What a series! Listen in for an episode that goes back to the very beginning.
Well, we’ve now reached the end of this very special ILM series, which was tied into the release of my book: Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation.
For the final episode, I wanted to reach back to my own beginnings in VFX. Certainly, that involved accessing the earlier ILM books that came out in the 1980s and 1990s. It involved Cinefex, which was a major, major part of my early VFX life.
And it involved Todd Vaziri.
Todd is now, of course, a compositing supervisor at ILM. But many moons ago he built a website that was my absolutely favourite website and the thing that really made me love visual effects. That website was VFXHQ, which is still online today at vfxhq.com. As you’ll hear in the podcast, I visited that site A LOT. And, it ultimately steered its creator – Todd – into the world of visual effects, eventually leading to him landing at ILM.
So, in this chat, we talk about all that: how VFXHQ started, how Todd came to ILM, and why he stayed. Then we get into the nitty gritty of some of the killer shots he’s worked on for films like Mission Impossible III, Transformers, The Force Awakens and Speed Racer. Todd breaks down his and ILM’s work on those projects in ways that I think only Todd can do.
Finally, we talk about Todd’s role as an observer in the VFX industry, which is another thing I really admire him for. And we bring it full circle to what the atmosphere and collaboration is like at Industrial Light & Magic.
Thanks to Todd for sitting down with me, thanks to everyone for listening to this series, and thanks to ILM, most of all. Listen in, above.
This podcast is sponsored by RE:Vision Effects.
Here’s a quick quiz: Name the company that made VFX for these movies?
E.T., Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Abyss, Terminator 2,, Forest Gump, The Mask, Twister, Mission Impossible, Spawn, Speed II, Saving Private Ryan, The Perfect Storm, AI, Minority Report, Cowboys and Aliens, Lucy, Kong: Skull Island, The Revenant, The Batman, Alien: Romulus and Running Man?
Thanks for inspiring us, ILM. A message from revisionfx.com.
