set decorator, adding physical elements to sell the illusion. His crew shot various plates of smoke, explosions, and models like toy helicopters flying through the air that were combined to give the sequence volume and texture, all the while making sure the details were convincing in the high-resolution film stocks (much of Season 3 was shot on 65mm celluloid) Rev and Levinson employed to capture the images.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really gives it a natural cinema feel, an old Hollywood feel that fits in with the rest of the show,\u201d Van Dyke said, with Auduoy adding that the whole idea was to find a visual language to express Cassie\u2019s interior experience. \u201cCassie\u2019s inner life is one of the most heightened things on the show,\u201d Auduoy said, \u201cso going back to an old Hollywood craft tradition was a way to lean into her storyline.\u201d For Van Dyke, the satisfaction of the sequence came from the fact that he felt there was a real sense of purpose behind the methodology.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes people want to use miniatures just because they think it\u2019s \u2018neat,\u2019 but there\u2019s no real meaning behind it,\u201d Van Dyke said. \u201cWhen Fran\u00e7ois and I read this, it just made a lot of sense; it was exciting. When I do effects, I want to know what I\u2019m doing and why I\u2019m doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEuphoria\u201d airs Sunday nights on HBO and is now streaming on HBO MAX.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this week\u2019s episode of \u201cEuphoria,\u201d Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) comes into her own as an internet superstar who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[56905,236,275986,88,275988,275990,221688,7105,275987,275989],"class_list":["post-639276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-cassie","tag-celebrities","tag-david-van-dyke","tag-entertainment","tag-fantasy-sequence","tag-john-merritt","tag-sam-levinson","tag-sydney-sweeney","tag-van-dyke","tag-visual-effects-supervisor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}