Who The #@&% Am I?
Warning: Totally dull and boring drivel ahead, please have pillows and a nice comfy bed close at hand as I start with the blatant plug about myself.
My name is Andrew Shanks and I am a Visual Effects Supervisor (and compositor) based in Auckland, New Zealand. Up until a few years ago my special effects passion had really just been a hobby (ever since I was a teenager, I have been into making short comedy films utilizing every form of visual and audio effect skill I've been able to muster, ..starting with basic stop-motion, miniature's & other practical effects), with my day job being that of a freelance NLE television editor (cutting my teeth on TV adverts, sports items & music videos, moving to specialize in documentaries once I went fulltime freelance). When Non-linear video systems started to appear, I was just starting out in the television industry as a lowly tape-op, but I embraced the technology, became friends with a couple of the suppliers who were bringing the new (and at the time, very unstable) machines into the country, which meant I was able to get time on these machines and learn non-linear techniques. I love learning new technologies that help me realize my visions (for my hobby skits) and those of the director's I work with, so over the years my knowledge extended as i learnt Photoshop & After Effects (using these apps for creating titles for programmes and graphics for TVCs), and learnt other apps ranging from 3D animation systems, to morphing, to rotoscoping, both at the high end (silicon graphics based Discreet compositing software and Alias-Wavefront 3D software) through to software that wielded the same results but ran on the slower home Macs and PCs, ....sure the software might take longer to render, you had to find a lot more workarounds for some techniques, ...but if you put time and effort in, you could still get the same "wow" factor results as if you'd used the squillion-dollar setups.
That is what i like about this current digital video age, ...the power to create a storytellers vision is basically within the budget and capabilities of anyone who wants to have a go (at standard def at least, ..and HD will hopefully quickly become affordable for everyone in the next couple of years). No longer do you have to be a big name director with studio money and an effects house supporting you, ...nowadays a simple PC or Mac, can be used to edit your Indie masterpiece, colourgrade it, add 2D and/or 3D special effects and titles to it, do the soundmix, and output it, ...keeping everything in the digital domain so that quality remains as high as possible. I'm sure the likes of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron would have had a field day if these technologies were available back when they started their revolutionary careers (but it is to the likes of pioneers such as them that we should be thankful that digital visual effects technologies have filtered so quickly down to an affordable level).
So yeah, after diversifying into broadcast graphics (where I also spent some of my spare time demonstrating software (even doing the photoshop6 roadshow with adobe showing it off) and writing tutorials for the Sdobe Pacific website), I got offered a position as head effects artist on a local TV teen comedy/drama series ("Being Eve series 2") that, amongst other things, parodied famous film scenes, ...It was a great gig, its not often you get paid to try and replicate the general "feel" of some of the great FX sequences, for a fraction of the cost, time and manpower the originals had access too. It was a lot of long hours and hard work, but it was fun to the max, and allowed a lot of creative freedom). After cutting my teeth on that I went on to do a string of other children/teen shows (including the quirky twilight zone kids show "Freaky", to two seasons of the light hearted "Secret Agent Men" series). I had dabbled with doing effects for short films over the previous years, but in 2004 I made the move into 35mm film, getting to work on a two short films ("Rest Stop" which I also VFX supervised and also shot some second unit stuff on, and "The Man Who Couldn't Dance") plus VFX supervised and did some compositing on the feature film "50 Ways To Say Fabulous" (a 35mm feature that myself and one other artist tackled over the course of about 6 months, encompassing around 150 FX shots during that time (all at 2k full apperture cineon rez), of which the final FX count (in the final cut) was probably around 80 odd, ...most of which are background effects that will hopefully not be noticed by the viewer, ...a lot more challenging than in your face effects that we usually do for TV, but ultimately more rewarding if it enhances the scene in the way the director envisaged, without the audience becoming aware that the shot was an effect). I have to say at the start of the year it was a huge learning curve, suddenly being thrown into the deep end, having never dealt with log colour space, grain, and all the inherent issues of dealing with 2K 35 mm film scans, ....but thankfully I had some great knowledgeable colleagues to call upon when I had questions, and was up to speed in no time. It was also good getting to deal with a range of film facilities (such as ATLAB, The Film Unit, WETA Digital) and getting to know something about their end of the process. While doing my film work I still managed to have time to do another series of "Secret Agent Men" (which was a nice distraction getting back to standard def work, ...felt like a bit of a holiday compared with the slow response of working with 2K), and VFX supervised an American Disney promo crew that were over here in NZ to shoot a couple of hundred bluescreen shots for "Power Rangers".
