So, it turns out my case study has 30 years experience in the Film Industry, not 18 as I thought previously - making his experience even more valuable for this project.
His name is Andrew and as you can see below we has really engaged with the questions. I had to ask basic stuff about his experience as I didn't know anything about him previously (not even his last name to search online). I was thrilled when I found out he has worked in movies such as Deadpool, John Wick, Black Widow and Mad Max.
Below I will highlight some of the phrases I could use to guide me on the final delivery of this assessment.
Andrew worked on Deadpool, including facial expressions in scenes such as the one above.
Interview
Please share a bit about your experience in the Film industry (if you
have a website, portfolio, and a resume, I would love to have a look at
that as well)
I started out making videos in highschool, got into the industry as an
editor. All the while I was editing, I was still making silly skit
videos with my friends, and part of that was parodies of whatever the
latest film was we were in to. In order to make these videos, I self
taught myself vfx and special effects. A post production producer knew
of my hobby and put me up for a vfx job on a kids show (without me
knowing until I got a phone call from them, ...I was annoyed at the time
as I was an editor and vfx was a hobby, but after meeting with them, my
arm was twisted and it was a crazy fun show where I worked insane hours
just because I was loving what I was doing, and continued to learn more
tricks on the job). After that I never looked back. I have supervised in
the past but am far happier being a compositor (I prefer the hands on
working with a shot than the bordom of on set life and the endless
meetings), which is my current role. I have worked for Method, Weta and
am currently working for ILM.
You can see the projects I have worked on here;
How long have you been working in the Film Industry?
What is your area of expertise?
I've been in the film and television industry for 30 years. First decade
as an editor and last 20 years as a compositor (12 years in NZ and 8 in
Australia). I am a compositor. We use Nuke to bring all the footage, cg
and matte paintings together for the final effects shot.
As well as doing the final shots, I have broken that up with doing
postviz, something I enjoy as you get to work directly with directors,
editors and producers early on to rough out ideas and also cut around
potential issues in the edit if needs be.
What was the most impacting technological change you have faced in
your career? why? how did you adapt to it?
Just showing how old I am, there have been a few big changes that have
been monumental. First with editing it was a leap from tape to tape
editing, to digitizing tapes and editing them non-linear on a computer.
I was young and just started in the industry so I embraced this change,
buddied up with the suppliers of all these new systems and learnt them
all within a year. Fun times and this move to the computer also gave me
the kickstart into starting to learn doing basic effects and graphics.
Second big thing would be the move from actually shooting on 35mm film,
doing laser scans to get that into the computer so we can do our effects
work, then outputting back to film, ....to shooting on digital video
formats directly. Once again this was a godsend compared to the time
consuming processes with film, so happily adapted to it.
Are you currently facing the impact of any technological change? Which
one? How are you adapting?
Machine learning is the big thing at the moment. Our tools are in the
early days but so far we are using it to do quick roto (cutting people
out of scenes without need for greenscreen). Face replacements, de-aging
and bringing back dead actors are all things this technology is capable
of. Once again it is something I see that will save us a lot of time
going forward and we will embrace it as we always do anything that helps
us to achieve the directors vision. On a person note though, I do worry
about where this will lead in 5 or so years. People are already using it
to make deepfake adverts (including using AI voice creation). The
quality at the moment is usually bad enough you know what it is, but in
a few years you won't be able to tell, ...this means people with no
morals could use this tech for their own gains. So for us in
entertainment it will be a boon, but it could also have huge downsides
when it comes to fake news generation.
In your view, what changes are Streaming services such as Netflix and
Amazon Prime causing in the film industry? Why?
Streaming services have been good for providing more work. This means
that not only the bigger FX companies keep humming but there is plenty
of work for smaller companies to do well and keep a full capacity team
on, rather than the short contract, feast or famine way our industry has
traditionally been. It has meant the death of the video rental store
(which the nostalgic me finds sad, but will give it up for the
convenience). One thing I hope the big studios sort out is giving a
decent window for cinemas to make money. I worked on Black Widow, and
you can see there that their business model isn't sound. They had a
bumper opening weekend, with just as much boxoffice takings as Disney+
takings, but then that number plummeted for the next weekend. There was
a reason the studios back in the eighties had their staggered release
strategies, ...film goes to cinema, 2 to 3 months later it is at the
rental store, then another 2 to 3 months its available to buy, and then
TV rights. They got a nice staggered revenue stream. If they keep with
the dual release strategy, streaming and cinema on same day, it will eat
into the cinema profits for sure (and they only really make money from
food, not ticket sales, ...but they need people in the cinema for that
to happen). I think letting the cinemas have a 6 week to 2 month window
before streaming is a good idea.
Something else the streamers are learning is that to get good long term
buz for a TV series, a week to week, episode release schedule works
best, ...if you release whole season, you get buz for a couple of weeks
at workplaces, but if you have 12 episodes split over 12 weeks you build
audience and watercooler chat over those 12 weeks.
What are the challenges and adaptation processes for the changes
mentioned above?
For us there is no real change except for everything on streaming
services being 4K resolution minimum. A lot of feature films are still
done at 2K (and up-converted later) but for releases going to streaming
services they have to be 4k right through the pipeline, which makes
things slower and uses more resources.
Do you believe Streaming is disrupting the film industry or bringing
new opportunities? (Or both...?)
I think I answered this above. Definitely more opportunities, and great
it is sustaining FX companies of all sizes.
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