The scale of digital special F/X produced by Montreal's BIG BANG FX/Animation for the new live-action family series The Neverending Story may accurately be described as fantastic, with as many as 250 to 300 F/X shots in the first nine (of 13) episodes alone.

F/X on the show include "complete virtual cities ready to be used from any angle - cityscapes in which we can actually land a plane," says series F/X producer and BIG BANG president Mario Rachiele.

Rachiele calls F/X such as The Neverending Story's cityscapes "amortized effects, because it takes four months to build, but once it's built it can be used throughout the series."

BIG BANG has created major 3D elements that integrate with live-action footage in the series, which is set in both the real world of a young boy and the world of his vivid imagination, called Fantasia. These elements include a dragon-like airplane called The Flying Machine and the Dark City, a vast, hellish cityscape floating on a volcanic sea cloud ruled by the Dark Princess of Fantasia. The show features frequent shape-shifting and computer morphing, such as when a character changes from a wolf to a man, and extensive motion-tracking sequences, which requires a time-consuming production process that yields rewarding results.

Rachiele says the F/X work on The Neverending Story is likely to create "a new standard in episodic television storytelling, because half of every hour is set on Earth and the other half is set in Fantasia, the realm of the fantastic." He adds: "The future of digital special F/X is in their seamlessness and overall enhancement of the story."

The Neverending Story is a Canadian/German copro between Muse Entertainment Enterprises and The Movie Factory Film GmbH of Munich. Exec producers are Muse's Michael Prupas and Rolf Schneider of The Movie Factory. Dieter Geissler, a producer on the franchise's feature films, is the series' creative producer. The producer is Irene Litinsky. Supervising producers and writers are David Preston and Leila Basen.

The series is being shot in Sony CineAlta 24P High-Definition and is budgeted at close to $20 million, using cutting-edge design and techniques including matte paintings, models, mechanical trompe l'oeil and digital F/X.

Twelve-year-old Mark Rendall (Olivier, Screech Owls) stars as the imaginative boy who enters Fantasia. The series is based on the Michael Ende novel of the same name, which to date has inspired three feature films. The new series is the first live-action version for worldwide TV.

Benoit Briere, the series' F/X supervisor on set, is part of a dedicated BIG BANG team of 10 to 15 full-time employees on the show, which includes 3D animators, digital compositors, storyboard artists and matte painters.

Careful preparation is the essential ingredient in meeting budgets and production deadlines, but Rachiele says one factor in BIG BANG's favor is experience. "We have almost all senior [staff] working here because [that way] you can do a lot more with fewer people."