BAF – Double Negative Talk
On 14 November I had the opportunity to meet Nathan Ortiz from Double Negative who had a talk at BAF regarding his role as FX Supervisor on Ron Howard’s biopic Rush. As soon as I arrived at the National Media Museum and opened my stall (I was working for my department – SCIM) I saw Nathan wondering around. Even though I didn’t had my “speech & research” prepared I jumped straight forward and asked him if he could answer couple of questions. Time passed by, and after over half an hour we were talking about the future of VFX, what things the students should know, and how one should embrace the market. From our half an hour chat I got that he is a great guy who has the skill and experience. He is definitely a FX guru without even arguing it as he worked for Thor- The Dark World, Harry Potter and The Deadly Hallows, The Incredible Hulk and my favourite one : Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
Nathan truly inspired me and besides that, he convinced me to come and visit their studio in London which I will definitely do, but probably next year.
Regarding his presentation I have to say that I was amazed of how much effort they’ve put into creating Rush, and how they tried to recreate the original story. I was stunned of how many hours of footage they had to analyze and of how much detail they had to add such as: car re-constructions, track re-constructions, reflection maps for cars, debris/flames/smoke, etc.
I am very happy that I managed to see Nathan’s presentation, as he truly inspired me to try my luck at Dneg next year. I hope Dneg will continue to come with amazing projects in the future which will not only have great visual effects but also good stories to tell.
As a final thought I have to say that I was somehow disappointed by this year’s BAF as they only featured one VFX company compared to previous years. Besides that, I have to say that it was pretty quiet during the entire festival, and this could have happened for two reasons:
- They didn’t promote the festival as in previous years
- People are starting to spend less amounts of money on festival tickets
If you want to find more info and behind the scenes from Rush the guys from FXGuide wrote an article in which they explain the whole workflow for the film. It’s a must read!
