Visual Effects in Upcoming Television Pilots

I was reading an article in The Hollywood Reporter about new television shows premiering this fall. I watched the promos for all of the shows and noticed a lot of them utilized visual effects and animation. Two shows in particular caught my eye mainly because of their visual effects. ABC's Once Upon a Time and Fox's Terra Nova both appear to be big budget, sci-fi shows that utilize a large amount of visual effects to tell the story. When I was watching each of their trailers, I felt like I was watching a trailer for a big-budget movie.

Once Upon A Time takes audiences into the world of fairytales, with characters like Snow White and the Evil Queen. Terra Nova is produced by Steven Spielberg and tells the story of a futuristic family that is transported back 85 million years to join a colony aimed at rebuilding civilization. When I looked into the crew behind both of these shows, a lot of them come from a film background and have done visual effects for such films as X-Men, Superman Returns, The Matrix, and 2012. All of these films are heavy on impressive visual effects so I am curious to see how the work of these talented people translates to television.

Here is the trailer for Once Upon a Time.

Here is the trailer for Terra Nova.