March 12, 2025 • 59 mins
Ever wonder how those vampires on Buffy turned to dust? Or how Barry Allen's lightning trails look so convincing on The Flash? Dave Funston has been behind it all.
From humble beginnings making Mortal Kombat-inspired flip books to becoming an Emmy-nominated visual effects supervisor, Dave's 25-year journey through Hollywood's "golden age" of television VFX reveals the magic and mayhem that happens when creativity meets impossible deadlines.
Dave pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career, from his first big break on Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to developing the iconic vampire dusting effects for Buffy and Angel, creating Trueblood's memorable fang transformations, and orchestrating complex sequences for The Flash. His stories highlight how television VFX teams innovate under constraint, often accomplishing in days what feature films might take months to perfect.
One particularly harrowing tale involves a Van Helsing sequence featuring 18 vampires simultaneously disintegrating – a single shot that consumed four months of painstaking work. Dave explains how VFX artists often resorted to "brute force" solutions before modern tools existed, manually rotoscoping and animating elements frame by frame.
For filmmakers working with visual effects, Dave offers invaluable advice about planning, communication, and the critical importance of involving VFX professionals early in production. As he looks to the future, he shares thoughtful perspectives on how AI might transform aspects of VFX production while maintaining that the human element of storytelling cannot be replaced.
Whether you're a filmmaker looking to incorporate visual effects into your next project or simply a fan curious about how your favorite supernatural shows come to life, this conversation offers fascinating insights into the artistry and problem-solving behind the screen magic we often take for granted. Subscribe to VFX for Indies for more episodes exploring the intersection of visual effects and independent filmmaking.
Hosted by Foxtrot X-Ray’s founder and “chief pixel pusher” Paul DeNigris, who brings to the conversation 30 years of experience in both independent filmmaking and visual effects, as well as 20 years of experience in teaching all aspects of digital filmmaking at the university level.
For episodes, transcripts, and more, visit http://vfxforindies.com
For more information about what Foxtrot X-Ray can do for your film, visit https://foxtrotxray.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul DeNigris (00:00):
Take a peek behind the scenes on some of the
most iconic genre TV shows ofall time Buffy, angel, firefly,
true Blood, smallville, theFlash and more.
This week on VFX for Indies, apodcast about the intersection
(00:35):
of visual effects andindependent filmmaking.
I'm your host, paul DeNigris,vfx artist, filmmaker and CEO of
boutique visual effects shopFoxtrot X-Ray.
With me today is Dave Funstonwho, as I alluded to at the top
of the show, is a VFX supervisorwith an incredible resume going
back almost 25 years to Buffythe Vampire Slayer.
Welcome to the podcast, dave.
Thanks, paul, great to be hereOn this show.
(00:58):
Our goal is to bring on guestslike Dave to share their
insights into visual effects andfilm production without going
too deep into the weeds of techtalk, with the goal of educating
filmmakers who are relativelynew to using VFX.
If you like what we're doinghere, please like and subscribe
to stay updated as we releasenew episodes, and you can find
our back catalog of episodes atvfxforindiescom.
(01:18):
Dave and I recently becameacquainted through a mutual
friend since his move here toArizona, but because the VFX
industry is incredibly small, werealized that we know more than
a few people in common and weeven almost worked together at
one point, about a decade ago,while I was living in LA, I
interviewed at Zoic Studios,where Dave spent quite a bit of
time.
Before we get into your time atZoic, why don't you, dave, why
(01:40):
don't you tell us a little bitabout your background, your
education and what brought youto the world of VFX?
Dave Funston (01:48):
Certainly my background and education in
animation and my fascinationwith visual effects started, you
know, probably pre-high school.
I remember my grandmotherbuying me boxes of little
notepads and I began making flipbooks and it started with an
(02:15):
obsession of Mortal Kombat andfighting games like that, and I
would just draw stick figurescutting each other's heads off
in little flip books and I wouldjust go through notebook after
notebook covering only 1% of thepage, and then that notebook's
done.
I also then remember watchingthe Abyss is one of my favorite
movies and there was a behindthe scenes on the Abyss and this
(02:36):
was in I don't know mid 90s,maybe maybe late 90s, and that
really lit my fire about what'spossible, because you know they
had that water, that tentaclemonster, and they showed the cgi
3d stuff behind that.
Um, I then was fortunate inhigh school to have a.
(02:58):
There was a tech school it'scalled atc at the time applied
technology center but theyoffered optional electives for
the local high schools insteadof your high school's electives.
And there was a class I heardabout with these super high
powered Macintosh computers theywere the beige G3 desktops at
(03:20):
the time.
So anyway, I took this class.
It was called commercial designand it changed my life.
I wasn't quite sure what I wasdoing with my life at that time,
but my teacher, susan Cook, whoI'm still connected with today,
she just saw the talent in meand was able to figure out where
(03:42):
it was and how to get it out.
That's where we learnedillustrator.
Uh, illustrator and freehandwas one at the time.
Infinity was the 3d programthat they had and I I just once
she realized that's all I caredabout.
She just let me do my own thing, because all I was doing was
learning and, and, and she sawme accelerating my interests.
(04:04):
We did a bunch of other stufftoo four color printing press
and, and they had threeheidelberg four color printing
presses at the school.
So we were making our ownplates in illustrator, printing
them, transferring them, doingall kinds of all kinds of wild
things um, for a high school kid.
(04:27):
But then we, uh, we did a tourin my senior year of downtown,
of, of of Disney, and they hadin Florida and they had this
program where you could go inand do cell animation and, um,
it was very topical, but you gotyour, you got a chance to see a
lot of cool behind the scenesDisney animation stuff and at
the time we toured Full Sail andum, which is in Winter Park,
(04:51):
and when I walked in that placeit was an absolute slam dunk.
The first minute I walked inthey had all the equipment.
It was all professional grade,high-end facilities and and, um,
I knew it at that point, butthat's what I, that's what I was
going to be doing, that's allthat I can really say.
It was just, it was a lightbulb moment for me.
Um, after I graduated I wentstraight there and, and, and my
(05:16):
first day of class was January3rd 2000.
So it was the whole Y2K thing.
It was weird, super weird.
But guess what?
Nothing happened.
And I did a year and a halfthere for my associate's degree
and I learned Maya, I learnedsome compositing, I learned some
(05:36):
basics and some other stuff,but it was basically I did the
computer animation program, Ithink, for like the third class
ever at the time and it was justa hardcore 3d Maya eight hours
a day, kind of deal.
That's really.
That's really where it allstarted for me.
Paul DeNigris (05:54):
As you may know, I used to teach college at a
very similar type of school,very similar to Full Sail.
So I want, I want you to tellme the name of your teacher that
mentored you in high schoolagain, because I want to give
her a shout out.
Dave Funston (06:09):
Oh yeah, Her name is Susan Cook.
So.
Paul DeNigris (06:12):
Susan Cook, here's to you Teachers like you
are what make the world possible.
Really.
I mean, everybody that's everbeen a high achiever in the
world, I believe, has beenmentored by somebody maybe not
informal education, but they'vebeen mentored by somebody and uh
(06:32):
, and for a teacher like you tomentor someone like Dave uh and
and introduce him to what becamehis passion and his career,
that is incredibly commendable.
So hats off to Susan Cuck.
Dave Funston (06:46):
She's a heck of a lady.
Paul DeNigris (06:48):
That's fantastic.
So you inevitably ended up inLA, so why don't we talk about
that?
I'd love to hear about yourjourney from Florida, from Full
Sail, to Los Angeles, what gotyou that first gig working on
Buffy and how you got into theindustry from there.
Dave Funston (07:12):
Sure, yeah, my journey from Florida to Los
Angeles was pretty interesting,but also what you hear from a
lot of people of like it's aboutwho you know.
So at Full Sail made lots offriends connections and once we
graduated and I say we, becausethere was two other friends of
mine that we all became prettyclose um, guy by the name of
Eric Ebling and another guy bythe name of Christopher Strauss,
(07:33):
chris Strauss, and um, eric andI, we graduated in March of a
one and, completely unrelated,my folks had moved from South
Carolina to LA.
Unrelated, my mom got hired bythis design company, um, and
they decided to make the movewhen their only son had left for
(07:54):
college.
So they, we all kind of leftthe East coast together.
Uh, we were like, hey, whydon't we drive out?
We can stay with my parents fora little while and try to find,
try to find work.
Hey, why don't we drive out?
We can stay with my parents fora little while and try to find
work.
And then I think that wasliterally that's just where the
work is two students that didn'tbarely knew anything, but it
(08:14):
seemed like the right thing todo.
So we packed up a car and asmall U-Haul trailer and Eric
and I drove from Orlando throughmany crazy nights and and can't
find gas and and it was nuts,uh.
But we, we did a quick stop atthe grand canyon, saw the grand
canyon for the first time.
It was amazing.
(08:35):
It snowed the next day, so wehad to wait for the snow to
weeks.
We, um, eric, had reached out toa friend that we knew, uh, that
previously graduated full sail,and we just met up with him and
(08:57):
another buddy of his for drinks, um, dinner.
We weren't 21 yet, um, and thatwas the other crazy thing is
doing this at like 19.
Like, we just, you know,driving to a whole new part of
the country.
But we met these guys andhappened to have our reels from
school.
Turns out our friend's friend,who turned out to be Scott
(09:19):
Metzger, who is a very, verywell-known figure in the visual
effects, the visual effectsworld.
He, we let him know that wejust graduated and we had our
reels and he was like, oh,that's awesome, we're actually
hiring at the place he wasworking.
(09:40):
So we gave him our reels,finished up the night, and then
the next day he called us withhis supervisor and they were
like we want you guys to come in.
We're, we're in the middle of afilm.
We have a lot of work and wewant you guys to come in.
So that was Eric and I and wedrove up to third and La Brea to
go to Metrolight studios andthey were working on Jay and
(10:04):
Silent, bob Strike Back, whichwas Kevin Smith's first major
feature film.
He'd done many films beforethat, but this one had a lot of
traditional visual effects in itand you know there was a lot of
tracking 3D tracking involvedand lots of cool shots in that
movie, especially for two kidsout of college.
(10:26):
And, um, basically, eric and Ijust hit it so hard and we were
moving so quickly.
Uh, they asked if we, if therewere any other friends from
school that we could callbecause we were doing such a
great job.
And we did.
We called Chris and he flew outfrom Florida and we're like hey
, man, you got to come.
This is, this is crazy.
(10:46):
You got to come do this gigwith us.
So Chris and I and Ericfinished the film.
Uh, we got film credits.
We went to the opening night.
I got to meet Kevin Smith andJason Hughes.
It was wild First job right outof college.
Really set the set, the bar.
(11:08):
But I think, the more I lookback on it it was like the
golden age of the like earlygolden age of visual effects in
la was kind of ending.
Um, things just kind of changeda lot since then and kind of
turned into a new.
You know, the whole buffy andangel and all of the crazy
television visual effects stuffwe'll talk about later just
began to roll right after that.
(11:28):
But we got in at the right time.
The timing was perfect.
It was just who we knew.
The timing of the industry atthe time was just at the right
place at the right time is whatit feels like.
Paul DeNigris (11:39):
Yeah, it sounds like the stars really aligned.
The fact that your parentsmoved there, you know, when I
was teaching that was one of thethings I always told students
that the work is in LA, you needto move there.
And a lot of them didn't havethat safe place.
The parents weren't living inLA or they didn't know anybody.
(11:59):
And it was hard for some youngfolks to make that transition,
to say I have to go where thework is come what may.
So you were incrediblyfortunate, but you also made the
most of that right.
The fact that you showed up tothat dinner with demo reels in
(12:20):
tow, I assume, probably on DVD,VHS, VHS.
Dave Funston (12:30):
I remember those days, vhs, I and I and I hope
that they were like you know,the short play ones, just for
reels, not like, not like a fourhour vhs tape with like two
minutes of reel at the head.
Um, I heard, I remember so manystories before and after we got
there of oh hey, remember John,he graduated right after us.
(12:51):
Um, he drove out to LA himselfand and after six months he went
back and now he's, you know,working X, y, z it it I heard so
many times.
