Building Bad Season 1
What happens when scientists, inventors, and engineers apply their skills to illegal ends? Building Bad combines true crime with science and engineering, using cinematic CGI, expert interviews, and exclusive footage from law enforcement worldwide.
Building Bad is a true-crime engineering series that asks a simple, provocative question: what happens when brilliant minds go bad? Season 1's ten episodes examine some of the most audacious criminal engineering ever documented — Colombian narco-submarines built in jungle clearings, Italian Mafia assassination drones, the engineering behind Pablo Escobar's escape routes, and the physics of history's most daring diamond heists.
Our VFX mandate was to make the invisible visible. Where archival footage was absent or classified, we rebuilt the criminal engineering in photorealistic CG — the cramped interior of a narco-sub, the mechanical complexity of a tunnel boring machine used for drug smuggling, the structural ingenuity of Alcatraz's most famous escape. The work had to be technically accurate, visually arresting, and above all credible.
Season 1 aired on Crave (Bell Media Canada) and Prime Video from March through June 2025, earning strong audience numbers and a renewal. The VFX package — ten episodes, delivered on a broadcast schedule — represents some of the most technically demanding factual work in our catalogue.
Gallery
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Series open — cinematic title card establishing the show's dark criminal-engineering aesthetic.
Factual VFX pipeline overview — the same CG reconstruction methodology deployed across 10 episodes.
Cross-discipline factual VFX — the forensic environment-build process shared with our ice and arctic productions.
Secrets in the Ice S3 — sister production illustrating the full scope of our factual reconstruction work.
Secrets in the Sand — parallel factual series showcasing the pipeline's range across environment types.
Arctic fieldwork composite — on-location photography extended with full CG environmental elements.
Underground tunnel system — the same engineering-simulation technique applied across multiple episodes.
Factual series reel — cross-section of the reconstruction style maintained consistently across all productions.
Series open — cinematic title card establishing the show's dark criminal-engineering aesthetic.
Factual VFX pipeline overview — the same CG reconstruction methodology deployed across 10 episodes.
Cross-discipline factual VFX — the forensic environment-build process shared with our ice and arctic productions.
Secrets in the Ice S3 — sister production illustrating the full scope of our factual reconstruction work.
Secrets in the Sand — parallel factual series showcasing the pipeline's range across environment types.
Arctic fieldwork composite — on-location photography extended with full CG environmental elements.
Underground tunnel system — the same engineering-simulation technique applied across multiple episodes.
Factual series reel — cross-section of the reconstruction style maintained consistently across all productions.
Series open — cinematic title card establishing the show's dark criminal-engineering aesthetic.
Factual VFX pipeline overview — the same CG reconstruction methodology deployed across 10 episodes.
Cross-discipline factual VFX — the forensic environment-build process shared with our ice and arctic productions.
Secrets in the Ice S3 — sister production illustrating the full scope of our factual reconstruction work.
Secrets in the Sand — parallel factual series showcasing the pipeline's range across environment types.
Arctic fieldwork composite — on-location photography extended with full CG environmental elements.
Underground tunnel system — the same engineering-simulation technique applied across multiple episodes.
Factual series reel — cross-section of the reconstruction style maintained consistently across all productions.
Next Project
Secrets in the Sand S2→