We describe a series of experiments reconstructing dynamic VFX scenes from multi-camera and moving-camera footage using Gaussian Splatting, built from open-source components. Through this process we report what worked, what broke, and what we learned — spanning an extension of Shape of Motion for fast-moving cameras, a reimplementation of a recent 4D Gaussian Splatting method, a baseline study, and algorithmic contributions targeting core limitations of existing methods. We report results on multi-camera performance-capture data from visual effects production, showing freely navigable 4D scene reconstructions.