Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1532181
10 C I N E M O N T A G E W H A T O U R M E M B E R S D O WARREN HICKMAN VISUAL EFFECTS EDITOR Q: Where are you currently employed? MGM/Amazon Q: Current projects? "P roject Hail Mary," an adaptation of a popular science fiction novel of the same name. Q: Describe your job. The visual effects editor is a conduit between the editorial and visual effects departments. We need to identify and track all visual effects in the film from inception to completion. We're also part of the creative process in that we're often asked to give ideas, or feedback on ideas, when it comes to a shot or sequence that the editor and director are working on — often before the visual effects supervisor gets involved because they're still in the "what if we tried this?" stage. As a result, we do temp effects using Avid or After Effects to help the filmmakers conceptualize their ideas before other resources or departments invest in the shot. R e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s c a n va r y b e t w e e n films, but it always starts with identifying potential visual effects that will be temp c o m p o s i te d i n t h e Av i d o r h av e m o re elaborate temp effects done by a post-vi- sualization team. When a sequence gets to the point where the director, editor, and vi- sual effects supervisor want a vendor — the company that creates the final visual effects shots, e.g., ILM, Wētā FX [co-founded by Peter Jackson], etc.) — to officially start work on a shot, we: — "Pull" plates (pieces of original pho- tography that are used as a base for visual effects for each shot). — Gen erate EXRs (an uncompressed file format where each frame of the moving picture is delivered as an individual file). — Create "count sheets" (documents that lay out a shot's visual details along w i t h t h e w o r k t h a t n e e d s t o b e p e r - formed and whatever plates are needed). All of this is delivered to the vendor. Once the vendor has a version they're ready to submit, we receive that shot and I cut it into a sequence. The filmmakers make notes on the shot, and we pass those on to the shot's vendor. So a lot of it is a process of sending things out, getting them back, checking them, then passing along any additional notes from the filmmakers. The cycle repeats until a shot gets finalized by the director. As the cut progresses, we track those changes and how they affect other visual effects in the film. Then we pass that info along to the visual effects department and vendors. Once we've turned over most of the shots to the vendors, we shift into review mode. That's often a daily meeting, run on the Avid, where we show the shots in context to the editor and the director so they can give their notes directly to the visu- al effects supervisor. Sometimes this will be