That's why I feel so gratefuland lucky to all these, to all
these people that were there.
I mean, obviously I, I knewwhat I was doing and I could, I
could do the work.
But it doesn't matter if youcan do the work, if you can't,
(13:13):
if you don't have that in, youknow, just applying to a job is
not going to necessarily get it.
Paul DeNigris (13:18):
You gotta network , network, networking yeah,
networking is the key toeverything, uh, uh, but to some
degree it is.
It is a war of attrition, right?
It's uh, uh, you, the, the, thefolks who go out there and they
, they leave after six months.
Could, could month seven havebeen the time they met somebody.
(13:41):
You know?
Um, I always think about uhkrasinski.
Right before he got the, uh,before he got the office, he was
ready to quit, he was ready toleave, la, okay, and his mom
sent him money and and saidhoney, you just got to stick it
out, just just a couple moremonths.
I'm gonna send you money, juststick it out and like the next
week or two, he, he booked theoffice.
(14:02):
Holy cow, his career took off.
Right, that's wild's wild yeah.
So it's a, it's a war ofattrition, it's it's knowing
your stuff, it's being in theright place at the right time,
being open opportunities and andjust having the persistence to
stick it out.
Uh, I think is, uh is the magicformula.
You know people again as a, asa former educator and still a
(14:22):
mentor for a lot of these youngpeople, I get asked you know
what's the secret?
Well, that's it.
There is a formula.
Everybody's combination of youknow, of persistence and
networking and skill, isdifferent, but it's a
combination of all of thosethings, oh, yeah.
Dave Funston (14:41):
Your train will come, you just don't know.
Paul DeNigris (14:43):
It's hard to know when, absolutely so.
So you transitioned from, uh,from Jay and silent Bob strike
back to Buffy.
And uh, what?
What studio were you at whenyou were working there?
Dave Funston (14:56):
Yeah, I um.
So I finished Jay and silentBob and, uh, like a week after
that show wrapped, I decided,hey, I'm just going to drive up
to the, to the studio, and sayhi, for no apparent reason, I
just felt like I should.
And Scott was there Cause hewas staffed Scott Metzger was
staffed, he was working onsomething and and I just said
(15:19):
I'm hanging out.
He said, hey, do you want to doa night gig for me?
Cause I don't want to do it?
And and I'm like yes, and hesaid, here I'm going to show you
something.
And he pulled up buju thatnobody knew what it was at the
time and he's like this tracksfor you automatically.
We need to.
You got to do some tracking forthis music video, this other
(15:39):
place.
So he showed me buju and it wasreally cool, uh, because I had
been tracking in my alive beforethat, which was like very
interesting tool.
Um, anyway, I go over to thisplace called 525 and I meet a
few different people that Iwould ultimately know for
decades after that.
That was kind of like the firstdomino falls, uh, there at five
(16:04):
to five and it just kept going.
So I worked on a genuine musicvideo, um tracking some footage
of like a set, just like acamera pushing upset, and we had
to do a set extension on thisapartment building.
It was just one floor and wehad to do a CG section.
I just did the tracking.
I wasn't doing the CG at thetime but I but like I didn't
(16:24):
like an hour it was, it wassuper fast and everybody was
really impressed.
Um again, right place at theright time.
I knew what I was doing butBuju helped Um and then I got
called back and called back andthen eventually I got called
back for the Smallville pilotand they were doing that shot
where the corn, where he had tocatch the bus and the corn like
(16:47):
lays down or spreads when heruns through the corn, when
clark runs through the corn.
And from that point on, um, Iwas a regular there doing all
kinds of fun cg stuff a littlebow wow music video, all like a
cg baseball flying into space,all kinds of fun, fun stuff.
And that facility, like I said,that facility, golden age of
(17:07):
visual effects it was acommercial house, high end
commercial house, and it was atfifth street in Santa Monica.
You could see the rooftop.
Was this like penthouse rooftop?
They had a bunch of flame,flame bays, henry bays, all this
classic visual effects stuff,and we could see sailboats on
(17:28):
the water and it was just, itwas crazy full kitchen.
It was.
It was crazy.
I've never been to a place likethat since.
That was just like tell whereall the money was going.
They had clients walking in.
They had, like I remember likeuh, very serious musicians
coming in to see their videosput together at the end and
(17:48):
ultimately, through thoserelationships, I would then go
to work at Radium LA and that'swhere I met these people Lonnie
Paris here, chris Jones, andrewOrloff they all rock with
passion.
You know these guys knew JossWhedon.
They had been building theserelationships up to that point.
I was working on Angel andBuffy and I think the first
(18:12):
season of Smallville carriedover there as well.
So we're doing all three, if mymemory serves me, and this was
in early 2002.
And from that point forward Iworked side by side with Andrew
Um.
He was another great mentor forme.
Um, he was from a 3d background, so we got along really well,
(18:35):
um, and uh, quick anecdote aboutthat that I mentioned, that I
wanted to mention I watchedBuffy the vampire slayer, um,
prior to school and as a kid,you know, as a younger, as a
younger person, and I remembersitting on the floor in my
apartment in Florida just aboutto start full sail, and I
remember seeing the shot where aknife floats like through the
(18:58):
camera and like stops in frontof somebody's face.
I can't remember what season itwas it was probably season four
of of Buffy or something and Iremember going ah, I'm going to,
I want to work on that, I wantto do that.
You know it was before I knewhow to do it, but I remember.
I remember distinctly seeingthat and doing that and then,
through some crazy journey thatmy, that the universe has me on,
(19:19):
I was nominated for an Emmy forworking on Buffy.
So it is, I was nominated foran Emmy for working on Buffy.
So it's crazy.
Another thing that, just likein the fourth, in like the first
or second year of my career,you know, being in the right
place at the right time but alsohelping develop the Buffy
dusting effect.
We did it in Angel and Buffy.
I did tests for the Blade TVseries.
(19:40):
That didn't go at the time, butwe were doing an upgraded
version of of that, of thateffect, um, that, with fire
involved and and all kinds offun, fun things, it was just.
It was just an awesomerollercoaster out of the gate.
Paul DeNigris (19:58):
Yeah, it sounds like it.
So you've thrown out a bunch ofbunch of names of software and
hardware, some of which Ihaven't heard in years, like
Buju takes me back my alive.
And you mentioned flame andHenry.
So, again, with the thought inmind that my, our viewers, our
listeners, are not supertechnical, they might not know
(20:20):
what any of this stuff is.
So you mentioned Buju 3dtracking software.
Um, not around anymore, right?
Dave Funston (20:28):
it's.
I don't think it's supported.
I have a copy that I use oftenright on.
Paul DeNigris (20:34):
Um, yeah, I haven't.
I haven't heard anybody mentionbuju in a long time.
It's been pretty muchsupplanted in the industry by
like pf track and synth eyes andsome other, some other stuff,
but it's.
It's basically 3d trackingsoftware tracks the the camera.
Uh maya, maya live was theirversion of of 3d tracking.
Um maya is still around.
(20:55):
It's still still the sort ofthe flagship product out there
for uh 3d animation, althoughthere's there's lots of others
now, but it's still a top-endsoftware.
But you mentioned Flame andHenry.
Just give us a little kernel ofknowledge about what those were
(21:15):
.
Dave Funston (21:16):
Sure.
So the Henry was a compositingtool, I think back then and even
now with Flame and things, butthe hardware and the software
were designed together.
Not, hey, is it Windows or Mac,it doesn't matter what you put
(21:36):
it on, is the graphics card goodenough?
That's kind of what you talkabout today when you talk about
software capabilities.
Back then the Henry was its ownthing.
You bought it by itself and itwas like I don't know a hundred
thousand dollars, just likeinsane money, but it was for
doing a hundred thousand dollarmusic videos, it was for doing
(21:58):
high end commercial work.
So it was compositing, but ithad custom built tools that did
tracking and color correction,um, all kinds of things like
that.
And and um, henry's definitelyaren't around anymore.
Um, the flame is still around.
That's a very, very popular umindustry standard tool even
(22:21):
still, though those you buy, thehardware and the software, are
designed together.
So, um, it's basically you canupload the footage into the
system and then everything runsreal time like and not like a,
not like an unreal engine kindof real time, like you know,
when you hit render and aftereffects or premiere, and it goes
that, that, that, that, that,or when you, when you try to
(22:43):
like roto and then check your,your progress and the screen has
to like down res to keep up andyou see it up res and down res
and nothing is.
You can't see your workhappening in real time.
The flame, the work happens inreal time, like you can color,
correct and edit and do thingsum, and it happens right away.
(23:04):
Super powerful, um, lots ofcool little tools and things
like that.
So most commercials, musicvideos, all of those are
conformed and finished on on aflame flame machine.
Paul DeNigris (23:19):
There's also smoke and smoke flame.
Dave Funston (23:24):
There's a couple other ones that are focused on
one specific process or anotherRight, smoke, flame, fire, and
those are all Autodesk now.
Paul DeNigris (23:36):
That's all Autodesk, right.
And then they for a while theyhad Combustion, which was their
desktop software.
I used to teach that.
And then Foundry came in andthey were like smoke flame,
we're Nuke.
That's a great name, it'sawesome, it's a great name.
So, aside from what you'vetalked about and I'm going to
(24:00):
circle back to Smallville in asecond but aside from what
you've talked about, what aresome of your biggest career
highlights?
What are the things that youlook back on and go, man, I'm
really proud of that shot orthat show or that sequence, or
I'm really and you've mentioneda few names I'm really grateful
that I worked with you, knowthis person or that person, just
(24:22):
like, really briefly, lookingback, what's like your top two
or three things that you wouldthat you reflect on as being
super proud of?
Dave Funston (24:32):
Yeah, you know, meeting those guys, lonnie,
chris and Andrew and Rocco.
That really got me going onBuffy and Angel and then and so
those shows are just so near tomy heart.
Like I found some swag.
Uh, as we're going through ourstorage room I have this.
Not to do with it, but I havethis messenger bag.
(24:54):
It's black line with red insideand it just has Buffy the
Vampire Slayer embroidered onthe front of it.
It's like a legitimate20-year-old, perfect condition
Like that show just means somuch to me.
That's definitely one of mycareer highlights.
With the Emmy nomination whichwe lost to Firefly, which was
(25:20):
ourselves like Zoic one forFirefly, I think we were up
against enterprise and so happythat Zoic, that Zoic one, it
stayed in the family.
A show that happened shortlyafter that that I am also really
proud of that.
Actually don't think about a lotbut Trueblood.
So I worked on the pilot forTrueblood.
That show turned into a massiveshow.
Actually, don't think about alot but true blood.
So I worked on the pilot fortrue blood.
That show turned into a massiveshow.
(25:42):
Um, and I remembered working onthe pilot and I I got to do the
shots.
The shot where I believe sookiefirst gets bitten by by um bill
and you see her teeth like popout for the first time and she's
like laying on her side andprofile.
And I got to do these.
They were like, how did theteeth come out?
They don't just go.
(26:02):
You know that we did round andround and round and round.
Do the teeth unfold, do theyshoot down, do the old, do the
your original teeth disappearand the vampire teeth come in.
It was really fun process.
That was at Alan Ball, who wasfamous for um six feet under Um.
So true blood was a huge showto work on.
(26:26):
We would have viewing partiesat my house and everybody would.
We'd all get to see um my work.
Uh, golden age of HBO rightthere, golden age.
Paul DeNigris (26:35):
Oh man Right, six feet under true blood, the wire
uh, the Sopranos.
Yeah, it's yeah.
Dave Funston (26:42):
Yes, absolutely, man.
What a again.
Just like crescendo like this,this awesome thing.
And then and then everythingchanged as as I'm getting my
like Netflix DVD in the mail,you know, like all stacked on
the on on the desk, desk by thedoor, those little paper
envelopes, right, my gosh.
(27:03):
Um, there was a string offeatures that we got to work on
because there there was a timebefore the tax incentives and
all that were really reallypushing work out of out of la in
the united states for postanyway.
Um, van helsing was a featurefilm that I got to work on,
spider-man 2, I got to work onPremium Rush, which was a remake
(27:26):
of that Kevin Bacon moviecalled Quicksilver.
