THE VISUAL EFFECTS PRODUCER

Our book looks mainly at producing visual effects from the stu- dio’s or production company’s perspective. Studios and indepen- dent producers alike have learned the value of bringing their own VFX Producers and VFX Supervisors on board. And here we make an important distinction: We’re dealing here with a freelance visual effects team that works for the production company , not in-house staff producers like those who work at dozens of other visual and digital effects facilities all over the world.

[...]... freelance visual effects team that works for the production company, not in-house staff producers like those who work at dozens of other visual and digital effects facilities all over the world We stress this point because the challenges of the digital producer or visual effects production manager working within a digital facility are quite different from the ones we face on the production end The in-house... people include visual effects in the general category of special effects, while others may refer to them as special visual effects Visual effects have been a part of the filmmaker’s creative toolbox almost from the first time a cinematographer cranked a handle on a wooden camera back in the 1890s The first known visual effect that seems to have survived was created in 1895 in a short film called The Execution... a producer and a director They face a set of unique creative and logistical challenges and go about solving them to the best of their abilities, hoping that their efforts will result in a rewarding experience for the moviegoer They will never face the exact same situations again Instead, they will bring their accumulated experience to bear on the next project and the one after that, adapting as they... in-house facility producer s job is to see to it that his or her employer’s work gets done on time and on budget xv xvi Introduction This vendor may be only one of several companies creating visual effects for a project, each with its own interests at heart The producer s visual effects team, on the other hand, is there to protect the production by seeing to it that the overall visual effects work will... colleagues to share their stories with us and to tell us their thoughts about being in this exciting field and about what producing visual effects entails We have sprinkled their “Success Stories” throughout the book We hope you will enjoy them—and perhaps derive some inspiration from them Part VISUAL EFFECTS IN REVIEW 1 This page intentionally left blank 1 THE “GOOD” OLD DAYS: VISUAL EFFECTS BEFORE COMPUTERS... effects work will proceed smoothly and will have the unified vision that the director wishes to express In particular, we will be emphasizing the role of the VFX Producer in this book It is not an exaggeration to say that visual effects have become the stars in many a film, and with the explosive growth of the visual effects industry in recent years, VFX Producers have found opportunities for an exciting... 1 THE “GOOD” OLD DAYS: VISUAL EFFECTS BEFORE COMPUTERS relatively easy to say what a visual effect was: If a shot required some sort of treatment in postproduction and rephotographing on an optical printer, it was called a “special photographic effect.” John Dykstra, one of the top visual effects supervisors in the business today (and one of the main creative forces behind the visual effects for the. .. accomplished all in-camera As such, they don’t necessarily qualify as true visual effects as we define the term Nevertheless, we chose to include these techniques because they become the responsibility of the visual effects producer on many productions 1 (Millimeter, March 2002) STOP-MOTION ANIMATION 5 SUCCESS STORY Lynda Thompson - (Evan Almighty ; Haunted Mansion) The first film I worked on was Tron…I... of bigger objects In miniatures, the devil is in the details, and the art of the miniature builder lies in getting the details just right Primarily among them are the scale, the mass (if the miniature has to move), the color and texture, and the final detailing Human perception is very finely attuned to what looks real and what doesn’t If the miniature builder misses the mark even by a little, it takes... orangutans—appear in the same shot Many times the crew had to shoot literally dozens of motion control passes of the animals to make the shots work In-Camera Practical Effects These are stand-alone effects that need no digital compositing help In a strict interpretation of our definition of visual effects, you could reasonably argue that in-camera special effects are not really visual effects at all We include them . people include visual effects in the general category of special effects, while others may refer to them as special visual effects. Visual effects have. of the serious visual effects work took place in postproduction. Nowadays we simply call it visual effects. But even defi ning a visual effect is far from