So what was Ian Hunter doing behind Paul Franklin at the Oscars?

Last night Ian Hunter jointly won the VFX Oscar and rightly so, the film Interstellar was remarkable and a large part of that was the brilliant work done at New Deal Studios in LA. For example The Endurance, The Ranger, and The Lander were all constructed by New Deal Studios under the supervision of Ian Hunter, and overall vfx supe Paul Franklin speaks very highly of their work and contribution.

fxguide covered New Deal’s work in a recent article and yet when Paul Franklin started to speak, we could not help but notice Ian doing something behind him…but what was so important??

For a start Ian dropped something as he walked up on the stage trying to pull this thing out of his pocket – hopefully it was not the valet parking docket. Then he can be seen writing something. We assumed it was a note to thank his business partners Shannon Gans or Matthew Gratzner…or perhaps the great crew at New Deal…but no.

Ian was reaching for a copy of the LA Times! Or rather the page with the Oscar bingo sheet so he could tick off another “Yeah I got that category right box!”. He was literally marking off:

Interstellar VFX Oscar …..TICK

Yeah – in front of a billion people, he was crossing off an Oscar bingo card!  And in case you were wondering if he was drunk (which he completely was not )…at the end he yelled out over the play off music…Latin!

What one can just hear over the music is the Hunter clan motto “Cursum perficio” which means “I accomplish the hunt”. Ian says that his father used to say it and the meaning in his family was “I stay in the hunt.” Ian loved his father very much and the scarf he wore was a gift from his father. Sadly his father Alex passed away the year the team started the company, but it was indicative of Ian’s strong sense of family and his good luck charm for the evening. Luckily, it worked.

Ian the morning after...
Ian the morning after…

ALSO…

It is also worth nothing that at the Oscars the issue of women’s equal pay was raised and the role of women was discussed – as it was at the Sci-Techs earlier and we published a story on ILM’s only woman Sci-Tech winner last week. In light of this, one should note that New Deal Studios is run by Shannon Gans. She runs the studio as she is the best person to run it. She may be a rarity but she does an outstanding job and she runs New Deal Studios extremely well – with the respect of the entire industry for the work she does. It is great to see this team and this company once again honored for the work they do in special effects.

Ian from his twitter @ianmachunter
Ian from his twitter @ianmachunter back stage last night