It's basically JosephGordon-Levitt on a bicycle in
New York City and there were allkinds of cool shots that we did
.
I'm a huge car nut and we gotto do all of these CG cars for
that show.
They would have JosephGordon-Levitt.
He did a lot of his own stunts.
(27:47):
They just put down sandbags inthe road.
They'd have him likechaotically weave around the
sandbags and then we had to putin all these cars, taxis, all
different of cg cars, and weused um craft simulation
director.
It was a vehicle simulation tooland it was a plug-in for maya
(28:08):
at the time and maya eventuallybought that and I think they
roped it in um, but that was ahuge show that a buddy of mine
and I, scott Rosecrans, got toreally just do that whole show
ourselves.
We did the pipeline, theanimation, how to export
animation and import it in forlighting, and um, that was a
(28:31):
really fun project to work on.
Um, what, what year is that itwas?
Paul DeNigris (28:34):
in the two thousands.
That's pretty.
That's almost a decade after.
Like the digital cars and, uh,the matrix reloaded, uh, it
feels like sort of a naturalextension of of the work that
was done for that movie, right?
I mean, we, we sort of takedigital cars for granted now,
totally you know yeah, yeah butif you think about everything
(28:55):
that we do, it it's, it's acontinuum, right, we're talking
about, you know, the, the, theevolution of, you know, from
flame to combustion, to nuke, etcetera, the same thing.
It's all of these, all thesetechniques, all of this, these
tools, they, they continue tomigrate from one studio to
another, from one one productionto another, and it sounds like
it sounds like you got kind ofpigeonholed in the vampire genre
(29:18):
for a little bit there,probably because, you guys were
the vampire guys.
Dave Funston (29:22):
I believe so we would see the films come out
like Blade 2.
When Blade 2 came out, we wereseeing that work when the
vampires would burn and ash awayand I think that was 3D Studio
Max.
And what was the tool at thetime?
They had a dynamics tool.
(29:44):
That was awesome.
We were still using Maya justoff the shelf, maya particles.
But you know the budget andtime, that was just what we had.
That was what we could do.
The turnaround was those werelike 10-day turnarounds on those
shows too, which is unheard ofum today.
(30:04):
So, yeah, the tools were justthe tools just kept trickling
down um and, and you know, frompaul to, you know, going way
back, like paul the bevics workwith his hdri process for
lighting and capturing anenvironment.
I remember when that kind ofcame through and when we all
realized that we were lightingwrong and we had to light linear
(30:29):
, you know, in linear space, andbecause we were like in the
beginning we were lighting insRGB space, which basically
you're just working with only aquarter of the range that you
really could be working with.
So many things that justdeveloped along the way trial by
(30:51):
fire.
I remember that was somethingelse that I complained about in
the off times or in that, maybe,when I'm in the fire.
There was never any time fordev, there was never any time
for research.
It was hey, this job booked,it's due in three weeks, go
figure it out.
And so you would just have tofigure it out in production.
(31:13):
Things change later on, butthat's how it was back then.
We were comping our own shotstoo.
We were, we were delivering theshot from beginning to end.
And uh, that's also how youlearn how to be efficient,
because you're either going tofail or you're going to figure
it out.
Move on, figure it out, move on, figure it out, move on.
Paul DeNigris (31:36):
I mean this is.
This is a great example of whyI like to bring TV folks on to
this show.
Right, the mission is VFX forindies.
It's really geared forindependent filmmakers, and so
maybe the correlation betweentelevision and indie film isn't
super apparent.
People haven't worked in bothlike I have.
But what you're saying is it'sthe same stuff we deal with in
(31:59):
the indie film space, in the lowto medium budget film space.
There's never enough time,there's never enough money.
We're using off-the-shelfsoftware.
We don't have time to write newplugins, new purpose-built
simulations or whatever for thevampire disintegration effects,
the stuff that they wereprobably writing new tools for.
(32:20):
For blade, too, you were havingto do with off the shelf Maya,
for true blood or whatever.
Right, it's the, it it's applesand oranges can try to compare
a TV budget and timetable to afeature film budget and
timetable.
But at the same time,especially now, viewers are so
accustomed to things lookinggreat that when we tune into the
(32:45):
latest marvel show on disneyplus, we expect it to look as
good as avengers endgame.
Right?
Dave Funston (32:53):
it's.
If it doesn't, you're like, ohyeah, jump on reddit.
Paul DeNigris (32:56):
See the cg in that show last night, exactly,
exactly, so you know what are.
What are some of the lessonsyou've learned working on TV
that are specifically about howto how to deal with those
limitations of time and money.
What are some lessons thatyou've learned that you think
could apply to the indie filmspace?
Dave Funston (33:19):
Yeah, I mean regardless of your time and
budget, right you?
You, if you have visual effects, you, you must get a visual
effects professional involved assoon as possible.
Now, speaking for myself, Itell people I love to talk shop
all the time.
You don't need to pay me untilyou need me on set, you know, at
(33:42):
midnight helping you know shootplates, but I'll break.
I think most visual effectspeople will be this way.
They'll, they'll, they'll helpyou, they'll, they'll maybe read
sections of your script or youtell them about an idea that you
have and and just getting thegetting the the knee jerk
reaction from a seasoned visualeffects professional, supervisor
(34:03):
, artist to help you understandwhere to shoot something, how to
shoot something maybe issomething you don't need to
shoot.
That'll obviously help you atthe end of the day, because you
won't have a bunch of footageyou didn't need to shoot, or
you'll have the footage that youneeded to shoot and didn't.
(34:24):
I think that is kind of the mostbroad advice that I could give.
Um, you know, yeah, I, I, thatwas.
That was really, I think, thebest, the best advice.
And then, once you have someone, then you just got to plan the
hell out of it, even thesmallest thing.
(34:45):
Even the smallest thing,because that visual effects
person is going to know howsomething turned out after
filming it, working on it,getting it to screen, working on
it, getting it to screen.
There's so many variablesbetween the beginning and the
end and it's just superimportant to have someone to
(35:06):
guide you.
Paul DeNigris (35:06):
What do filmmakers consistently get
wrong about?
Visual effects, regardless oftheir budget, regardless of the
size of the project.
What do you see filmmakersdirectors, producers, whatever
consistently getting wrong?
And I know you've seen this.
You've been in the businesslong enough that you've seen
some trends, I'm sure.
Dave Funston (35:24):
The thing that I see often, whether it's on a
small series or even the biggestseries, is planning for how
many visual effects cuts you'regoing to have at the end of the
day.
Like you'll have an earlyproduction meeting.
A director wants no, we have tosee this effect more than three
(35:48):
times.
It must happen this many times.
And then they talk about budgetand then eventually they're
like no, we're just going to seeit three times, that's it.
We haven't even filmed yet.
And they're like no, it's threetimes.
And then in the budget they gothree visual effects shots and
those shots are $1,000 each andit comes back and there's 12
(36:21):
cuts of that effect.
And it's between the visualeffects supervisor and the
producers and the director tohave the best round of
communication.
Now, it's not always possible,because sometimes the producers
you know they know what they'regoing to need at the end of the
day to hand over to the studiofor their show, because at the
end of the day, you're makingthe product for the people that
are paying for it, technicallyspeaking, and being honest about
(36:47):
the budget and what's going tobe in the show ahead of time is
a big variable.
That I see is very inconsistent.
More often than not, the cutthat comes from the editor after
filming is done, but beforevisual effects has started.
(37:07):
The budget changes a lot, andit doesn't have to.
Sometimes it does, but honestly, I've worked on enough shows
that have gone both ways and andhaving everyone on the same
page, having meetings early andyou're going to everybody's
going to have a better idea ofwhat to expect, instead of
(37:30):
having a big surprise at the endwith, like, what are visual
effects budgets?
Only $100,000, but thisbudget's at 250.
Thousand dollars, but thisbudget's at 250.
Well, hopefully, the visualeffects people told you how much
to what to expect in thebeginning.
Paul DeNigris (37:46):
That's a perfect scenario, but that's what I see
often, yeah, it's always achallenge when, when somebody
comes to us with a script andsays I need a VFX budget for
this, and it's, it's just wordson paper.
At that point, you know, we canmake educated guesses.
We could go through with thehighlighter and highlight the
things that are going thatsurely seem like they're going
(38:07):
to be VFX, and we can make aguesstimate like oh it's, you
know this, this guydisintegrating is probably going
to be, you know, a master shot,you know.
And then a close-up of hisreaction and then maybe, uh, you
know a medium shot for for theeffect to finish.
Okay, that's three shots.
It's all guesswork.
Uh, that's why I tell peopleprevious, previous, previous
(38:30):
storyboards right, I'm notsaying everybody needs to be
pixar, but look at the way pixara movie.
Right, they make the moviedozens and dozens of times.
Right, because they're startingfrom.
We're recording voiceover, andthen we're laying out drawings,
we're doing an animatic, it'sjust the boards, really.
(38:52):
And then we'll do roughanimations and then we'll revise
the script and we'll do newvoiceover and then we'll cut in
new storyboards as sequenceschange, and then new rough
animations, and then we'llrevise the script and we'll do
new voiceover and then we'll cutin new storyboards as sequences
change and then new roughanimations and it is this living
, breathing, moving document foryears.
Before they start clickingfinal render on stuff, yeah, you
know they've made the movie,they've seen 20 iterations of
(39:14):
the movie.
Before you know they, theyclick final render.
Dave Funston (39:18):
So yeah, not saying, not saying of an indie
filmmaker needs to do that, but,man, that is a good model for
at least for your vfx sequencesit absolutely is, and I got to
experience that heavily on theflash, on the last couple
seasons of the flash, which wasjust a year or two ago.
Um, I got very, got on a verygood page with the producer, the
(39:43):
post um, the post supervisorand producer, um, jeff garrett,
and we were, we got to liketexting relationship.
We're like, oh, what about thatshot it, how many shots is that
going to be?
How many cuts?
I was doing storyboards forthem, for the full cg action
shots and it was a wonderful,wonderful relationship because
him and I would, we would speakthe same language where, oh well
(40:05):
, if Barry has to land, throw alightning bolt, turn and run,
well, we know he has to land,start the throw, then you're
going to cut to the other sideof him.
We both understood the cuttingpattern for the show and what to
expect and that's something Iput that in my resume because I
feel proud of it.
(40:25):
Right, like I have a goodunderstanding of action cutting
pattern sequences from aneditorial standpoint, because
you don't just go, he throws alightning bolt and it hits the
guy.
It's not two cuts.
Nobody cuts a movie or asequence like that.
You have to establish thecharacter.
Those are just patterns, thatare just basic and understanding
(40:48):
.
That is getting the chance towork with a team that all
understands that together itbecomes fun and that's what we
want.
As stressful as the deliveriesare and the budgets are, when
you can speak the same languagewith a different department it's
(41:08):
a wonderful experience.
Paul DeNigris (41:09):
That's one of the reasons why you see filmmakers,
directors, working with thesame VFX supervisors, the same
cinematographers, the sameeditors for their entire career.
Because you develop thatshorthand but also visual
effects.
People have to have some basicknowledge of filmmaking, right,
they it's.
We have to know all of thetechnical stuff.
(41:31):
We have to know all of all ofthe match moving and compositing
and all of that.
But we also have to understandcamera work, editing, you know
the line of action, continuity.
We have to understand all ofthat sort of stuff to be able to
serve the director's vision,right, and to be able to
understand yeah, this is not twoshots, this is six shots to
tell the story.
And that's again.
(41:53):
That's one of the challenges.
When you're looking at just thewritten page, you're looking at
a scene and trying tounderstand, especially when
you're working with a new, a newclient, a new um team, just
trying to understand how arethey going to tell their story?
You know, is it.
I've had clients who want to.
They, you know they want to dorapid fire cuts and I've had
(42:14):
clients who do these longmeditative shots in slow motion.
We just did a film, or a teaserfor a film where we were
working from the page, from thescript, and the director
storyboarded and he cut thesequence with music, with the
(42:36):
storyboards to, to show me thisis the pacing.
So I knew, okay, this sequenceof the character falling through
the black void.
