Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/65909
Compositing a hobbyist back in the mid '90s. The Internet wasn't what it is today in terms as serving as an educational resource, so Metzger enrolled in a Florida film school to learn the craft. Things didn't go as planned, and soon he was out of school, out of money and look- ing for work. "I hopped into tech support and I had a friend in Los Angeles who had a studio called Pixel Envy," he recalls. It was partners Colin and Greg Strause, who also owned Hydraulx, that gave him his big start working for a studio. With a plane ticket, Metzger travelled to Scott Metzger is currently in Louisiana supervising effects on the feature Beautiful Creatures. LA, where he learned rotoscoping and compositing skills while working on music videos. "That's pretty much what started my career," he recalls. "I was doing a lot of 3D modeling and rendering, but by no means professional-level material. I was desperate to do anything to get into the industry." Without a degree, he was grateful that someone took a chance on him. "I learned everything working for those guys. And that's how anyone in their first job gets for- ward in the industry." After his stint at Pixel Envy, Metzger worked with a number of high-profile studios, including on and off at Method for about 10 years. He contributed to two films while at Digital Domain. He also spent time with Psyop, Moving Pixels, Zoic and Radium. His experience exposed him to many dif- ferent people and an array of pipelines. Recently, he started working with Alex Frisch, who co-founded the collective COPA. "It's all about building a studio for the future, where all the work gets handled remotely through multiple artists around the world," Metzger explains. His first project with COPA was the Turn Me On music video with Nicki Minaj and David Guetta. And at press time, Metzger was in Louisiana, working as a digital effects supervisor for Alcon Entertainment on an upcoming film titled Beau- tiful Creatures. "[I'm working] as their digital effects supervisor on the studio side, which is a big change from working at a facility. " The supernatural drama centers around a local teenager and a mysterious new girl in town who uncover dark secrets about their respective families. The film uses live action along with some "pretty intense" visual effects, says Metzger, who's put together his own toolbox over the years. "You always go to the software and hard- ware that you've worked with, especially with camera equipment and such. Nuke, Mari, V-Ray and Maya are pretty much my top appli- cations of choice. Nuke is more than just a compositing package. It's like going into your garage [where] you have your tool table. There's no way you can work without it." The work studios can now do with V-Ray is what inspires him, particularly Digital Domain and Blur, which he describes as "mind blowing." "What's also amazing is what artists can now do without a large team of TDs," he adds. "It's really amazing, the fact that soft- ware has come to this point. Before you'd need this huge RenderMan pipeline, with all of these guys writing shaders for you, and I think those times are going away. What's hap- pening is you have an extremely efficient renderer that it very artist friendly and allows for things to be done in a lot quicker time, which means a lot cheaper as well. The fact that you can actually do this is exciting stuff. Rates go down. Bids go down on jobs. It's a lot cheaper to get the job done." This requires artists to find efficiencies in their workflow in order to remain competi- tive. "Pipeline becomes a big deal," he notes. "But then you can push through a lot more work. Rendering wise, you can do so much more of it, so I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing." 28 Post • May 2012 www.postmagazine.com