Visual Effects Supervisor
Dreamworks Animation [Source @ end]
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
I enjoy the visual story telling. When I work closely with the directors, with my colleagues and team, and we find new, fresh, visual solutions to design the style of the film. It's a creatively challenging part of the film making process. It enables me to help the directors find or define their vision for the film. It's very fulfilling.
What do you find the most challenging about your job?
Staying nimble. In large structures, large processes, I find the first thing that gets sacrificed in favor of efficiency and a certain level of predictability is flexibility. It's challenging to stay inventive both creatively and technically through a process as long as an animated feature film. Most people would probably like me to be more predictable, but they do appreciate the result the flexibility brings to the finished film. There's some pain involved in allowing for flexibility, and my job is to evaluate the risk and gain, and I need to make sure that everyone sees and understands the benefit clearly.
How has emerging computer technology affected your work?
It's always a huge benefit. HUGE. HUGE. It's not always what you think you will benefit from that truly makes the difference, but the technology developments always allows you to push the creative process somewhere new. On "Kung Fu Panda" for instance we couldn't have created the film we created without 64-bit architecture. The memory needs were simply too great. That enabling technology allowed us to design the film differently from the start, before we even had it. We benefited greatly from where SyFlex, the cloth simulator, was evolving to at the time when we started production. The Wacom Cintiq tablets changed our front end process immensely, by making our boarding process digital to allow for our story work to be as fluent with editorial as possible. This to name a few. Sometimes it is not about inventing a new process, instead it's about evolving a process that works by improving the efficiency or dependencies. Allowing us to create a better or "larger" film.
I will look at the next project similarly. What can I utilize that allows us to create a better process. Ultimately allowing for a better end result. Or depending on the project, a different end result. It's exciting to push the envelop creatively. The films that we create usually require us to. It's simply not enough to keep doing what we've been doing. We are raising the bar each time in some way. There are great new horizons creatively and in exhibition that technology will allow us to find new ways to take advantage of. It's an exciting time to be making films right now using computer technology.
What do you think has been the most innovative technological development in the movie industry in the last ten years?
There's a lot of great development over the last ten years. Difficult to say that one is above the rest. I think the new generation of stereoscopic film exhibition is up there. Digital film cameras are changing the landscape of acquisition. DI (digital intermediate) has grown in to a great creative step for film makers. The development and use of computer graphics has really come in to it's own. There's been a lot of phenomenal work in computer simulations that allowed for water, fire, explosions, and clothing to be accomplished. HDRI (high dynamic range imaging) allowed for a level of integration between live action and computer graphics that's phenomenal.
If I had to pick one, the innovation in my close proximity that I feel significantly changed the way we create animated films in the last ten years in computer graphics is global illumination (GI). Ten years ago it was impossible to deal with lighting this way, and today, we are. I do believe global illumination is "older" than ten years, but it became a usable production tool during this period.
Do you think any of the changes in technology have been negative?
I don't think of innovation as negative. We learn from both positive steps as well as the negatives. Most of the time we are very good at correcting the negatives. In film making innovation is driven by an ambition to create something new. How can that pursuit be labeled negative. It shouldn't.
For me the negatives are usually "lack of change". For instance, we've been watching 24 fps (frames per second) films since the beginning of cinema. As the fidelity of the imagery and the camera language of films have changed the frame rate choice has really become a hindrance in our creative process. We spend a lot of effort making 24 fps look good. The industry has been pursuing higher resolution to make the exhibition experience stand out from the HD home theater experience, but I do feel that the dialog about a higher frame rate has been lost in the noise. Many pioneers in our field have tried to make the point that a higher frame rate would be equally or more valuable for the audience experience.
Where do you see animation and movie-making going in the next ten years?
No doubt in my mind that what we will see more film makers using virtual techniques to create their visuals. As the technology becomes more mature and as more film makers become more fluent in using it, the willingness to experiment and push further will certainly happen. How quickly this will evolve has to do with the success of the projects using it. "300" made some of the techniques viable for larger and mid budget budget films because of it's success. However I can already see films that will revert some of that thinking. It always surprises me how our industry equates technique with the creative result, the perception that a technique is only viable based on the success of a film at the box office. Which is usually how the evolution takes a left turn from what we expect.