This is not, you know, 10 cuts,this is one long slow motion
shot as he, as he falls, okay,so that changes how I have to
shoot it, how I have to bid it,all of that sort of stuff.
And it really comes down tocommunication.
(42:57):
You know, and that's whatyou're talking about, the, this
shorthand, this that youdeveloped with, uh, with the
producers on the flash, um, uh,you know the, the communication
to be able to make sure that youknow everybody's on the same
page.
And the longer you worktogether, the the shorter, the
more and more shorthand youdevelop and the and the the
(43:18):
easier communication becomes.
Absolutely, yeah, thinking back, what's the biggest challenge,
or maybe the toughest shot inyour career?
The one that that you know youreally pulled your hair out
about, uh, and, and you knowwhat was the problem and how did
you solve it.
Dave Funston (43:38):
Uh, and, and you know what was the problem and
how did you solve it?
Oh, I, I was thinking a lotabout this and I don't like to
say, however true it is, that,like I said, there was a lot of
oh, we just have to figure itout, kind of thing and there's
not a time, there's not time tobuild a tool for that.
That.
A lot of my career has beenbrute force, which is funny
(43:59):
because I like brute force aslike a global elimination
process.
It's kind of a fun, fun analogy, because I don't have time to
bake all my lighting and I don'thave time to do all these
tricks to make my scene renderfaster.
I like the way it looks, nowrender and then hopefully it's
done in the morning.
That's kind of the way thingshave gone in a way.
(44:20):
So, for example, van Helsing Ithink I only did Zoic, only did
a handful of shots for thatmovie, but I was handed, being
the vampire expert, I was handedthis big shot in that movie
where they're at a masqueradeball and, uh, van helsing and
(44:45):
and his partner's identity havebeen compromised and now all the
vampires at this party arechasing them.
They run upstairs into thisroom and he has this, um,
basically just like a grenade,but it's's a UV light bomb
grenade and he runs in the room,sets it down, starts it and
then they jump out the window.
(45:06):
But at the same time it's like18 vampires burst through the
door and it's this low cameraangle.
The camera pulls back as theyall, as they all run into the
door and the bomb is right thereat the bottom of frame.
So it was maybe like a foursecond, five second shot, but we
(45:26):
were using off the shelf Maya.
It was also had a slow motionmoment.
So they would all run in.
The bomb would start and thenwe would, we would stop to slow
motion and then everything wouldgo like this the light would
come out, you would see theirskin eat away to the bones, all
in slow motion, and then itwould go to real time with all
(45:49):
these bones crashing in front ofthe camera.
Wow, and I think the bonesdisintegrated too.
I think the bones disintegratedtoo.
But at the time, our process forBuffy was we had a rig, we
called him dusty and it was aMaya character with a skeleton.
(46:09):
Oh, I think we added a skeletonto that.
So we added a human skeletonand then there was a geometry
polygon shell as the as thething, and we had different
textures that we would renderout from that skin geometry.
Anyway, basically, we had to byhand roto, match, roto, animate
however you want to say everycharacter in that scene.
(46:30):
And so I called my buddy, eric,who was working across town at
the time, and I said I need youto come help me with this shot.
And so him and I roto animatedin 3D all 18 of those characters
.
And then once we got throughthat which that probably took
weeks and weeks anyway, whileI'm developing the UV bomb on
(46:52):
the side but it was figuring outhow to do this slow motion
moment which, if you've everworked with particles, maya
particles or particles ingeneral back then there was no
like, oh, just retime the cacheand it's going to be fine.
You couldn't do that, so we hadto, like, run it all real time,
then pick the section that wasslow, re-simulate all of it from
(47:14):
scratch because now it's fourtimes slower than normal speed
from scratch, because now it'sfour times slower than normal
speed.
It was just a massive fourmonth long shot.
One shot, four months, notsomething I was used to, because
I was used to.
You know, five shots one week,um, and it was a huge, just task
(47:36):
of patience of rendering andcaching over again and Eric and
I did it together but it turnedout looking really nice and
funny.
About combustion at the time,zoic was using combustion and
Helsing was 2004.
Cow Zoic was trying outcombustion.
Cow Um Zoic was trying outcombustion.
(48:03):
So, um, chris Jones wascompositing the shot by himself
on combustion in the other roomand I remember many late nights
of swearing and and asking fordifferent things and why is this
broken?
And and and figuring it out.
But you know that was one ofthem.
That was one of the biggestearly achievements.
That was just an absolutenightmare of a shot to pull off
(48:24):
Because of all the layers, likeit was like four and five and
six people on top of each other.
And when you have to erodesomebody behind four other
people, what do you erode from?
Because there's four people andwe weren't painting clean
plates of these people.
We weren't like re repaintingthese people like you would do
today, or just creating full CGversions of these people.
(48:45):
That's that's what you do today.
Right, this was projecting.
We just project the plate ontogeometry.
You get what you get put someglow over it.
Uh, that's kind of glow andsmoke and dust and that's kind
of glow and smoke and dust andthat's kind of.
That was kind of a big shotyeah, it sounds like it uh, it's
pretty impressive.
Paul DeNigris (49:02):
I have to go back and re-watch that movie.
So you've kind of been throughthe the the golden age of vfx as
you, as you talk about it, andnow we're in a we're in a very
weird period for vfx, especiallyin Los Angeles.
Where do you, where do you seethings now and where do you see
the VFX industry in 10 years?
(49:23):
You know what.
What tech are you excited about?
What challenges do you thinkthe industry is going to face?
I know this is a very broadquestion, so answer it how you,
how do you like?
Dave Funston (49:33):
Oh yeah, the challenges and the next 10 years
for visual effects.
You know, right now everybodyis talking about generative AI.
Oh yeah, the challenges and thenext 10 years for visual
effects.
You know, right now everybodyis talking about generative AI.
Some people think it's going totake over, Some don't.
You know, right now I don'tthink it will, because I'm
(49:54):
seeing uses for it in productionright now.
It's being used in productionright now, but in a very narrow
use case.
It's being used in productionright now, but in a very narrow
use case.
However, in 10 years, there'ssome really amazing things that
are out there right now that Ithink will be adopted.
(50:19):
You know, a lot of the facegeneration and recreation seems
like a technology that is notgoing away and I think it'll get
changed and kind of adjustedinto the pipeline in some form.
But you know, an actor'slikeness is really special and
it's being fought for very, very, very strongly right now about
who gets to use it and how.
You know, back to the cameratracking.
(50:42):
I think that camera trackingand utility things are going to
continue to improve.
There's so many cool uses of AIin Nuke, in compositing
packages that are coming outright now, like depth maps,
normal maps, all of those thingsare going to be like.
It's like just one of thoseparts of a process that now just
(51:03):
becomes automatic.
You don't need someone to rotothousand frames of a person.
You know like honestly thattechnology can be, that that
process can be done much moreefficiently.
To make time for for more ofthe art that's what we always
say in a process is like oh,that show was terrible because
(51:25):
we spent so much time justsolving problems, as opposed to
a show that your tools areworking efficiently.
You can have fun and spend timeon the art, on the storytelling
, instead of instead of justtrying to fix stuff that's
broken.
You never get a chance toactually do what you wanted to
do or even give the client whatthey really wanted.
(51:45):
So in the next I mean, God manthe next 10 years, I would say
there'll be a lot moregenerative 3D things working
pretty well.
I don't know if modeling assetsfrom scratch will really be a
thing that's probably going tobecome much more of just scan it
(52:08):
and you're done.
But the thing that I think thatwon't change, and a lot of
people argue with me about thiswe like watching stories told by
other humans we don't like, asas there's so much cool stuff
online right now that you see,but every single one of those
images doesn't look like aperson.
(52:31):
It looks like a human, but Ibut I don't think it looks like
a person.
I don't think it's going to beinteresting to watch a story
about that.
I think all of the greatestmovies and shows that we all
love were because of people'sexperience when they were a kid
or when they were growing up, ora hard time they had or an
incredible experience that theyhad, and I think that won't
(52:54):
change.
I just think the tools willbegin to make the storytelling
easier, and that's a romantic,idealistic way to think about it
, but that's how I feel about it.
Paul DeNigris (53:06):
No, I think you're right.
I think you know it's thedifference between reading your
Wikipedia page and having aconversation with you.
That's a good example, yeah,right, and if you think about it
, um, a lot of what we love,about the stuff we love develop
because of happy accidents orthings that happened that the
(53:28):
creator could never haveanticipated.
Great example, one that aiwould would have rendered
completely impossible, isimagine a version of breaking
bad, where, where vince gilligancreated the entire thing in ai,
what happens?
He kills jesse at the end ofthe first season.
Okay, sure, totally differentshow.
(53:50):
That was his original intent.
The show became what it wasbecause aaron paul and brian
cranston had such magicalchemistry between them that they
said we can't kill pinkman, wehave to keep him on.
We love working with aaron, wehave to keep him on right.
So the version of breaking bad,that vince, that some alternate
(54:13):
universe vince gilligan cookedup with mid journey and chat gpt
kills jesse pink you know fourepisodes in and it and doesn't
it just isn't the show that we,that we know and love.
Dave Funston (54:25):
Wonderful example.
I have a.
I have a short example too.
This is not a famous movie,glenn Gary, glenn Ross.
It might be famous in some, insome circles, but a friend of
mine yeah, coffee's for closers,exactly.
um, the scene with alec baldwinwas not in the script and he
ad-libbed the scene.
(54:45):
That scene is incredible, yes,but but you know why?
Because alec baldwin is awesomeand just because of the
characters incredible cast inthat movie.
But, like, it's not a superspecial movie.
But look at this scene that itwas born from it it's like that
that is literally the only sceneanybody remembers from that
exactly, exactly.
Paul DeNigris (55:07):
You see this watch yeah, like man, the leads
are weak and you're fucking weakand he could act that way
because of how he grew up.
Dave Funston (55:18):
You know it's it's .
It's exciting and frustratingtoo, that you know AI can do
what it can do just because itcan observe and learn from
everything that we've done up tothis point.
So it's like a it's.
Paul DeNigris (55:32):
It's very controversial, lots of cool
things going to come from it,but, but we all just need to
keep telling our own stories andI think we're going to be,
we're going to get through itsomehow absolutely, uh, real
quick, before I let you go, I'veseen that that uh painting on
the wall behind you.
If if you're listening on oneof the podcast apps and not
(55:52):
watching on youtube, I'm sorrythis is not for you, but yes,
that one right there that looksremarkably like Lana Lang from
Smallville.
Dave Funston (56:02):
Tell us about it.
It is yeah.
So when I worked Zoic in theearly days, I worked with this
incredible artist named JeffWest and he came from painting
lightning on the Power Rangersoriginal series.
So he was this specialist,incredible artist and he came
over as compositor and weconnected on all things that we
(56:26):
worked on and we talked aboutsmallville all the time and he
drew this for me.
He just draw like you go in hisoffice and he just has sketches
just laying everywhere.
He was like a serial artist,but he drew this awesome Lana
Lang.
It's in color pencil.
It's um, it's really special.
Oh, wow, really cool Colorpencil.
(56:48):
Um, that is fantastic.
But uh, jeff is still.
Jeff is still kicking it.
Um, he did some stuff for me acouple of years ago actually.
Nice.
Paul DeNigris (56:59):
That's very cool.
That's a.
That's a great uh memento ofyour, your time on the show and
and also celebration of your,your fandom of the show.
Uh, sounds like uh, and a goodremembrance of your, your uh
friend and colleague.
That's that's great Uh.
Anything you want to plug,anything you got going on, or uh
, or how can people you knowfind out more about you or
(57:21):
connect with you online?
Dave Funston (57:23):
yeah, absolutely.
Um, I have a new websiteupdated, dave funstoncom.
Um, I have a little company aswell, desert pixels that I'm
getting up and running, um, andthat's desert pixels creativecom
uh, that's, and that'sdesertpixelscreativecom.
That's really where it is rightnow, working on getting some
(57:47):
new gigs going on, just likeeverybody else right now, as the
business is still in the lurchfrom the strikes.
But there's stuff going on, butthat's generally it.
I'm on, but, uh, but that'sgenerally it.
I'm on LinkedIn, too, daveFunston.
