Netflix effects studio Eyeline swaps locations, rebuilds crowds and relights scenes with AI
Netflix's in-house effects studio can now swap a location, rebuild a crowd and relight a scene after filming has finished.
That was the update from Mohsen Mousavi, VP of Virtual Pioneering at Eyeline Studios, which is owned by Netflix. He laid out the work at the View Conference in Turin, according to Variety.
Mousavi is an Emmy and VES award-winning visual effects supervisor and creative director, according to his View Conference biography. His session is titled "Artists in the Loop: Generative AI in Production at Eyeline". The View Conference, now in its 27th year as an international visual effects and computer graphics event, runs from October 12 to October 16, 2026.
Eyeline calls the method "hybrid production". In plain terms, it mixes real filmed footage with conventional visual effects, meaning computer-made imagery added by artists, and generative AI, meaning systems that create new images from learned patterns.
In practice, that means three jobs that used to lock in on set can now shift in post-production. Locations can be replaced. Crowds can be rebuilt. Lighting can be changed. The studio is also developing tools that could let a director reposition the camera after an actor's performance has already been captured.
Two Netflix projects show how it works. For "Brazil '70: The Third Star", Eyeline helped fill stadiums using a mix of filmed crowd elements, sprites, which are small flat images repeated to suggest large numbers, conventional CG and generative techniques. For "The American Experiment", a five-part historical documentary, the team created background extensions and generative dust that was blended with practical footage.
Mousavi also showed a technique for changing a performer's apparent age while keeping the original acting intact. To train its relighting systems, Eyeline uses a rig of 40 synchronised RED V-Raptor cameras that capture the same subject from many angles at once.
What makes this stand out for viewers is how invisible it is meant to be. For fans, this means fuller stadiums, dustier historical streets and smoother day-to-night shifts, without reshoots pulling actors back to set.
