After being inspired by Star Wars to pursue a career in VFX, Andrew Orloff became a technical director on South Park and worked on Joss Whedon’s (un)holy trinity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. After founding Zoic Studios, he’s gone on to serve as VFX supervisor and creative director on some of TV’s biggest shows, including Once Upon a Time, The 100, Fringe, and For All Mankind.

In this podcast, Andrew talks Chris through the evolution of VFX technology and techniques, from huge Silicone Graphics workstations and renting blade servers to the latest real-time technology for pre-viz and VFX and cloud rendering. You’ll find out how tax incentives work when most of your team works from home, how he collaborates with creatives on big shows — and he answers the burning question of whether working on streaming series is more like TV or film.

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and Chaos is highlighting some of the upcoming graduates of Exceptional Minds, an academy and studio for neurodiverse young adults. This week, we have Andrew Rosengard, who will be graduating with an emphasis in VFX. You can check out his work on Creatively.

To learn more about Exceptional Minds, visit exceptional-minds.org, or find them on social.

Jill Smolin has seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Early computer graphics techniques on Amiga computers. CG breakthroughs at Digital Domain. Mind-blowing stereoscopy techniques in filmmaking and the advent of ultra-high-definition streamed content. All these memories will be discussed in this podcast.

Jill also talks about her background in theater and how a Canadian CG character drew her into the world of VFX, where she worked and taught Gnomon, Cinesite, Digital Domain. Jill also became important behind-the-scenes as a volunteer at SIGGRAPH, bringing in top Hollywood talent to discuss how they advanced VFX.

It’s a touching podcast in which Jill demonstrates an in-depth technical knowledge coupled with a genuine fondness for the many people with whom she’s worked.

Stine Sørensen and Jonas Ussing have got your VFX needs covered. With a background in animation, Stine is able to create and rig characters, while Jonas can handle the 3D pipeline. They’ve worked on everything from award-winning games to Hollywood movies to frenetic videogame trailers. But, they also happen to be a husband-and-wife team with two children.

In this podcast, Stine and Jonas — aka Space Office VFX — talk about how The Little Mermaid and The Empire Strikes Back inspired their careers and the differences between movies made in their native Denmark and the USA. They also delve into how a fast internet connection and Chaos Cloud have made it possible for them to work with freelancers from a rural location in Denmark.

Aliens and The Terminator inspired Mariana Acuña Acosta to get into movie-making — and now, she’s on the cutting edge of new production methods. After working on movies including The Day After Tomorrow, Planet Terror, and Green Lantern, Mariana joined Foundry’s Media and Production department. She then founded JoltVR to create virtual reality experiences, and Glassbox Technologies, which specializes in the unique toolset used for virtual production.

Mariana talks Chris through the past, present, and future of filmmaking, from rubbing shoulders with stunt people on-set through to the enticing promise of creating movies within the metaverse. She dives into the Glassbox’s Dragonfly virtual camera, which enables directors to explore sets and shoot films in virtual environments. She also offers her thoughts on how gaming companies are changing the movie-making process.

Peter Baustaedter’s Hollywood career is an adventure worthy of a movie. After cracking the demoscene in Austria, he took a chance and wrote to Digital Domain — only for them to offer him a job. From here, he worked on a string of movies with groundbreaking VFX: Apollo 13, Dante’s Peak, The Fifth Element, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Sin City, King Kong, and Avatar.

In this extraordinary episode, Peter explains the minor role Arnold Schwarzenegger played in his career, discusses the dangerous world of practical effects in the mid-90s, and reveals why the power kept tripping at Square Pictures’ Hawaiian production facility. Peter also talks about stepping up to become a visual effects art director and shares tidbits on using Unreal Engine to produce a major upcoming TV series from Amazon Studios.

In this episode, we get a deep dive into the efficiencies of Goodbye Kansas’ pipeline, and how they grew their team from 4 to 12 TDs. Dan and Erik discuss how they started using V-Ray for Houdini, Solaris, and Hydra. They explain how USD is not just a new file format, but a complete change in the way people think about pipelines.

We get into a lot of technical details about the advantages of USD, including how it can carry a lot of different data including lighting and shading. We also discuss how today, pipelines are more interested in using and supporting open-source initiatives compared to how they used to have to write their own proprietary solutions.

It is a very technical discussion, but also a great way to kick off 2022 as we consider the future of the VFX pipeline.

This week, Chris meets Nathan Millsap, a humble but hugely enthusiastic CG generalist. Nathan’s career began as a “render monkey” for Chris at Sway, and since then he’s gone on to work at 19 effects studios on movies including 2012, Avatar, and Transformers: Age of Extinction. Today, Nathan is working on TV series for prestigious LA studio, GhostVFX.

In this podcast, Nathan talks through his life and career so far, from how Toy Story inspired him to pursue VFX, to his early days at Sway, moving to Singapore to fix shots on Transformers: Age of Extinction, and then returning to LA to raise his family. He gives his thoughts on why TV is taking over from theaters, talks about his favorite projects, and shares tales of working with directors including Roland Emmerich and Joe Kosinski.

Jelmer Boskma is livin’ the VFX dream. Originally hailing from the Netherlands, he moved to Vancouver to go to film school and became interested in character modeling. Jelmer then picked up work as a modeler on movies including Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and District 9. With Tron: Legacy, he became a matte painter, then moved up to art direction on Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and VFX supervision on Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Eternals.

Jelmer tells Chris about his career highlights, from early encouragement from practical effects wizard Rick Baker to working alongside directors including Robert Rodriguez and Tim Burton. He also talks about how love blossomed in the VFX industry, discusses the pros and cons of working remotely, and shares some of the important life lessons he’s learned.

Kofi Opoku-Ansah and Daniel Mark Miller have both found interesting routes to becoming successful VFX artists. Kofi was inspired by Final Fantasy to pursue a career in gaming, but working at The Mill ignited his passion for VFX. Daniel, meanwhile, toyed with becoming an editor before getting into compositing via the advertising industry.

Together, Kofi and Daniel host The VFX Artists Podcast, which uses their wide range of industry contacts to record engaging, funny, and advice-packed podcasts. In this conversation with Chris, they give lots of valuable ideas about starting in VFX and how the industry works. Kofi also reveals how his three-year-old inspired him to set up the podcast, while Daniel details “Broken Toy,” his Black Mirror-esque short film.

Steve Griffith’s impressive IMDb page includes The Matrix sequels, Captain America: The First Avenger, Ant-Man, the Watchmen TV series, Jungle Cruise, and many more blockbusters. Over the course of 20 years, he’s gone from intern to VP of Production at Legend, taking in stints at major VFX studios including Rodeo FX, MPC, Luma Pictures, Atomic Fiction, and Digital Domain.

In this podcast, Chris and Steve reminisce about some of the projects they worked on together, including I, Robot and Stealth, before tackling the current state of the visual effects industry. They track the evolution of virtual production from Gravity and Oblivion to Murder on the Orient Express and The Mandalorian and discuss how real-time and AI are changing the way studios
work.