On LinkedIn You'll see me and,um, this has been awesome chat,
paul.
I really appreciate theopportunity.
Paul DeNigris (58:08):
Thanks for being on, dave.
Really uh appreciate your time.
I'm sure my audience uh lovedhearing your stories and uh, and
yeah, everybody check out, uh,check out Dave's website.
Well, everyone, that wraps upthis episode of VFX for Indies,
for Foxtrot X-Ray and our littleshow.
Here.
I'm Paul DeNigris, the host,and if you liked what you heard
(58:29):
slash saw on the show today,please like and follow, leave us
a comment, tell us what youthought of the show.
If you've got further follow-upquestions that I can ask Dave
and relay to you through thecomment section, I'd be happy to
do that.
And make sure you check out ourback catalog, including last
season's full-length episodes, aseries of shorts we've been
(58:51):
doing about the VFX process andour special presentation about
VFX and gun safety that wereleased earlier this year.
So check that out atVFXforindiescom.
Thanks so much for your timeand attention and I will see you
next time.
Thank you.
Take a peek behind the scenes on some of the
most iconic genre TV shows ofall time Buffy, angel, firefly,
true Blood, smallville, theFlash and more.
This week on VFX for Indies, apodcast about the intersection
(00:35):
of visual effects andindependent filmmaking.
I'm your host, paul DeNigris,vfx artist, filmmaker and CEO of
boutique visual effects shopFoxtrot X-Ray.
With me today is Dave Funstonwho, as I alluded to at the top
of the show, is a VFX supervisorwith an incredible resume going
back almost 25 years to Buffythe Vampire Slayer.
Welcome to the podcast, dave.
Thanks, paul, great to be hereOn this show.
(00:58):
Our goal is to bring on guestslike Dave to share their
insights into visual effects andfilm production without going
too deep into the weeds of techtalk, with the goal of educating
filmmakers who are relativelynew to using VFX.
If you like what we're doinghere, please like and subscribe
to stay updated as we releasenew episodes, and you can find
our back catalog of episodes atvfxforindiescom.
(01:18):
Dave and I recently becameacquainted through a mutual
friend since his move here toArizona, but because the VFX
industry is incredibly small, werealized that we know more than
a few people in common and weeven almost worked together at
one point, about a decade ago,while I was living in LA, I
interviewed at Zoic Studios,where Dave spent quite a bit of
time.
Before we get into your time atZoic, why don't you, dave, why
(01:40):
don't you tell us a little bitabout your background, your
education and what brought youto the world of VFX?
Dave Funston (01:48):
Certainly my background and education in
animation and my fascinationwith visual effects started, you
know, probably pre-high school.
I remember my grandmotherbuying me boxes of little
notepads and I began making flipbooks and it started with an
(02:15):
obsession of Mortal Kombat andfighting games like that, and I
would just draw stick figurescutting each other's heads off
in little flip books and I wouldjust go through notebook after
notebook covering only 1% of thepage, and then that notebook's
done.
I also then remember watchingthe Abyss is one of my favorite
movies and there was a behindthe scenes on the Abyss and this
(02:36):
was in I don't know mid 90s,maybe maybe late 90s, and that
really lit my fire about what'spossible, because you know they
had that water, that tentaclemonster, and they showed the cgi
3d stuff behind that.
Um, I then was fortunate inhigh school to have a.
(02:58):
There was a tech school it'scalled atc at the time applied
technology center but theyoffered optional electives for
the local high schools insteadof your high school's electives.
And there was a class I heardabout with these super high
powered Macintosh computers theywere the beige G3 desktops at
(03:20):
the time.
So anyway, I took this class.
It was called commercial designand it changed my life.
I wasn't quite sure what I wasdoing with my life at that time,
but my teacher, susan Cook, whoI'm still connected with today,
she just saw the talent in meand was able to figure out where
(03:42):
it was and how to get it out.
That's where we learnedillustrator.
Uh, illustrator and freehandwas one at the time.
Infinity was the 3d programthat they had and I I just once
she realized that's all I caredabout.
She just let me do my own thing, because all I was doing was
learning and, and, and she sawme accelerating my interests.
(04:04):
We did a bunch of other stufftoo four color printing press
and, and they had threeheidelberg four color printing
presses at the school.
So we were making our ownplates in illustrator, printing
them, transferring them, doingall kinds of all kinds of wild
things um, for a high school kid.
(04:27):
But then we, uh, we did a tourin my senior year of downtown,
of, of of Disney, and they hadin Florida and they had this
program where you could go inand do cell animation and, um,
it was very topical, but you gotyour, you got a chance to see a
lot of cool behind the scenesDisney animation stuff and at
the time we toured Full Sail andum, which is in Winter Park,
(04:51):
and when I walked in that placeit was an absolute slam dunk.
The first minute I walked inthey had all the equipment.
It was all professional grade,high-end facilities and and, um,
I knew it at that point, butthat's what I, that's what I was
going to be doing, that's allthat I can really say.
It was just, it was a lightbulb moment for me.
Um, after I graduated I wentstraight there and, and, and my
(05:16):
first day of class was January3rd 2000.
So it was the whole Y2K thing.
It was weird, super weird.
But guess what?
Nothing happened.
And I did a year and a halfthere for my associate's degree
and I learned Maya, I learnedsome compositing, I learned some
(05:36):
basics and some other stuff,but it was basically I did the
computer animation program, Ithink, for like the third class
ever at the time and it was justa hardcore 3d Maya eight hours
a day, kind of deal.
That's really.
That's really where it allstarted for me.
Paul DeNigris (05:54):
As you may know, I used to teach college at a
very similar type of school,very similar to Full Sail.
So I want, I want you to tellme the name of your teacher that
mentored you in high schoolagain, because I want to give
her a shout out.
Dave Funston (06:09):
Oh yeah, Her name is Susan Cook.
So.
Paul DeNigris (06:12):
Susan Cook, here's to you Teachers like you
are what make the world possible.
Really.
I mean, everybody that's everbeen a high achiever in the
world, I believe, has beenmentored by somebody maybe not
informal education, but they'vebeen mentored by somebody and uh
(06:32):
, and for a teacher like you tomentor someone like Dave uh and
and introduce him to what becamehis passion and his career,
that is incredibly commendable.
So hats off to Susan Cuck.
Dave Funston (06:46):
She's a heck of a lady.
Paul DeNigris (06:48):
That's fantastic.
So you inevitably ended up inLA, so why don't we talk about
that?
I'd love to hear about yourjourney from Florida, from Full
Sail, to Los Angeles, what gotyou that first gig working on
Buffy and how you got into theindustry from there.
Dave Funston (07:12):
Sure, yeah, my journey from Florida to Los
Angeles was pretty interesting,but also what you hear from a
lot of people of like it's aboutwho you know.
So at Full Sail made lots offriends connections and once we
graduated and I say we, becausethere was two other friends of
mine that we all became prettyclose um, guy by the name of
Eric Ebling and another guy bythe name of Christopher Strauss,
(07:33):
chris Strauss, and um, eric andI, we graduated in March of a
one and, completely unrelated,my folks had moved from South
Carolina to LA.
Unrelated, my mom got hired bythis design company, um, and
they decided to make the movewhen their only son had left for
(07:54):
college.
So they, we all kind of leftthe East coast together.
Uh, we were like, hey, whydon't we drive out?
We can stay with my parents fora little while and try to find,
try to find work.
Hey, why don't we drive out?
We can stay with my parents fora little while and try to find
work.
And then I think that wasliterally that's just where the
work is two students that didn'tbarely knew anything, but it
(08:14):
seemed like the right thing todo.
So we packed up a car and asmall U-Haul trailer and Eric
and I drove from Orlando throughmany crazy nights and and can't
find gas and and it was nuts,uh.
But we, we did a quick stop atthe grand canyon, saw the grand
canyon for the first time.
It was amazing.
(08:35):
It snowed the next day, so wehad to wait for the snow to
weeks.
We, um, eric, had reached out toa friend that we knew, uh, that
previously graduated full sail,and we just met up with him and
(08:57):
another buddy of his for drinks, um, dinner.
We weren't 21 yet, um, and thatwas the other crazy thing is
doing this at like 19.
Like, we just, you know,driving to a whole new part of
the country.
But we met these guys andhappened to have our reels from
school.
Turns out our friend's friend,who turned out to be Scott
(09:19):
Metzger, who is a very, verywell-known figure in the visual
effects, the visual effectsworld.
He, we let him know that wejust graduated and we had our
reels and he was like, oh,that's awesome, we're actually
hiring at the place he wasworking.
(09:40):
So we gave him our reels,finished up the night, and then
the next day he called us withhis supervisor and they were
like we want you guys to come in.
We're, we're in the middle of afilm.
We have a lot of work and wewant you guys to come in.
So that was Eric and I and wedrove up to third and La Brea to
go to Metrolight studios andthey were working on Jay and
(10:04):
Silent, bob Strike Back, whichwas Kevin Smith's first major
feature film.
He'd done many films beforethat, but this one had a lot of
traditional visual effects in itand you know there was a lot of
tracking 3D tracking involvedand lots of cool shots in that
movie, especially for two kidsout of college.
(10:26):
And, um, basically, eric and Ijust hit it so hard and we were
moving so quickly.
Uh, they asked if we, if therewere any other friends from
school that we could callbecause we were doing such a
great job.
And we did.
We called Chris and he flew outfrom Florida and we're like hey
, man, you got to come.
This is, this is crazy.
(10:46):
You got to come do this gigwith us.
So Chris and I and Ericfinished the film.
Uh, we got film credits.
We went to the opening night.
I got to meet Kevin Smith andJason Hughes.
It was wild First job right outof college.
Really set the set, the bar.
(11:08):
But I think, the more I lookback on it it was like the
golden age of the like earlygolden age of visual effects in
la was kind of ending.
Um, things just kind of changeda lot since then and kind of
turned into a new.
You know, the whole buffy andangel and all of the crazy
television visual effects stuffwe'll talk about later just
began to roll right after that.
(11:28):
But we got in at the right time.
The timing was perfect.
It was just who we knew.
The timing of the industry atthe time was just at the right
place at the right time is whatit feels like.
Paul DeNigris (11:39):
Yeah, it sounds like the stars really aligned.
The fact that your parentsmoved there, you know, when I
was teaching that was one of thethings I always told students
that the work is in LA, you needto move there.
And a lot of them didn't havethat safe place.
The parents weren't living inLA or they didn't know anybody.
(11:59):
And it was hard for some youngfolks to make that transition,
to say I have to go where thework is come what may.
So you were incrediblyfortunate, but you also made the
most of that right.
The fact that you showed up tothat dinner with demo reels in
(12:20):
tow, I assume, probably on DVD,VHS, VHS.
Dave Funston (12:30):
I remember those days, vhs, I and I and I hope
that they were like you know,the short play ones, just for
reels, not like, not like a fourhour vhs tape with like two
minutes of reel at the head.
Um, I heard, I remember so manystories before and after we got
there of oh hey, remember John,he graduated right after us.
(12:51):
Um, he drove out to LA himselfand and after six months he went
back and now he's, you know,working X, y, z it it I heard so
many times.
That's why I feel so gratefuland lucky to all these, to all
these people that were there.
I mean, obviously I, I knewwhat I was doing and I could, I
could do the work.
But it doesn't matter if youcan do the work, if you can't,
(13:13):
if you don't have that in, youknow, just applying to a job is
not going to necessarily get it.
Paul DeNigris (13:18):
You gotta network , network, networking yeah,
networking is the key toeverything, uh, uh, but to some
degree it is.
It is a war of attrition, right?
It's uh, uh, you, the, the, thefolks who go out there and they
, they leave after six months.
Could, could month seven havebeen the time they met somebody.
(13:41):
You know?
Um, I always think about uhkrasinski.
Right before he got the, uh,before he got the office, he was
ready to quit, he was ready toleave, la, okay, and his mom
sent him money and and saidhoney, you just got to stick it
out, just just a couple moremonths.
I'm gonna send you money, juststick it out and like the next
week or two, he, he booked theoffice.
(14:02):
Holy cow, his career took off.
Right, that's wild's wild yeah.
