Plus stories you might never have heard before about The Golden Compass.
This week on the befores & afters podcast, we’re chatting to Mike Fink, a veteran visual effects supervisor who won a VFX Oscar for The Golden Compass and was also nominated for Batman Returns.
He’s recently retired as a professor from USC, and I thought it would be fun to go back over some career highlights with him. These span the photochemical and model and miniatures days of VFX, through early computer graphics to modern digital effects filmmaking.
We talk about lots of projects, including the stunning Batman Returns and Mars Attacks, starting Warner Digital as a VFX studio in the 90s, and then we go in-depth on the incredible bamf’ing effect for Nightcrawler in X2 and just as in depth on The Golden Compass.
Along the way, Mike shares a whole lot of stories I don’t think I’d ever heard before. One fun thing we touch on was his commercial directing duties on the first Coca-Cola polar bears commercial, which I’ve always loved.
This episode of the befores & afters podcast is sponsored by Kitsu from CGWire. Together, we are all winners. This is the mantra of Kitsu a collaboration platform for VFX productions. With Kitsu, communication happens as if all the teams are in the same room. Producers can dispatch tasks, do reports, and collect deliveries at a glimpse. Artists know what they have to do and can publish their work easily, while the director can watch all the preview versions and send feedback directly to the team. As a result, you ship better pictures and your studio can handle more projects seamlessly. With Kitsu, you will unleash your full potential!
Check out the podcast below.
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