beloFX has revealed how its visual effects team helped bring A24’s psychological thriller Mother Mary to life, delivering 156 VFX shots that include digital stadium crowds and cloth simulations for the mysterious red spirit haunting the film’s central character.
A concert filled with thousands of fans can create an extraordinary cinematic spectacle. But what happens when a performer encounters something that doesn’t belong in the real world?
In Mother Mary, that unsettling contrast is central to the story. Directed by David Lowery, the psychological thriller follows a famous pop star preparing for a comeback performance while confronting a complicated relationship with her former creative collaborator.
The film blends the spectacle of contemporary pop music with supernatural imagery and psychological tension. Its visual effects needed to support both sides of that world: enormous concert performances and the mysterious presence that follows the singer.
On October 13, 2026, visual effects studio beloFX released a new breakdown revealing selected shots from its work on the film. The studio contributed 156 VFX shots, including CG audiences for stadium performances and cloth simulation for the film’s distinctive red spirit.
Building the Scale of a Stadium Performance
Concert sequences present a particular challenge for filmmakers. The audience must feel enormous, energetic and responsive to the performer, while the camera needs the freedom to capture a range of compositions.
Filling every seat with real spectators can be expensive and logistically difficult, especially when the production requires multiple camera angles or changes in crowd density.
Computer-generated crowds offer another option.
For Mother Mary, beloFX created CG crowds for stadium performance scenes, helping establish the scale of the pop star’s world.
Digital audiences can be useful for extending photographed crowds, filling distant seating areas and supporting wide shots where individual spectators do not need to be visible in close detail.
The challenge is making the crowd feel like a collective audience rather than a collection of repeated digital figures.
In a concert environment, viewers expect a convincing sense of energy. Even when the audience is distant, movement and overall density influence how large and lively the venue feels.
Crowd effects therefore need to support the performance, camera composition and atmosphere of the scene.
The breakdown provides a glimpse into how beloFX helped create the scale needed for the film’s stadium sequences.
The Red Spirit: Turning Fabric Into a Supernatural Presence
One of the film’s most distinctive visual elements is the mysterious red spirit that follows Mother Mary.
Rather than appearing as a conventional ghost or a fully digital creature, the entity takes the form of flowing red fabric. Its movements and unusual behaviour make an otherwise familiar material feel supernatural.
The visual concept was deliberately rooted in something tangible. Director David Lowery described the apparition as being made from different types of real red fabric, giving the filmmakers a practical starting point for its appearance.
However, making fabric appear to move in unnatural ways presents a different challenge.
Cloth is highly responsive to gravity, air resistance, momentum and contact with surrounding objects. Its folds and edges change continuously as it moves.
For the VFX team, the task was to preserve the material’s recognisable qualities while making its behaviour feel mysterious.
beloFX used cloth simulation for the red spirit, allowing the digital fabric to move and deform in ways that supported the film’s supernatural imagery.
Why Cloth Simulation Matters
Cloth simulation is a core technique in modern computer graphics. It is used to reproduce the movement of materials such as clothing, flags, curtains and other flexible surfaces.
In a typical digital workflow, artists define the material’s properties and use simulation to calculate how it responds to forces and movement. The resulting animation can then be refined to meet the visual requirements of a shot.
For a supernatural entity, the objective is not necessarily to reproduce physically ordinary movement.
Instead, the artists can use the familiar behaviour of fabric as a foundation and shape the result to feel unsettling.
The fabric may need to billow, fold, stretch or change direction in ways that appear almost alive. Lighting and compositing then help integrate the simulated material into the photographed scene.
The key is maintaining enough physical credibility for the audience to recognise fabric while creating movement that feels beyond the ordinary.
In Mother Mary, this approach supports an apparition that is visually simple yet psychologically disturbing.
Combining Practical Imagery With Digital Effects
A film such as Mother Mary does not rely on visual effects for spectacle alone. The digital work needs to coexist with performances, production design, cinematography and practical elements.
That balance is especially important when an effect is built around a familiar material.
If digital fabric looks too artificial, the spirit may lose the unsettling quality that makes it effective. If the movement is too ordinary, the supernatural presence may feel unconvincing.
The same principle applies to digital crowds. A stadium environment needs to feel like a real concert space, even when some of the audience is computer-generated.
The production’s visual effects therefore serve different purposes within the same film: crowd work establishes scale, while the red spirit introduces uncertainty and supernatural tension.
Together, these elements show how VFX can support very different kinds of storytelling without making the technology itself the centre of attention.
Inside beloFX’s 156-Shot Contribution
The new breakdown showcases selected examples of beloFX’s work, including the stadium audiences and the red spirit. The studio says its team was led on the project by VFX Supervisor Russell Bowen and VFX Producer Laura Jones.
Although the published breakdown does not provide a detailed technical breakdown of every shot or identify all the software used, the work highlights two important areas of visual effects production.
Digital crowd work helps filmmakers expand the scale of a location beyond what can be captured practically.
Cloth simulation gives artists control over complex material movement, from realistic fabric behaviour to more stylised supernatural motion.
Both require careful integration with the live-action footage. The effects must respond to the cinematography and remain consistent with the scene’s lighting, scale and movement.
What VFX Artists Can Learn From Mother Mary
For CG artists, technical directors and compositors, beloFX’s work offers a useful example of how different disciplines can support the same creative vision.
- Use digital crowds to extend scale. CG audiences can help create convincing stadium environments without requiring every spectator to be photographed.
- Let material behaviour contribute to storytelling. Fabric movement can communicate character, mood or supernatural presence.
- Balance physical credibility with artistic intention. An effect can be grounded in real-world physics while still behaving in a deliberately unnatural way.
- Integrate effects into the cinematography. Crowd work and simulated fabric must feel as though they belong in the photographed scene.
- Keep the story in control. The best effects support the intended emotion rather than distracting the audience from it.
The red spirit is particularly interesting because its concept begins with something simple: a piece of fabric. Through design, movement and visual effects, that familiar material becomes a memorable supernatural image.
Watch the Mother Mary VFX Breakdown
beloFX has released a breakdown showing selected shots from its contribution to David Lowery’s psychological thriller.
The footage offers a closer look at the studio’s digital crowd work and the simulated red spirit, providing a glimpse of how visual effects support both the concert spectacle and the film’s supernatural atmosphere.
- Read the CG Channel report
- Watch beloFX’s official updates
- Explore the film’s supernatural visual concept
Follow Zgian for more VFX breakdowns, CG simulation techniques, compositing workflows and behind-the-scenes insights from film production.