So it's a, it's a war ofattrition, it's it's knowing
your stuff, it's being in theright place at the right time,
being open opportunities and andjust having the persistence to
stick it out.
Uh, I think is, uh is the magicformula.
You know people again as a, asa former educator and still a
(14:22):
mentor for a lot of these youngpeople, I get asked you know
what's the secret?
Well, that's it.
There is a formula.
Everybody's combination of youknow, of persistence and
networking and skill, isdifferent, but it's a
combination of all of thosethings, oh, yeah.
Dave Funston (14:41):
Your train will come, you just don't know.
Paul DeNigris (14:43):
It's hard to know when, absolutely so.
So you transitioned from, uh,from Jay and silent Bob strike
back to Buffy.
And uh, what?
What studio were you at whenyou were working there?
Dave Funston (14:56):
Yeah, I um.
So I finished Jay and silentBob and, uh, like a week after
that show wrapped, I decided,hey, I'm just going to drive up
to the, to the studio, and sayhi, for no apparent reason, I
just felt like I should.
And Scott was there Cause hewas staffed Scott Metzger was
staffed, he was working onsomething and and I just said
(15:19):
I'm hanging out.
He said, hey, do you want to doa night gig for me?
Cause I don't want to do it?
And and I'm like yes, and hesaid, here I'm going to show you
something.
And he pulled up buju thatnobody knew what it was at the
time and he's like this tracksfor you automatically.
We need to.
You got to do some tracking forthis music video, this other
(15:39):
place.
So he showed me buju and it wasreally cool, uh, because I had
been tracking in my alive beforethat, which was like very
interesting tool.
Um, anyway, I go over to thisplace called 525 and I meet a
few different people that Iwould ultimately know for
decades after that.
That was kind of like the firstdomino falls, uh, there at five
(16:04):
to five and it just kept going.
So I worked on a genuine musicvideo, um tracking some footage
of like a set, just like acamera pushing upset, and we had
to do a set extension on thisapartment building.
It was just one floor and wehad to do a CG section.
I just did the tracking.
I wasn't doing the CG at thetime but I but like I didn't
(16:24):
like an hour it was, it wassuper fast and everybody was
really impressed.
Um again, right place at theright time.
I knew what I was doing butBuju helped Um and then I got
called back and called back andthen eventually I got called
back for the Smallville pilotand they were doing that shot
where the corn, where he had tocatch the bus and the corn like
(16:47):
lays down or spreads when heruns through the corn, when
clark runs through the corn.
And from that point on, um, Iwas a regular there doing all
kinds of fun cg stuff a littlebow wow music video, all like a
cg baseball flying into space,all kinds of fun, fun stuff.
And that facility, like I said,that facility, golden age of
(17:07):
visual effects it was acommercial house, high end
commercial house, and it was atfifth street in Santa Monica.
You could see the rooftop.
Was this like penthouse rooftop?
They had a bunch of flame,flame bays, henry bays, all this
classic visual effects stuff,and we could see sailboats on
(17:28):
the water and it was just, itwas crazy full kitchen.
It was.
It was crazy.
I've never been to a place likethat since.
That was just like tell whereall the money was going.
They had clients walking in.
They had, like I remember likeuh, very serious musicians
coming in to see their videosput together at the end and
(17:48):
ultimately, through thoserelationships, I would then go
to work at Radium LA and that'swhere I met these people Lonnie
Paris here, chris Jones, andrewOrloff they all rock with
passion.
You know these guys knew JossWhedon.
They had been building theserelationships up to that point.
I was working on Angel andBuffy and I think the first
(18:12):
season of Smallville carriedover there as well.
So we're doing all three, if mymemory serves me, and this was
in early 2002.
And from that point forward Iworked side by side with Andrew
Um.
He was another great mentor forme.
Um, he was from a 3d background, so we got along really well,
(18:35):
um, and uh, quick anecdote aboutthat that I mentioned, that I
wanted to mention I watchedBuffy the vampire slayer, um,
prior to school and as a kid,you know, as a younger, as a
younger person, and I remembersitting on the floor in my
apartment in Florida just aboutto start full sail, and I
remember seeing the shot where aknife floats like through the
(18:58):
camera and like stops in frontof somebody's face.
I can't remember what season itwas it was probably season four
of of Buffy or something and Iremember going ah, I'm going to,
I want to work on that, I wantto do that.
You know it was before I knewhow to do it, but I remember.
I remember distinctly seeingthat and doing that and then,
through some crazy journey thatmy, that the universe has me on,
(19:19):
I was nominated for an Emmy forworking on Buffy.
So it is, I was nominated foran Emmy for working on Buffy.
So it's crazy.
Another thing that, just likein the fourth, in like the first
or second year of my career,you know, being in the right
place at the right time but alsohelping develop the Buffy
dusting effect.
We did it in Angel and Buffy.
I did tests for the Blade TVseries.
(19:40):
That didn't go at the time, butwe were doing an upgraded
version of of that, of thateffect, um, that, with fire
involved and and all kinds offun, fun things, it was just.
It was just an awesomerollercoaster out of the gate.
Paul DeNigris (19:58):
Yeah, it sounds like it.
So you've thrown out a bunch ofbunch of names of software and
hardware, some of which Ihaven't heard in years, like
Buju takes me back my alive.
And you mentioned flame andHenry.
So, again, with the thought inmind that my, our viewers, our
listeners, are not supertechnical, they might not know
(20:20):
what any of this stuff is.
So you mentioned Buju 3dtracking software.
Um, not around anymore, right?
Dave Funston (20:28):
it's.
I don't think it's supported.
I have a copy that I use oftenright on.
Paul DeNigris (20:34):
Um, yeah, I haven't.
I haven't heard anybody mentionbuju in a long time.
It's been pretty muchsupplanted in the industry by
like pf track and synth eyes andsome other, some other stuff,
but it's.
It's basically 3d trackingsoftware tracks the the camera.
Uh maya, maya live was theirversion of of 3d tracking.
Um maya is still around.
(20:55):
It's still still the sort ofthe flagship product out there
for uh 3d animation, althoughthere's there's lots of others
now, but it's still a top-endsoftware.
But you mentioned Flame andHenry.
Just give us a little kernel ofknowledge about what those were
(21:15):
.
Dave Funston (21:16):
Sure.
So the Henry was a compositingtool, I think back then and even
now with Flame and things, butthe hardware and the software
were designed together.
Not, hey, is it Windows or Mac,it doesn't matter what you put
(21:36):
it on, is the graphics card goodenough?
That's kind of what you talkabout today when you talk about
software capabilities.
Back then the Henry was its ownthing.
You bought it by itself and itwas like I don't know a hundred
thousand dollars, just likeinsane money, but it was for
doing a hundred thousand dollarmusic videos, it was for doing
(21:58):
high end commercial work.
So it was compositing, but ithad custom built tools that did
tracking and color correction,um, all kinds of things like
that.
And and um, henry's definitelyaren't around anymore.
Um, the flame is still around.
That's a very, very popular umindustry standard tool even
(22:21):
still, though those you buy, thehardware and the software, are
designed together.
So, um, it's basically you canupload the footage into the
system and then everything runsreal time like and not like a,
not like an unreal engine kindof real time, like you know,
when you hit render and aftereffects or premiere, and it goes
that, that, that, that, that,or when you, when you try to
(22:43):
like roto and then check your,your progress and the screen has
to like down res to keep up andyou see it up res and down res
and nothing is.
You can't see your workhappening in real time.
The flame, the work happens inreal time, like you can color,
correct and edit and do thingsum, and it happens right away.
(23:04):
Super powerful, um, lots ofcool little tools and things
like that.
So most commercials, musicvideos, all of those are
conformed and finished on on aflame flame machine.
Paul DeNigris (23:19):
There's also smoke and smoke flame.
Dave Funston (23:24):
There's a couple other ones that are focused on
one specific process or anotherRight, smoke, flame, fire, and
those are all Autodesk now.
Paul DeNigris (23:36):
That's all Autodesk, right.
And then they for a while theyhad Combustion, which was their
desktop software.
I used to teach that.
And then Foundry came in andthey were like smoke flame,
we're Nuke.
That's a great name, it'sawesome, it's a great name.
So, aside from what you'vetalked about and I'm going to
(24:00):
circle back to Smallville in asecond but aside from what
you've talked about, what aresome of your biggest career
highlights?
What are the things that youlook back on and go, man, I'm
really proud of that shot orthat show or that sequence, or
I'm really and you've mentioneda few names I'm really grateful
that I worked with you, knowthis person or that person, just
(24:22):
like, really briefly, lookingback, what's like your top two
or three things that you wouldthat you reflect on as being
super proud of?
Dave Funston (24:32):
Yeah, you know, meeting those guys, lonnie,
chris and Andrew and Rocco.
That really got me going onBuffy and Angel and then and so
those shows are just so near tomy heart.
Like I found some swag.
Uh, as we're going through ourstorage room I have this.
Not to do with it, but I havethis messenger bag.
(24:54):
It's black line with red insideand it just has Buffy the
Vampire Slayer embroidered onthe front of it.
It's like a legitimate20-year-old, perfect condition
Like that show just means somuch to me.
That's definitely one of mycareer highlights.
With the Emmy nomination whichwe lost to Firefly, which was
(25:20):
ourselves like Zoic one forFirefly, I think we were up
against enterprise and so happythat Zoic, that Zoic one, it
stayed in the family.
A show that happened shortlyafter that that I am also really
proud of that.
Actually don't think about a lotbut Trueblood.
So I worked on the pilot forTrueblood.
That show turned into a massiveshow.
Actually, don't think about alot but true blood.
So I worked on the pilot fortrue blood.
That show turned into a massiveshow.
(25:42):
Um, and I remembered working onthe pilot and I I got to do the
shots.
The shot where I believe sookiefirst gets bitten by by um bill
and you see her teeth like popout for the first time and she's
like laying on her side andprofile.
And I got to do these.
They were like, how did theteeth come out?
They don't just go.
(26:02):
You know that we did round andround and round and round.
Do the teeth unfold, do theyshoot down, do the old, do the
your original teeth disappearand the vampire teeth come in.
It was really fun process.
That was at Alan Ball, who wasfamous for um six feet under Um.
So true blood was a huge showto work on.
(26:26):
We would have viewing partiesat my house and everybody would.
We'd all get to see um my work.
Uh, golden age of HBO rightthere, golden age.
Paul DeNigris (26:35):
Oh man Right, six feet under true blood, the wire
uh, the Sopranos.
Yeah, it's yeah.
Dave Funston (26:42):
Yes, absolutely, man.
What a again.
Just like crescendo like this,this awesome thing.
And then and then everythingchanged as as I'm getting my
like Netflix DVD in the mail,you know, like all stacked on
the on on the desk, desk by thedoor, those little paper
envelopes, right, my gosh.
(27:03):
Um, there was a string offeatures that we got to work on
because there there was a timebefore the tax incentives and
all that were really reallypushing work out of out of la in
the united states for postanyway.
Um, van helsing was a featurefilm that I got to work on,
spider-man 2, I got to work onPremium Rush, which was a remake
(27:26):
of that Kevin Bacon moviecalled Quicksilver.
It's basically JosephGordon-Levitt on a bicycle in
New York City and there were allkinds of cool shots that we did
.
I'm a huge car nut and we gotto do all of these CG cars for
that show.
They would have JosephGordon-Levitt.
He did a lot of his own stunts.
(27:47):
They just put down sandbags inthe road.
They'd have him likechaotically weave around the
sandbags and then we had to putin all these cars, taxis, all
different of cg cars, and weused um craft simulation
director.
It was a vehicle simulation tooland it was a plug-in for maya
(28:08):
at the time and maya eventuallybought that and I think they
roped it in um, but that was ahuge show that a buddy of mine
and I, scott Rosecrans, got toreally just do that whole show
ourselves.
We did the pipeline, theanimation, how to export
animation and import it in forlighting, and um, that was a
(28:31):
really fun project to work on.
Um, what, what year is that itwas?
Paul DeNigris (28:34):
in the two thousands.
That's pretty.
That's almost a decade after.
Like the digital cars and, uh,the matrix reloaded, uh, it
feels like sort of a naturalextension of of the work that
was done for that movie, right?
