Here's a masterclass on rising to the top of VFX supervision. Inspired by classic 80s movies, Sean Faden began his career in practical effects for Starship Troopers and The Fifth Element, helped sink Titanic, and became VFX supervisor on movies including A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Good Day to Die Hard. Then he switched to studio-side VFX supervision for Power Rangers and Mulan, the latter of which earned him a VFX Academy Award nomination.

Sean reflects on his career and regales Chris with stories about the early days of visual effects. He also highlights the importance of traveling and immersing yourself in new cultures, goes into detail on how Moon Knight turned Budapest into Cairo, and talks a little about his upcoming projects, The Last Voyage of Demeter and Family Leave.

If recruiters are the unsung heroes of the VFX industry, Stan Szymanski is Superman. This huge film fan began in graphic design and post-production but quickly worked up the ladder into recruitment, via movies including Virtuosity, Independence Day, Starship Troopers, and Hollow Man.

Today, Stan’s company, Stanleyvision, has become a go-to source for the perfect talent for companies including Crafty Apes, MPC, The Mill, and Method, as well as PlayStation, MSG Sphere Studios, and TurboSquid. Stan reveals what it takes to be a recruiter in the VFX world, from maintaining up-to-date expertise on new technology to understanding how people will fit in at certain companies. If you’re job hunting or headhunting, it’s worth staying with the podcast to the end, where Stan gives crucial advice on how to market yourself in the VFX industry.

Jeff Barnes’ career has taken him from two Amigas and a VHS deck to the world’s most cutting-edge digital display screens. After discovering a love for post-production, Jeff co-founded CafeFX in the early-90s and created VFX for over 90 movies including Flubber, Armageddon, Panic Room, Pan’s Labyrinth, Sin City, The Mist, and Alice in Wonderland. Jeff then oversaw DD’s 3D pipeline and consulted in the industry before moving to the innovative lightfield company Lytro, where he produced the world’s first 2k light field short.

In this podcast, Jeff reminisces about the early days of CafeFX, revealing how the company demonstrated its abilities via a Rocketeer laserdisc, reveals the pros and cons of being based in Santa Maria, and talks about meeting directors including John Hughes, Robert Rodriguez, and Guillermo del Toro. Jeff also discusses his current work at the Light Field Lab, in which he shares one of the company’s goals to make immersive Star Trek Holodeck-style experiences a reality.

If digital humans are evolving, Isaac Bratzel is the scientist altering their DNA. Beginning his career as a character artist (because it represented the biggest challenge), Isaac helped create Amelia, a conversational AI with a digital human face, and then went on to establish virtual social media phenomenon Lil Miquela.

Today, Isaac is bringing his expertise in AI and digital humans together in AvatarOS, the company he founded to create digital humans with personalities. In this podcast, Isaac reveals how he overcame some of the technical challenges of creating digital humans that work across the platforms of tomorrow and reveals his ultimate goal for the company.

For the past 30 years, Digital Domain has been ahead of the CG curve, delivering everything from True Lies’ CG jet to The Last of Us’ desolate landscapes. But what does the future hold for this innovative VFX studio? This week, Lala Gavgavian, the president and COO of DD, explains how it's charting a course through the waters of new technology.

Lala talks about how Digital Domain has branched out beyond blockbuster VFX and is now taking on gaming projects and medical imaging. She also talks about how AI and machine learning have been changing things behind the scenes at Digital Domain and how the technology behind its Digi Doug and Digi Zoe projects is helping create the perfect digital double.

Could Macroverse change the way creative content is created and consumed? In this podcast, Chris is joined by Adam Martin, an assistant director who has worked on productions including Transformers, Dave, and Barry. After growing frustrated with the Hollywood system, Adam co-founded Macroverse to give writers and artists a platform to share their stories and visions.

Adam gives a full overview of Macroverse and what makes it work, explaining how its Tap Story system enriches comic stories and gives them a cinematic flair, and covering how this democratized web 3.0 platform gives everyone a chance to tell their story and adds a level of transparency to funding and payments.

We want some of Chris Browne’s energy. This multiskilled VFX supervisor, currently working at Sony Pictures Animation, has helped bring animated series to life, including The Fast and Furious Spy Racers, Kung Fu Panda, and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. At the same time, he’s devoted his spare time to his own award-winning short films, beginning with “Gibb” at university, alien sci-fi “Beating the Abductors,” and now “Pleroma,” which examines themes of AI versus humanity. 

Chris breaks down what it was like to work on “Pleroma” during the pandemic, talks about shooting in a dangerous particle accelerator facility, and shares how he single-handedly created 200-plus visual effects shots and built robots for the short. He also reveals his big plans for the future of “Pleroma,” as well as discussing what’s coming up in the world of animation.

With John Wick: Chapter 4, the sleeper franchise reaches a violent crescendo, peppering the rogue assassin’s globe-trotting bone-crunching fights with jaw-dropping plot twists. This week, the film’s Production VFX Supervisor Janelle Croshaw Ralla, and Prep and On-Set VFX Supervisor Johnathan Rothbart join Chris for a spoiler-free discussion of the movie.

Janelle and Jonathan talk about working with director Chad Stahelski, who takes a meticulous, frame-by-frame approach to filmmaking and prefers to work in camera and on location over bluescreen or virtual production sets. They reveal the feats of stamina and endurance performed by star Keanu Reeves, share how to hit someone with a car or set them on fire without hurting him, and discuss the creative decisions behind the film’s incredible 1,500 invisible VFX shots.

Over the course of his career, Sean Looper has gone from humble beginnings as an architectural draftsman to chief technology officer at VFX studio Crafty Apes. Along the way, the pipelines he’s built have provided seamless effects for movies including Zathura: A Space Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Edge of Tomorrow.

In this podcast, Sean talks about his career and reveals a natural inclination toward the technical nuts and bolts that help a VFX pipeline run smoothly. He shares some of the important lessons he’s learned from being in the industry and gives his thoughts on how machine learning, cloud, and gaming technology will reshape the way movies are made.

This week, Chris takes a trip to Pandora to delve into the design of Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron’s latest jaw-dropping cinematic epic. His guide is Ben Procter, the super-talented production designer who specializes in creating vehicles and environments for Avatar antagonists the RDA — to the extent that he thinks of himself as the “bad guy” of the art department.

Ben goes into a fascinating deep-dive into the design and construction of the S-76 SeaDragon, the formidable whaling ship that becomes the setting for the film’s final act. Ben talks about how the design process works between the writers, other artists, VFX studios, and James Cameron himself. Ben also gives his thoughts on artificial intelligence and how it’s going to change a generation.