Five of the industry’s top visual effects supervisors joined Gold Derby as part of our Meet the Experts visual effects panel to discuss how much they each value keeping their work as realistic as possible.
“To me, visual effects is about putting something together with something that we shot that is completely invisible,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman explains in our exclusive video interview roundtable. “And if we do that, then we’re telling a completely different story than what we shot, and it’s part of that story.”
“I love working on shows that are grounded in the real world,” “Oppenheimer” visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson adds. “I’ve certainly found myself going away from the idea of using green screens and blue screens these days. And, you know, as roto gets better and easier, it allows the DP to light the scene and make it look more real. From the start, we know it’s going to be a little bit harder later, but we can reference that real photography much more and bring the visual effects into that world. That’s kind of the way I love to work.”
In addition to Helman and Jackson, the panel also includes “Cocaine Bear” visual effects supervisor Robin Hollander, “Society of Snow” visual effects supervisor Laura Pedro, and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse” visual effects supervisor Mike Lasker.
“We’re trying to make paintings that look like paintings. But at the same time, we’re shooting handheld, we have certain optical effects in the depth of field, there’s no motion blur, but you’ve got glows, you’ve got lens flares, and how to do those more photography-based effects mixed with this stylized world,” Lasker says. “A lot of our artists, we came up through live-action, more realistically-rendered techniques – and we’re we are using a realistic render. So we’re constantly taking what we like from it, subtracting other things, but just enough so that it looks sophisticated. And then you can strip it all away and get more stylized. It’s a real fine line.”
Watch the full roundtable panel conversation above. Click each person’s name above to watch an individual chat.
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