I mean, we, we sort of takedigital cars for granted now,
totally you know yeah, yeah butif you think about everything
(28:55):
that we do, it it's, it's acontinuum, right, we're talking
about, you know, the, the, theevolution of, you know, from
flame to combustion, to nuke, etcetera, the same thing.
It's all of these, all thesetechniques, all of this, these
tools, they, they continue tomigrate from one studio to
another, from one one productionto another, and it sounds like
it sounds like you got kind ofpigeonholed in the vampire genre
(29:18):
for a little bit there,probably because, you guys were
the vampire guys.
Dave Funston (29:22):
I believe so we would see the films come out
like Blade 2.
When Blade 2 came out, we wereseeing that work when the
vampires would burn and ash awayand I think that was 3D Studio
Max.
And what was the tool at thetime?
They had a dynamics tool.
(29:44):
That was awesome.
We were still using Maya justoff the shelf, maya particles.
But you know the budget andtime, that was just what we had.
That was what we could do.
The turnaround was those werelike 10-day turnarounds on those
shows too, which is unheard ofum today.
(30:04):
So, yeah, the tools were justthe tools just kept trickling
down um and, and you know, frompaul to, you know, going way
back, like paul the bevics workwith his hdri process for
lighting and capturing anenvironment.
I remember when that kind ofcame through and when we all
realized that we were lightingwrong and we had to light linear
(30:29):
, you know, in linear space, andbecause we were like in the
beginning we were lighting insRGB space, which basically
you're just working with only aquarter of the range that you
really could be working with.
So many things that justdeveloped along the way trial by
(30:51):
fire.
I remember that was somethingelse that I complained about in
the off times or in that, maybe,when I'm in the fire.
There was never any time fordev, there was never any time
for research.
It was hey, this job booked,it's due in three weeks, go
figure it out.
And so you would just have tofigure it out in production.
(31:13):
Things change later on, butthat's how it was back then.
We were comping our own shotstoo.
We were, we were delivering theshot from beginning to end.
And uh, that's also how youlearn how to be efficient,
because you're either going tofail or you're going to figure
it out.
Move on, figure it out, move on, figure it out, move on.
Paul DeNigris (31:36):
I mean this is.
This is a great example of whyI like to bring TV folks on to
this show.
Right, the mission is VFX forindies.
It's really geared forindependent filmmakers, and so
maybe the correlation betweentelevision and indie film isn't
super apparent.
People haven't worked in bothlike I have.
But what you're saying is it'sthe same stuff we deal with in
(31:59):
the indie film space, in the lowto medium budget film space.
There's never enough time,there's never enough money.
We're using off-the-shelfsoftware.
We don't have time to write newplugins, new purpose-built
simulations or whatever for thevampire disintegration effects,
the stuff that they wereprobably writing new tools for.
(32:20):
For blade, too, you were havingto do with off the shelf Maya,
for true blood or whatever.
Right, it's the, it it's applesand oranges can try to compare
a TV budget and timetable to afeature film budget and
timetable.
But at the same time,especially now, viewers are so
accustomed to things lookinggreat that when we tune into the
(32:45):
latest marvel show on disneyplus, we expect it to look as
good as avengers endgame.
Right?
Dave Funston (32:53):
it's.
If it doesn't, you're like, ohyeah, jump on reddit.
Paul DeNigris (32:56):
See the cg in that show last night, exactly,
exactly, so you know what are.
What are some of the lessonsyou've learned working on TV
that are specifically about howto how to deal with those
limitations of time and money.
What are some lessons thatyou've learned that you think
could apply to the indie filmspace?
Dave Funston (33:19):
Yeah, I mean regardless of your time and
budget, right you?
You, if you have visual effects, you, you must get a visual
effects professional involved assoon as possible.
Now, speaking for myself, Itell people I love to talk shop
all the time.
You don't need to pay me untilyou need me on set, you know, at
(33:42):
midnight helping you know shootplates, but I'll break.
I think most visual effectspeople will be this way.
They'll, they'll, they'll helpyou, they'll, they'll maybe read
sections of your script or youtell them about an idea that you
have and and just getting thegetting the the knee jerk
reaction from a seasoned visualeffects professional, supervisor
(34:03):
, artist to help you understandwhere to shoot something, how to
shoot something maybe issomething you don't need to
shoot.
That'll obviously help you atthe end of the day, because you
won't have a bunch of footageyou didn't need to shoot, or
you'll have the footage that youneeded to shoot and didn't.
(34:24):
I think that is kind of the mostbroad advice that I could give.
Um, you know, yeah, I, I, thatwas.
That was really, I think, thebest, the best advice.
And then, once you have someone, then you just got to plan the
hell out of it, even thesmallest thing.
(34:45):
Even the smallest thing,because that visual effects
person is going to know howsomething turned out after
filming it, working on it,getting it to screen, working on
it, getting it to screen.
There's so many variablesbetween the beginning and the
end and it's just superimportant to have someone to
(35:06):
guide you.
Paul DeNigris (35:06):
What do filmmakers consistently get
wrong about?
Visual effects, regardless oftheir budget, regardless of the
size of the project.
What do you see filmmakersdirectors, producers, whatever
consistently getting wrong?
And I know you've seen this.
You've been in the businesslong enough that you've seen
some trends, I'm sure.
Dave Funston (35:24):
The thing that I see often, whether it's on a
small series or even the biggestseries, is planning for how
many visual effects cuts you'regoing to have at the end of the
day.
Like you'll have an earlyproduction meeting.
A director wants no, we have tosee this effect more than three
(35:48):
times.
It must happen this many times.
And then they talk about budgetand then eventually they're
like no, we're just going to seeit three times, that's it.
We haven't even filmed yet.
And they're like no, it's threetimes.
And then in the budget they gothree visual effects shots and
those shots are $1,000 each andit comes back and there's 12
(36:21):
cuts of that effect.
And it's between the visualeffects supervisor and the
producers and the director tohave the best round of
communication.
Now, it's not always possible,because sometimes the producers
you know they know what they'regoing to need at the end of the
day to hand over to the studiofor their show, because at the
end of the day, you're makingthe product for the people that
are paying for it, technicallyspeaking, and being honest about
(36:47):
the budget and what's going tobe in the show ahead of time is
a big variable.
That I see is very inconsistent.
More often than not, the cutthat comes from the editor after
filming is done, but beforevisual effects has started.
(37:07):
The budget changes a lot, andit doesn't have to.
Sometimes it does, but honestly, I've worked on enough shows
that have gone both ways and andhaving everyone on the same
page, having meetings early andyou're going to everybody's
going to have a better idea ofwhat to expect, instead of
(37:30):
having a big surprise at the endwith, like, what are visual
effects budgets?
Only $100,000, but thisbudget's at 250.
Thousand dollars, but thisbudget's at 250.
Well, hopefully, the visualeffects people told you how much
to what to expect in thebeginning.
Paul DeNigris (37:46):
That's a perfect scenario, but that's what I see
often, yeah, it's always achallenge when, when somebody
comes to us with a script andsays I need a VFX budget for
this, and it's, it's just wordson paper.
At that point, you know, we canmake educated guesses.
We could go through with thehighlighter and highlight the
things that are going thatsurely seem like they're going
(38:07):
to be VFX, and we can make aguesstimate like oh it's, you
know this, this guydisintegrating is probably going
to be, you know, a master shot,you know.
And then a close-up of hisreaction and then maybe, uh, you
know a medium shot for for theeffect to finish.
Okay, that's three shots.
It's all guesswork.
Uh, that's why I tell peopleprevious, previous, previous
(38:30):
storyboards right, I'm notsaying everybody needs to be
pixar, but look at the way pixara movie.
Right, they make the moviedozens and dozens of times.
Right, because they're startingfrom.
We're recording voiceover, andthen we're laying out drawings,
we're doing an animatic, it'sjust the boards, really.
(38:52):
And then we'll do roughanimations and then we'll revise
the script and we'll do newvoiceover and then we'll cut in
new storyboards as sequenceschange, and then new rough
animations, and then we'llrevise the script and we'll do
new voiceover and then we'll cutin new storyboards as sequences
change and then new roughanimations and it is this living
, breathing, moving document foryears.
Before they start clickingfinal render on stuff, yeah, you
know they've made the movie,they've seen 20 iterations of
(39:14):
the movie.
Before you know they, theyclick final render.
Dave Funston (39:18):
So yeah, not saying, not saying of an indie
filmmaker needs to do that, but,man, that is a good model for
at least for your vfx sequencesit absolutely is, and I got to
experience that heavily on theflash, on the last couple
seasons of the flash, which wasjust a year or two ago.
Um, I got very, got on a verygood page with the producer, the
(39:43):
post um, the post supervisorand producer, um, jeff garrett,
and we were, we got to liketexting relationship.
We're like, oh, what about thatshot it, how many shots is that
going to be?
How many cuts?
I was doing storyboards forthem, for the full cg action
shots and it was a wonderful,wonderful relationship because
him and I would, we would speakthe same language where, oh well
(40:05):
, if Barry has to land, throw alightning bolt, turn and run,
well, we know he has to land,start the throw, then you're
going to cut to the other sideof him.
We both understood the cuttingpattern for the show and what to
expect and that's something Iput that in my resume because I
feel proud of it.
(40:25):
Right, like I have a goodunderstanding of action cutting
pattern sequences from aneditorial standpoint, because
you don't just go, he throws alightning bolt and it hits the
guy.
It's not two cuts.
Nobody cuts a movie or asequence like that.
You have to establish thecharacter.
Those are just patterns, thatare just basic and understanding
(40:48):
.
That is getting the chance towork with a team that all
understands that together itbecomes fun and that's what we
want.
As stressful as the deliveriesare and the budgets are, when
you can speak the same languagewith a different department it's
(41:08):
a wonderful experience.
Paul DeNigris (41:09):
That's one of the reasons why you see filmmakers,
directors, working with thesame VFX supervisors, the same
cinematographers, the sameeditors for their entire career.
Because you develop thatshorthand but also visual
effects.
People have to have some basicknowledge of filmmaking, right,
they it's.
We have to know all of thetechnical stuff.
(41:31):
We have to know all of all ofthe match moving and compositing
and all of that.
But we also have to understandcamera work, editing, you know
the line of action, continuity.
We have to understand all ofthat sort of stuff to be able to
serve the director's vision,right, and to be able to
understand yeah, this is not twoshots, this is six shots to
tell the story.
And that's again.
(41:53):
That's one of the challenges.
When you're looking at just thewritten page, you're looking at
a scene and trying tounderstand, especially when
you're working with a new, a newclient, a new um team, just
trying to understand how arethey going to tell their story?
You know, is it.
I've had clients who want to.
They, you know they want to dorapid fire cuts and I've had
(42:14):
clients who do these longmeditative shots in slow motion.
We just did a film, or a teaserfor a film where we were
working from the page, from thescript, and the director
storyboarded and he cut thesequence with music, with the
(42:36):
storyboards to, to show me thisis the pacing.
So I knew, okay, this sequenceof the character falling through
the black void.
This is not, you know, 10 cuts,this is one long slow motion
shot as he, as he falls, okay,so that changes how I have to
shoot it, how I have to bid it,all of that sort of stuff.
And it really comes down tocommunication.
(42:57):
You know, and that's whatyou're talking about, the, this
shorthand, this that youdeveloped with, uh, with the
producers on the flash, um, uh,you know the, the communication
to be able to make sure that youknow everybody's on the same
page.
And the longer you worktogether, the the shorter, the
more and more shorthand youdevelop and the and the the
(43:18):
easier communication becomes.
Absolutely, yeah, thinking back, what's the biggest challenge,
or maybe the toughest shot inyour career?
The one that that you know youreally pulled your hair out
about, uh, and, and you knowwhat was the problem and how did
you solve it.
Dave Funston (43:38):
Uh, and, and you know what was the problem and
how did you solve it?
Oh, I, I was thinking a lotabout this and I don't like to
say, however true it is, that,like I said, there was a lot of
oh, we just have to figure itout, kind of thing and there's
not a time, there's not time tobuild a tool for that.
That.
