Newbie seeking advise on VFX/compositing career

[Anonymous]

Dear all,

I’m interested in entering the vfx field. I’m 23, and I’m planning to go back to school, most likley School of Visual arts in NYC. I have some basic questions about the typical career work day, etc.. Here goes, 😀

1) Does a compositor, i.e. flame/combustion artist, shake artist, actually do alot of the actual ‘effects’, (like particles, unique effects) etc.. and solve problems creativly, or is it just integrating live action w/ CG? Just integrating things together sounds boring, or does the compositor actually create the effects such as a wall of fire, or various effects animation?

2) What is the career like, is it fun, boring, daily grind? Do you really have to sit in a dark room all day? What are the typical tasks day to day?

3) For example, on a commerical, are the cool effects mainly done by compositors or some other position? I’m basically looking for the position that creates those unique effects.

4) What positions can compositors generally move up to? is TD or vfx supervisor something that one can step up to?

5) Is effects animator a seperate position in many places or does the compositor take their role sometimes?

6) Do compositors have much creative freedom to fashion the look of the effect? In a commerical, for example? Do they have freedom to come up with creative solutions to the effect rquired?

Thanks all,
Alan 8) 😆

[John Montgomery]

First off, I mainly do work on national spot commercials. The answers to your questions will certainly vary based upon the work being done.

1) Does a compositor, i.e. flame/combustion artist, shake artist, actually do alot of the actual ‘effects’, (like particles, unique effects) etc.. and solve problems creativly, or is it just integrating live action w/ CG?

It really depends upon the situation in which you’re working. A lot of time, I’m doing experimentation and problem solving. Sometimes, due to workload, I’ll offload it to the 3D artist or someone else. So yeah…there are times I’d create a wall of fire.

2) What is the career like, is it fun, boring, daily grind? Do you really have to sit in a dark room all day? What are the typical tasks day to day?

Well…its not really dark. And I’ve got windows. But that is certainly the case in many situations.

3) For example, on a commerical, are the cool effects mainly done by compositors or some other position? I’m basically looking for the position that creates those unique effects.

It is a combination of 3D artists and effects artists (and practical effects shot on set).

4) What positions can compositors generally move up to? is TD or vfx supervisor something that one can step up to?

Yes….most certainly. But it depends upon where you’re working. For instance, in Chicago where I work there really aren’t a ton of openings for vfx supervisors.

6) Do compositors have much creative freedom to fashion the look of the effect? In a commerical, for example? Do they have freedom to come up with creative solutions to the effect rquired?

Yes. Yes. Yes. But in the end, the client can have a large say in how the effect turns out. There are times when the effect that ends up in the commercial is not the one that ends up on your reel.

[eltopo]

If you want creative freedom, i suggest you go with 3D. Since you have to CREATE everything from 0 it is more exciting. A compositor finishes the others work. The field of 3d has a lot of other fields that you can work on, plus there are more windows

[Peter]

Hi,

I have worked for many years as a vfx designer / compositor and now as a vfx supervisor so here are my responses to your comments.

1) Does a compositor, i.e. flame/combustion artist, shake artist, actually do alot of the actual ‘effects’, (like particles, unique effects) etc.. and solve problems creativly, or is it just integrating live action w/ CG? Just integrating things together sounds boring, or does the compositor actually create the effects such as a wall of fire, or various effects animation?

– much of the time, I have worked integrating elements from various sources, often they are all film, no 3D. But in doing so I often find I need to enhance the material that i am provided with so I do end up doing effects animation including particle system animations. I used to take a lot of pleasure in creating as many elements as possible myself but since have discovered that collaborating with other talented animators allows me to do more shots and achieve better results. It hasn’t made it boring for me, it has allowed me to take the quality of effects to a higher standard.

2) What is the career like, is it fun, boring, daily grind? Do you really have to sit in a dark room all day? What are the typical tasks day to day?

Quite a mixture really. I work mostly in visual effects for drama – films and tv series. I do some commercial work as well. Drama effects is mostly unsupervised – meaning there are no clients in attendence. They come in to check from time to time but for much of the time I push through with just my team. Commercial work though is more often supervised with clients sitting in the room with you – sometimes looking right over your shoulder. This means that you kind of have to keep the pace up and get a lot done in a short time. As John says, the rooms are not really dark but when making critical colour correction adjustments it’s important to control the lighting in the room so it is often darker than I would like. Sometimes I do find it a bit of a grind but really for the most part I find it stimulating and fun, especially the film and tv series work.

3) For example, on a commerical, are the cool effects mainly done by compositors or some other position? I’m basically looking for the position that creates those unique effects.

VFX is such a broad field – some cool effects are realised using all photographic elements, some are all 3D, some are a blend of these and composite box effects as well. So it depends on the shot. This is a generalisation but … bigger budget commercials have longer schedules and often involve pre-production, shoot supervision, 3D animation and long composite sessions that are mostly combining elements that have been created outside the comp. suite. Smaller budget commercials can’t afford big 3D components and require more elements to be fabricated in the comp. suite … in my experience anyway. I agree with eltoo though, if you really want to be creating effects from scratch, 3D would be a good choice.

4) What positions can compositors generally move up to? is TD or vfx supervisor something that one can step up to?

I moved up to vfx supervision from compositing so, yes – that is a typical path. TD’s are often required to design technique based solutions to vfx tasks so they can come from 3D (mostly) but also 2D / compositor as well.

5) Is effects animator a seperate position in many places or does the compositor take their role sometimes?

in smaller companies staff tend to multi-task and take on more than one specific role. Bigger shops need to specialise to get through large volumes of work so in that case the jobs are likely to be separate positions.

6) Do compositors have much creative freedom to fashion the look of the effect? In a commerical, for example? Do they have freedom to come up with creative solutions to the effect rquired?

Senior compositors yes for sure – they will likely be involved in pre production where techniques are cooked up. Junior compositors are welcome to come up with ideas and contribute them, a smart supervisor will listen to input from all staff but they may not be involved early in the process when some of those decisions are locked in.

regards,
Peter Webb.

[Author]

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