www.sebastiannevols.com

Creative Brief

For the Royal Opera House’s Autumn/Winter season campaign, photographer and director Sebastian Nevols brought together a team of visual collaborators to reinterpret the emotional resonance of Eugene Onegin for a new audience. Commissioned to craft a short trailer and key visual content for the season, Sebastian invited Little Shadow to join the production, bringing VFX craft to a poetic visual language. The brief centred on Onegin’s central theme: the shifting perspective of love and regret, captured through cinematic storytelling and design-led aesthetics.

Our Approach

The production aimed to blend stylised imagery with classical tone, bridging the world of live opera and contemporary visual storytelling. Little Shadow provided on-set VFX supervision for the Onegin shoot, ensuring plates were clean and flexible for post-production. Back in studio, we worked across compositing, clean-up, and set extensions to bring a heightened realism to the final trailer and key art.

Shot in a single location with minimal set dressing, the scenes required seamless enhancements to evoke the scale and elegance of the opera’s emotional world. Using a blend of Nuke compositing and Photoshop-based matte extensions, we expanded environments, refined lighting transitions, and supported the editorial structure with invisible FX. The goal was subtlety-enhancing without over-declaring.

The key art, directed by Sebastian and art director Elle Mikkola, was treated like a cinematic still, depicting Onegin’s final realisation and longing. Our work helped harmonise visual elements and extend the frame where needed for layout versatility.

The Results

The Eugene Onegin trailer was released as part of the Royal Opera House’s Autumn/Winter season campaign, capturing the drama and emotional tone of the production in under a minute.

Thank you, to Sebastian, Tony Pipes and Lara Cappelli @laracappelli, for the opportunity to create work for these incredible productions.

This Opera features outstanding talent Gordon Bintner @gordonbintner and Eliza Agrosoaie @ellizagrosoaie

Thanks to the brilliant team!
Editor – Ruairi Watson
DOP – Lorenzo Levrini @lorenzolevrini
Art director – Elle Mikkola @ellevoila
Colourist – Karol Cybulski @imkarol.colour
Retouch – Karl Hugill @onewhitechair
BTS – Mishike Fostik @mr_fostik
@crxss_agency