A lot of my career has beenbrute force, which is funny
(43:59):
because I like brute force aslike a global elimination
process.
It's kind of a fun, fun analogy, because I don't have time to
bake all my lighting and I don'thave time to do all these
tricks to make my scene renderfaster.
I like the way it looks, nowrender and then hopefully it's
done in the morning.
That's kind of the way thingshave gone in a way.
(44:20):
So, for example, van Helsing Ithink I only did Zoic, only did
a handful of shots for thatmovie, but I was handed, being
the vampire expert, I was handedthis big shot in that movie
where they're at a masqueradeball and, uh, van helsing and
(44:45):
and his partner's identity havebeen compromised and now all the
vampires at this party arechasing them.
They run upstairs into thisroom and he has this, um,
basically just like a grenade,but it's's a UV light bomb
grenade and he runs in the room,sets it down, starts it and
then they jump out the window.
(45:06):
But at the same time it's like18 vampires burst through the
door and it's this low cameraangle.
The camera pulls back as theyall, as they all run into the
door and the bomb is right thereat the bottom of frame.
So it was maybe like a foursecond, five second shot, but we
(45:26):
were using off the shelf Maya.
It was also had a slow motionmoment.
So they would all run in.
The bomb would start and thenwe would, we would stop to slow
motion and then everything wouldgo like this the light would
come out, you would see theirskin eat away to the bones, all
in slow motion, and then itwould go to real time with all
(45:49):
these bones crashing in front ofthe camera.
Wow, and I think the bonesdisintegrated too.
I think the bones disintegratedtoo.
But at the time, our process forBuffy was we had a rig, we
called him dusty and it was aMaya character with a skeleton.
(46:09):
Oh, I think we added a skeletonto that.
So we added a human skeletonand then there was a geometry
polygon shell as the as thething, and we had different
textures that we would renderout from that skin geometry.
Anyway, basically, we had to byhand roto, match, roto, animate
however you want to say everycharacter in that scene.
(46:30):
And so I called my buddy, eric,who was working across town at
the time, and I said I need youto come help me with this shot.
And so him and I roto animatedin 3D all 18 of those characters
.
And then once we got throughthat which that probably took
weeks and weeks anyway, whileI'm developing the UV bomb on
(46:52):
the side but it was figuring outhow to do this slow motion
moment which, if you've everworked with particles, maya
particles or particles ingeneral back then there was no
like, oh, just retime the cacheand it's going to be fine.
You couldn't do that, so we hadto, like, run it all real time,
then pick the section that wasslow, re-simulate all of it from
(47:14):
scratch because now it's fourtimes slower than normal speed
from scratch, because now it'sfour times slower than normal
speed.
It was just a massive fourmonth long shot.
One shot, four months, notsomething I was used to, because
I was used to.
You know, five shots one week,um, and it was a huge, just task
(47:36):
of patience of rendering andcaching over again and Eric and
I did it together but it turnedout looking really nice and
funny.
About combustion at the time,zoic was using combustion and
Helsing was 2004.
Cow Zoic was trying outcombustion.
Cow Um Zoic was trying outcombustion.
(48:03):
So, um, chris Jones wascompositing the shot by himself
on combustion in the other roomand I remember many late nights
of swearing and and asking fordifferent things and why is this
broken?
And and and figuring it out.
But you know that was one ofthem.
That was one of the biggestearly achievements.
That was just an absolutenightmare of a shot to pull off
(48:24):
Because of all the layers, likeit was like four and five and
six people on top of each other.
And when you have to erodesomebody behind four other
people, what do you erode from?
Because there's four people andwe weren't painting clean
plates of these people.
We weren't like re repaintingthese people like you would do
today, or just creating full CGversions of these people.
(48:45):
That's that's what you do today.
Right, this was projecting.
We just project the plate ontogeometry.
You get what you get put someglow over it.
Uh, that's kind of glow andsmoke and dust and that's kind
of glow and smoke and dust andthat's kind of.
That was kind of a big shotyeah, it sounds like it uh, it's
pretty impressive.
Paul DeNigris (49:02):
I have to go back and re-watch that movie.
So you've kind of been throughthe the the golden age of vfx as
you, as you talk about it, andnow we're in a we're in a very
weird period for vfx, especiallyin Los Angeles.
Where do you, where do you seethings now and where do you see
the VFX industry in 10 years?
(49:23):
You know what.
What tech are you excited about?
What challenges do you thinkthe industry is going to face?
I know this is a very broadquestion, so answer it how you,
how do you like?
Dave Funston (49:33):
Oh yeah, the challenges and the next 10 years
for visual effects.
You know, right now everybodyis talking about generative AI.
Oh yeah, the challenges and thenext 10 years for visual
effects.
You know, right now everybodyis talking about generative AI.
Some people think it's going totake over, Some don't.
You know, right now I don'tthink it will, because I'm
(49:54):
seeing uses for it in productionright now.
It's being used in productionright now, but in a very narrow
use case.
It's being used in productionright now, but in a very narrow
use case.
However, in 10 years, there'ssome really amazing things that
are out there right now that Ithink will be adopted.
(50:19):
You know, a lot of the facegeneration and recreation seems
like a technology that is notgoing away and I think it'll get
changed and kind of adjustedinto the pipeline in some form.
But you know, an actor'slikeness is really special and
it's being fought for very, very, very strongly right now about
who gets to use it and how.
You know, back to the cameratracking.
(50:42):
I think that camera trackingand utility things are going to
continue to improve.
There's so many cool uses of AIin Nuke, in compositing
packages that are coming outright now, like depth maps,
normal maps, all of those thingsare going to be like.
It's like just one of thoseparts of a process that now just
(51:03):
becomes automatic.
You don't need someone to rotothousand frames of a person.
You know like honestly thattechnology can be, that that
process can be done much moreefficiently.
To make time for for more ofthe art that's what we always
say in a process is like oh,that show was terrible because
(51:25):
we spent so much time justsolving problems, as opposed to
a show that your tools areworking efficiently.
You can have fun and spend timeon the art, on the storytelling
, instead of instead of justtrying to fix stuff that's
broken.
You never get a chance toactually do what you wanted to
do or even give the client whatthey really wanted.
(51:45):
So in the next I mean, God manthe next 10 years, I would say
there'll be a lot moregenerative 3D things working
pretty well.
I don't know if modeling assetsfrom scratch will really be a
thing that's probably going tobecome much more of just scan it
(52:08):
and you're done.
But the thing that I think thatwon't change, and a lot of
people argue with me about thiswe like watching stories told by
other humans we don't like, asas there's so much cool stuff
online right now that you see,but every single one of those
images doesn't look like aperson.
(52:31):
It looks like a human, but Ibut I don't think it looks like
a person.
I don't think it's going to beinteresting to watch a story
about that.
I think all of the greatestmovies and shows that we all
love were because of people'sexperience when they were a kid
or when they were growing up, ora hard time they had or an
incredible experience that theyhad, and I think that won't
(52:54):
change.
I just think the tools willbegin to make the storytelling
easier, and that's a romantic,idealistic way to think about it
, but that's how I feel about it.
Paul DeNigris (53:06):
No, I think you're right.
I think you know it's thedifference between reading your
Wikipedia page and having aconversation with you.
That's a good example, yeah,right, and if you think about it
, um, a lot of what we love,about the stuff we love develop
because of happy accidents orthings that happened that the
(53:28):
creator could never haveanticipated.
Great example, one that aiwould would have rendered
completely impossible, isimagine a version of breaking
bad, where, where vince gilligancreated the entire thing in ai,
what happens?
He kills jesse at the end ofthe first season.
Okay, sure, totally differentshow.
(53:50):
That was his original intent.
The show became what it wasbecause aaron paul and brian
cranston had such magicalchemistry between them that they
said we can't kill pinkman, wehave to keep him on.
We love working with aaron, wehave to keep him on right.
So the version of breaking bad,that vince, that some alternate
(54:13):
universe vince gilligan cookedup with mid journey and chat gpt
kills jesse pink you know fourepisodes in and it and doesn't
it just isn't the show that we,that we know and love.
Dave Funston (54:25):
Wonderful example.
I have a.
I have a short example too.
This is not a famous movie,glenn Gary, glenn Ross.
It might be famous in some, insome circles, but a friend of
mine yeah, coffee's for closers,exactly.
um, the scene with alec baldwinwas not in the script and he
ad-libbed the scene.
(54:45):
That scene is incredible, yes,but but you know why?
Because alec baldwin is awesomeand just because of the
characters incredible cast inthat movie.
But, like, it's not a superspecial movie.
But look at this scene that itwas born from it it's like that
that is literally the only sceneanybody remembers from that
exactly, exactly.
Paul DeNigris (55:07):
You see this watch yeah, like man, the leads
are weak and you're fucking weakand he could act that way
because of how he grew up.
Dave Funston (55:18):
You know it's it's .
It's exciting and frustratingtoo, that you know AI can do
what it can do just because itcan observe and learn from
everything that we've done up tothis point.
So it's like a it's.
Paul DeNigris (55:32):
It's very controversial, lots of cool
things going to come from it,but, but we all just need to
keep telling our own stories andI think we're going to be,
we're going to get through itsomehow absolutely, uh, real
quick, before I let you go, I'veseen that that uh painting on
the wall behind you.
If if you're listening on oneof the podcast apps and not
(55:52):
watching on youtube, I'm sorrythis is not for you, but yes,
that one right there that looksremarkably like Lana Lang from
Smallville.
Dave Funston (56:02):
Tell us about it.
It is yeah.
So when I worked Zoic in theearly days, I worked with this
incredible artist named JeffWest and he came from painting
lightning on the Power Rangersoriginal series.
So he was this specialist,incredible artist and he came
over as compositor and weconnected on all things that we
(56:26):
worked on and we talked aboutsmallville all the time and he
drew this for me.
He just draw like you go in hisoffice and he just has sketches
just laying everywhere.
He was like a serial artist,but he drew this awesome Lana
Lang.
It's in color pencil.
It's um, it's really special.
Oh, wow, really cool Colorpencil.
(56:48):
Um, that is fantastic.
But uh, jeff is still.
Jeff is still kicking it.
Um, he did some stuff for me acouple of years ago actually.
Nice.
Paul DeNigris (56:59):
That's very cool.
That's a.
That's a great uh memento ofyour, your time on the show and
and also celebration of your,your fandom of the show.
Uh, sounds like uh, and a goodremembrance of your, your uh
friend and colleague.
That's that's great Uh.
Anything you want to plug,anything you got going on, or uh
, or how can people you knowfind out more about you or
(57:21):
connect with you online?
Dave Funston (57:23):
yeah, absolutely.
Um, I have a new websiteupdated, dave funstoncom.
Um, I have a little company aswell, desert pixels that I'm
getting up and running, um, andthat's desert pixels creativecom
uh, that's, and that'sdesertpixelscreativecom.
That's really where it is rightnow, working on getting some
(57:47):
new gigs going on, just likeeverybody else right now, as the
business is still in the lurchfrom the strikes.
But there's stuff going on, butthat's generally it.
I'm on, but, uh, but that'sgenerally it.
I'm on LinkedIn, too, daveFunston.
On LinkedIn You'll see me and,um, this has been awesome chat,
paul.
I really appreciate theopportunity.
Paul DeNigris (58:08):
Thanks for being on, dave.
Really uh appreciate your time.
I'm sure my audience uh lovedhearing your stories and uh, and
yeah, everybody check out, uh,check out Dave's website.
Well, everyone, that wraps upthis episode of VFX for Indies,
for Foxtrot X-Ray and our littleshow.
Here.
I'm Paul DeNigris, the host,and if you liked what you heard
(58:29):
slash saw on the show today,please like and follow, leave us
a comment, tell us what youthought of the show.
If you've got further follow-upquestions that I can ask Dave
and relay to you through thecomment section, I'd be happy to
do that.
And make sure you check out ourback catalog, including last
season's full-length episodes, aseries of shorts we've been
(58:51):
doing about the VFX process andour special presentation about
VFX and gun safety that wereleased earlier this year.
So check that out atVFXforindiescom.
Thanks so much for your timeand attention and I will see you
next time.
Thank you.
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