What is exciting about this evolution is that the design of films can be more experimental or flexible. You are in a hybrid world of multi-format techniques servicing the artists. It will need strong vision to guide the process, for the end result to be successful, but it allows film makers almost infinite possibilities in what can be accomplished. Live action film makers using this type of process will start approaching pre-production of their films in a similar way to how animated films are started.
On the animation side we are starting to see a movement to allow for more dialog amongst the creative leads on the film as the process becomes more interactive. As directors move between animation and live action they want to be able to have similar creative processes, which will change the process of feature animated films. What will happen is that what used to be more or less "one way" to make animated films will become more flexible allowing film makers to decide the approach that suits their creative working style. I can already see animated films growing in scope, becoming event films in their own right. This will also re-define the production process of animated films. The linearity of the process will evolve to something more flexible to allow for the type of films the studios are wishing to create.
As we explore space and time with these new tools in production using new exhibition technology to show it to audiences there will be a new generation of films from film makers who can imagine new ways to tell stories. The more traditional story structure films will certainly not disappear, but I think the opportunities will allow for brave souls to go far into the unknown and define new ways to experience visual stories. If those first films are successful creatively and in the box office a new visual genre may grow out of it, or they will become experimental pieces that we look back on 20 years from now, laughing, while we are experiencing interactive dimensional stories on our holographic displays in the comfort of our home, on Mars.
What project did you have the most fun working on? Why?
"Kung Fu Panda". Being on it from the very start, it's been a great opportunity to work with a group of extremely talented people in designing a remarkable film. What I particularly love about it is that we got to design a process that allowed the artist's to contribute. I can see everyone's passion in the finished film. The sum is greater than it's parts, which is quite extraordinary. Being part of that experience has been amazing.
Do you think CGI and special effects have taken the focus away from good storytelling and put emphasis on visuals in movies? No, not really. I think the films we see today have a wider range of stories to tell. Some of them are less about the stories and more about the spectacle. The well made ones are very enjoyable to watch. When this topic comes up I always feel that we often forget how extremely difficult it is to make a great film. Period.
What computer technology do you use on a day-to-day basis for work? (If possible, please name specific programs and processors)
Let see [looking around the room]. Personally I have two HP xw9300 workstations in my office. One is running Linux with two monitors (one CRT and one LCD), the other Windows XP Pro (32-bit) with a widescreen LCD monitor. On my Linux system I use our proprietary software tools - EMO (our animation tool), LIGHT (our lighting tool), COMP (our compositing tool), Nile (our production tracking software), and all the utility tools in our pipeline. I use Autodesk Maya with lots of our own stuff in it. I use HP Remote Graphics for collaboration with artists in the company from my desk. I am also a bit of a OpenOffice maverick.
On my Windows workstation I run Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe After Effects CS3, and HP Remote Graphics. I am currently also running the latest versions of Autodesk Motion Builder, Autodesk Maya, and e-on software Vue 6.
What gadget would you not be able to live without?
That would be a grudge match between my iPhone and my TiVo. Not sure who would win. Probably my iPhone. Cause it's so darn versatile.
What three movies would you bring with you to a deserted island?
"Fargo" - I love the journey in this very believable world, I know some of these characters in real life, and the unsuspected scheme that takes place. Brilliant casting. I love the Coen's films, and Roger Deakins (cinematographer) did an amazing job shooting this one.
"Ghost in the Shell" - when I watch this, and I do, often, I understand what inspired the Wachowski brothers to make The Matrix. It's my love for comics, science fiction and animation all rolled up into one juicy love fest. A lot of respect to director Mamoru Oshii.
"Amelie" - ("Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain") from master film maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet fully encompasses how clever and unique visual film making can elevate a thoughtful romantic comedy to pure cinematic brilliance. I fall in love with this film all over again each time I see it.
I have six DVD folders in my portable DVD player case and I keep rotating DVDs through them. Of course at least two are taken by my three year old daughter who chooses "Cinderella" and "Shrek 2". Maybe I would be left alone to enjoy the movies on this particular vacation. Or are we talking Lost with "others" trying to kill me? Oh-oh.
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