Mad Men’s special effects supervisor has yet to view the notorious 4K remaster.

This week, gamers had a good chuckle over HBO Max’s new 4K remaster of Mad Men, which launched with some pretty obvious blunders that should have been caught before hitting the streaming service. Episodes went live with incorrect titles, and in one memorable instance, viewers could spot a production crew member who definitely shouldn’t have been on-screen. These errors reportedly stemmed from the original production company sending over the wrong set of files.

It’s hard to believe that no one at HBO noticed that the remastered episode “Red in the Face” still featured a clear shot of special effects foreman Shannon Thompson. In a recent chat, Thompson—whose impressive resume includes work on films like The Mask, From Dusk Till Dawn, American History X, Dune: Part One, and the new Matlock reboot—shared that he hasn’t had a chance to check out the remaster. However, he vividly recalls shooting that episode and views it as a prime example of the invisible special effects that make everyday TV feel authentic.

How did you get into special effects work?
I’ve always been drawn to creative, mechanical tasks like pyrotechnics, so I started in props, where there’s often overlap with special effects. I met a couple of effects guys, hit it off with them, and I’ve been in this field for 33 years now.

Looking at your IMDb, you’ve worked on a ton of major sci-fi and fantasy projects. What kind of special effects did you handle for Mad Men?
For a show like Mad Men, it’s mostly about atmospheric effects. Whenever you see snow, steam, or rain—anything that moves on camera but isn’t being moved by an actor—that’s special effects. Almost every elevator door you see in the show is fake, and a big part of my job was managing those elevator doors. I’d be hiding in the walls, waiting for my cue, figuring out how to make those everyday elements look seamless.

What goes into creating realistic projectile vomit that doesn’t look over-the-top?
[laughing] Honestly, it involves a lot of research and observation. I had to watch numerous videos of people vomiting, and then there’s the practical testing to nail the effect. We use a pressure pot to fill whatever liquid we want the vomit to resemble in the final shot. You study how that liquid flows from the hose, but sometimes you need to adjust the hose opening to make it look like it’s genuinely coming from someone’s mouth.

If you just use a straight tube, it’ll look like it’s coming from a tube, so you have to think about what’s in a person’s mouth—like teeth and the uvula—to create a believable vomiting shape. The director will specify the desired consistency, and then you have to ask questions like, “What did they eat? Are they sick from being drunk or is it a virus?”

For “Red in the Face,” do you recall the discussions about the vomit’s consistency?
For that scene, they wanted Roger Sterling to have eaten oysters, and [producer] Matt Weiner said it needed to be “clam chowder-ish.” So, I ended up using clam chowder and figuring out how to make it spew everywhere.

What do you think went wrong in the remastering process that left you visible in the shot?
I guess it was just a lack of foresight, you know? Whenever we did an effect, we aimed to be as close as possible while staying just out of frame.

When you were originally filming, was the assumption that you would be cropped out?
Yeah, back then, we always tried to blend in as much as possible, but these days, they often say, “We’ll fix it in post.” This time, though, it seems they didn’t fix it.