What is VFX?
Carolina Jiménez explains how animators, modelers, lighting TDs, and editors work together to create fantastic visual effects
Carolina Jiménez (@okinfografia) is a visual effects artist working in film and specialized in layout. With ten years’ experience in the industry, she has worked in famous productions such as The Hobbit Trilogy, Star Trek Beyond, Justice League, Planet of the Apes 2, and Prometheus. She talks about how a simple chroma key can turn into an incredible scene and amaze audiences.
Get to know her in the Domestika Live special effects talk that she recorded is available here.
Origins of VFX
Visual effects were created when cinema itself was invented. At first, before the digital revolution, they were simple photographic effects. With the advent of new technologies, chrome keys (green screens) were used to get rid of backgrounds and play around with scaling, modeling characters, and settings.
In the video industry, VFX is a fundamental part of post-production. Their primary function is to turn a director’s vision to life.
Technical tools are used to embellish the image in the frame, put it in a different context, or turn it into something spectacular.
Multidisciplinary work
The work of VFX professionals cannot dispense with the job of specialists in other disciplines. It is important to remember that, although visual effects are applied during post-production, they are planned at pre-production. At this stage, the screenwriter, director of photography, and art directors create storyboards that will serve as guidelines during shooting. At that point, the role of the visual artist is fundamental.
Likewise, animators, lighting TDs, and editors are key figures in the development of the job of the VFX specialist, because they provide the elements needed to work on the visual effects during post-production.
VFX references
It’s important to mention the examples that serve as inspiration during the careers of VFX specialists to understand their work. Carolina names two movies that represent the before and after of the history of cinema, in terms of contemporary visual effects.
The first example is Terminator 2 (1991), a movie in which the design of the character was a determining factor in turning the film into a classic.
The second movie Carolina mentions as a reference for visual effects is The Lord of The Rings (2001). This film took the available technology to the limit to turn something that only existed in the minds of its creators into reality.
If you would like to learn more about the stages of VFX in film production, enroll in Carolina Jimenez’s course Introduction to VFX for Cinema. You can watch part of her work in this demo reel:
2 comments
emmabrianen
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laniunhana
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