2005 saw me working on the SPP/BBC teen fantasy/drama series called "Maddigans Quest" (as supervisor and head compositor), which was shot on HD and was a very challenging yet rewarding show to be on. As well as that I did my first simulator work compositing a volcanic eruption in the centre of Auckland harbor together for a new simulator at the Auckland museum (I worked with a 3d artist from Brand Spank and one from Albedo, as well as Peter from Albedo providing a matte painting of the aftermath, indeed they did the hard work, I just crammed layers together, added smoke/water/clouds/grunge layers, graded things, and blended, ...but yeah, it had a good reaction and a still from it made the front page of the NZ Herald, so that was a buzz (first time any of my work has been in print, just so used to film and TV).
In 2006 I spent the first half of the year working on a kids TV series (my speciality) called "Amazing Extraordinary Friends" (AEF) for Greenstone Pictures. As usual it was a very fast turn around show (doing around 70 shots per episode, with a week per episode, and two compositors and an intern (thank goodness she picked things up fast!) handling it all, ...I was one of the two compositors, balancing that with on set supervising and pre-prod fx meetings. These shows are always crazy hectic and with no budget, but its very rewarding, this show in particular was a good gig (and towards the end I was dusting off the old 3D skills to do a few 3D Animations, from jets attacking to making up a couple of spaceships that had to have a bit of a galactic spat). Thats the thing I like about TV that you often don't get on the bigger feature film gigs, the fact on these TV shows, you have to be a bit of a jack of all trades, ...I pride myself as a compositor, that is my strongest area, ...but I am a competent matchmover, an okay matte painter, basic 3D modeller/texturer/animator, and can dangle my feet in the murky waters of grading and previz if needs be, ...on bigger jobs you get locked into one role and one task, ...I just like the creative input you get in TV (or smaller films), you own a shot or at least a lot more of a shot than you would on a bigger gig (granted, more often than not it won't look a million dollars, after all thats why the big gigs are run the way they are, with the best of the best doing their little bit in the production line, and its great to be a part of a team, ...but in TV you get a real energy about things, things have to happen so fast sometimes you wonder if you're really going to pull it off (as you have no budget and no time usually, and they'll always be wanting your shots to mimic what they've seen on shows that had budgets thousands of times more than theirs, ...luckily you can get about 85% of the way there pretty quickly with any shot, ...its that last 15% of pollishing that takes the time, ....in TV often you have to live with not getting that last maybe 10%, ....but when you can almost get there, and at least smooth off a few of the rough edges, you have a satisfaction that can't be bet, ....even more-so, the best thing about kids shows is having the kids love what you've done, ...they are the most appreciative audience you could ever hope for, and thats another reason I love the creative imaginative hectic world of kids fanatasy/sci-fi/comedy/drama. :-)
Late last year I got called up to help out on the feature film "White Noise 2" in Canada. That was a great experience, Vancouver being like a second home to me, so it was nice to hang out over there and work on a couple of good scenes. I then returned to NZ and worked on another US feature film for the same Canadian company (but remotely, using cinesync, from here in NZ) called "Postal", that was a fun but grueling couple of months work (just a very complicated series of shots). I am just waiting for both films to screen so I can update my showreel with the clips.
In between the above gigs I managed to help out on a couple of short films as well (I always like to keep in with them, ...I guess thats what happens when your profession is also your hobby).
This year I finished off the work on "Postal", have done some work on the NZ based telefeature "Head Cases" (for SPP) and am gearing up for the next series of A.E.F which I am looking forward to.
All the above projects I have done using Shake, After Effects, Combustion, Commotion, Silhouette Roto, as the main compositing platforms (After Effects and Shake (with Silhouette Roto in support) are my two choices of compositors, as they both have strengths and weakness', having both allows you to pick and choose depending on the job or choice, ...I tend to use AE for fast turn around TV work and Shake for feature film work or tough TV keys/comps :-).
Below I have listed all the graphics software that I will use (ones marked with # I only use occassionally, or not much anymore):
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Encore DVD
Alias Maya #
Apple Shake
Apple Finalcut Pro #
Avid Elastic Reality #
Avid Media Composer/HD Pro
Avid Softimage XSI
Adobe After Effects
Discreet Combustion #
Discreet 3D Max
Media 100 #
Pinnacle Commotion #
Silhouette Roto
Syntheyes 3D Tracker
Imagemodeller #
Softimage XSI
Antics 3D Previz
Of course, being a freelancer, I am always looking for interesting work, got to keep my tiny mind busy and food on the table after all, so if anyone from an effects house is reading this and wants a compositor, feel free to email me so I can send you a showreel (hopefully I'll have a showreel up here at some stage in the not too distant future).
Cheers,