 James Madigan , the visual effects supervisor , approached the series as a feature film , observing that " every aspect of the production took meticulous care with every detail , the costumes , the set dressing , the acting , and the attention to historical fact . As you worked on it , you really got the feeling that Rome was going to look like something we had never seen on TV before , so our <unk> approach very much wanted to respect that . " Madigan attempted to seamlessly <unk> the visual effects with the physical sets and depend less on CGI . A friend told Madigan that after seeing the pilot , " he didn ’ t see any <unk> shots , even though there are dozens of shots throughout episode 1 . That means we did our job well . " 
