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.

Inspired by scary movies to pursue a career in the film industry, Molly Pabian has worked her way up to head of studio at VFX company Crafty Apes. Along the way, she’s worked on over 100 movies and TV shows, including Avatar, Real Steel, Star Trek: Picard, The Last of Us, 1923, John Wick: Chapter 4, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Molly talks about her roles and responsibilities as she’s risen up the ranks. She also discusses the differences between working at big and small companies on 2D and 3D shots, how the bidding and budgeting processes work, and the effects of the pandemic and AI on the VFX industry. If you’re about to start in VFX, this podcast is an essential primer on its inner workings.