CG Garage

Hnedel Maximore did not come up through the traditional VFX pipeline. He started drafting floor plans in Liberia, studied architecture in Michigan, got laid off during the housing crash, and worked his way across industries before landing at Speed Shape in Detroit doing automotive commercials. That's also where he and Chris first crossed paths, years before either of them could have predicted where things would end up. What Hnedel built along the way was not just a technical skillset but a spatial intelligence that became the secret weapon behind one of the most visually distinctive streaming shows in recent memory.
Spider-Man Noir is shot in color and black and white simultaneously, built on sets too small for the scripted action, and executed with a noir discipline that its showrunner and director Harry Bradbeer summed up as: what if Orson Welles had a Steadicam? Hnedel breaks down how previs shaped what they could actually afford to build, how the stunt team and VFX department merged into a single production unit, and why the dual delivery format put black and white monitors at video village for the entire shoot. He also gets direct about where VFX gets siloed too late in the process, and what it means when the VFX supervisor is employee number four.
Guest:
Hnedel Maximore on LinkedIn >
Hnedel Maximore on IMDB >
References:
Spider-Man Noir (Amazon / Sony) >
Speed Shape
Torchlight (previs)
V-Ray >
ILM >
Fuse FX
Zero VFX
Scanline VFX
Digital Domain >
Sway
Chinatown (1974)
Wicked Is Pain (documentary)
Backrooms
Obsession
Honey Don't (Ethan Coen)
Blender


This episode is sponsored by:
Center Grid Virtual Studio
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For years Chris and Daniel have been saying the corner was going to turn, that history would repeat itself the way it did in the 1970s. It turned. Jason Blum said the same thing last week. Two horror films made by twenty-something YouTubers just proved everything the studio system has been getting wrong, and the box office numbers are not being polite about it. Obsession cost under a million dollars. Backrooms cost ten million. Both are outperforming movies that cost a hundred times more.
Chris and Daniel break down both films as filmmakers. They get into what Obsession borrows from Takashi Miike's Audition and why that works, how Backrooms uses the architecture of infinite scroll and TikTok as genuine psychological horror, why sound design and shadows are a more effective budget tool than any AI pipeline, what the economics of AMC A-list are doing to studio revenue models, and why the wrong lesson from all of this is to go hire these directors to make a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel.
Referenced in this episode:
Obsession (2025)
Backrooms (2026)
Audition (1999, dir. Takashi Miike)
Avatar 3 (2025)
The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan) (2026)
Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
AMC A-list >
A24 >
Blumhouse >
This episode is sponsored by:
Center Grid Virtual Studio
Kitbash 3D (Use promocode "CGGarage" for 10% off)

Hollywood is having a Marie Antoinette moment. The people running studios and making AI announcements have no idea how their decisions are landing with the audience that actually buys tickets, and the backlash to Jorge R. Gutierrez announcing Punky Duck as an AI project is just the most recent and visible proof. Chris and Daniel are joined by Trina Renee, a studio-side post producer whose client credits run through Warner Brothers and Fox, and Julianna Medina-Politsky, who spent a decade as an executive at Legendary Entertainment and now runs Station X Ventures, for a conversation that is more grounded in the realities of production and finance than most discussions of this subject ever get.
The episode tracks what is actually happening right now. Obsession got made with private equity because Universal passed, and it worked. The Backrooms built a decade of community before anyone put it in a theater, and the studios still haven't figured out what that means for distribution. Gareth Edwards keeps coming up as the filmmaker who understands this moment best, someone who always worked like he was discovering the movie rather than executing a plan, and who is now using AI the same way. The conversation keeps landing on the same uncomfortable truth: taste is the only thing that cannot be automated, and the industry keeps trying to route around it.
Guests:
Trina Renee on IMDB >
Julianna Medina-Politsky >
Referenced in this episode:
Station X Ventures >
Legendary Entertainment >
Latina Squad >
Jorge R. Gutierrez / Punky Duck
AI on the Lot (Amazon)
Obsession (Blumhouse / Universal)
The Backrooms
Gareth Edwards / Monsters
Iron Lung / Markiplier
This episode is sponsored by:
Center Grid Virtual Studio
Kitbash 3D (Use promocode "CGGarage" for 10% off)

Sergio Cilli is going to get hate from both sides. The pro-AI crowd thinks he's mocking their tools. The anti-AI crowd thinks he's a hypocrite for using them. He's fine with that. Cilli is a director and writer who came up through sketch comedy and the writers' room of a David Spade Comedy Central show, went on to the Late Late Show as a segment producer, built a commercial directing career through Funny or Die, and has been making people laugh on the internet for twenty years. His Instagram series Will AI Replace Us? has become one of the sharpest, funniest pieces of AI criticism online precisely because he's doing both at once -- using the tools seriously enough to know exactly where they fall apart, then putting that failure on camera and reacting to it live. The comedy isn't a take. It's a demonstration.
Chris and Daniel sit with Sergio and get into how the series actually started, why the joke stops being funny the second you swap in a human actor, what the gaps in AI performance reveal about what real acting actually is, and why all those viral "Hollywood is cooked" demo reels conveniently avoid putting anyone on camera with a speaking part. They also dig into the moat question -- why AI has flattened every competitive advantage in the industry except the one that always mattered: knowing what's good.
Links
Sergio Cilli on Instagram >
Sergio Cilli on IMDb >
Sergio Cilli on YouYube >
Will AI Replace Us? >
Will AI replace us Merch Store! >
We Got That B-Roll >
Ruairi Robinson's Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise video >
Ruairi Robonson's "Are we Not Men" >
 
This episode is sponsored by:
Center Grid Virtual Studio
Kitbash 3D (Use promocode "CGGarage" for 10% off)

Gothic horror is having a moment, and Justin Denton got there before the wave. His feature The Curse of the Sin Eater is now streaming on Prime, built for under a million dollars with 19 shooting days, a single private benefactor, Chicago theater actors, an English manor that half-burned down and got rebuilt by hand, and a composer found on Spotify who bowed his guitar like a cello because he didn't own one. Justin is a VFX veteran who has worked on $200 million productions, directed VR experiences for Legendary, and now has a completed independent feature with a Samuel Goldwyn distribution deal to show for a process that looks nothing like what Hollywood taught him and everything like what filmmaking actually requires.
Chris and Daniel dig into the full journey with Justin: how the sin eater mythology stuck with him through COVID, why he pitched it as a drama dressed in horror clothing, what it costs to make a real film in a union town, how distribution actually gets done in the backroom deals before AFM (American Film Market) even opens, and why not having a recognizable name in your cast is the one decision that follows a first-time director all the way to the release screen. The conversation ranges from the Philippou Brothers grinding out horror on YouTube in rural Australia to Demi Moore chasing a script nobody thought she would want, to why the studios are wrong about Gen Z and the movies. This is a real-world map of what it takes to make a feature right now.
Links and References:
Justin Denton on IMDB >
Justin Denton on LinkedIn >
Justin Denton on Instagram >
The Curse of the Sin Eater Trailer >
The Curse of the Sin Eater on Amazon Prime >
Film discussed:
Talk to Me (dirs. Danny and Michael Philippou) 
The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) 
My Old Ass (dir. Megan Park) 
Weapons (dir. Zach Cregger) 
Obsession (dir. Cory Barker) 
The Bride (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)
Widows Bay (Apple TV+) 
Honey Don't (dir. Ethan Coen)
 
This episode is sponsored by:
Center Grid Virtual Studio
Kitbash 3D (Use promocode "CGGarage" for 10% off)