SUPPORTING
THE TEAM
Aquaman was complex both creatively & technically. I supported artists in a Lead capacity, creating macros & templates while working on shots. Macros enabled artists to alter asset settings & work with pre-defined setups. Point clouds drove aquatic life with attributes defining asset types & animation offsets. Later, tools were created to alter offsets within Katana, without the need of recaching.
TECHNICAL
HURDLES
FX elements were integral in achiving an underwater look. Publishes required constant debugging & coupled with heavy environments & 4K resolution, optimisation was essential. My picture-in-picture tool was re-coded to work modularly. TDs provided detailed contact sheets of shot assets & render statistics which were leveraged by compositors & viewed in isolation by the vfx supervisor.
CHARACTERS &
ENVIRONMENT
TDs were provided imagery to project onto simplified set geometry. My projection tool was enhanced, improving layer mask capabilities. Particular attention was placed on beauty lighting, creating key, fill, & rim lights to define focus points & offset the busyness of the frame. Images were extracted & placed on lights to tie characters into their settings. Ultimately a large portion of shots were omitted in the final film.
PROJECT
INFORMATION
lead lighting technical director
- Industrial Light & Magic (501-1001 employees; Motion Pictures & Film Industry)
- May 2022 – February 2023 (10 months, Vancouver BC, Canada)
