CG Pro Podcast

What sparks your interest? Is it a painting? A movie? A song probably? For James it was the movie, ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’ by Steven Speilberg. James Blevins is an amazing product consultant. He has worked for Disney, Netflix and The Mandalorian. When James was a kid, he was amazed by filmmaking & storytelling, and it gave him the inspiration he needed to work for the film industr...

On top of being a filmmaker and graphic designer, Punn has lived his dream job—working for some of the most renowned studios in Hollywood. Some titles include Jurassic World, Mandalorian, and Jungle Book. As a kid he was influenced by comic books but growing up in Thailand he deemed it impossible to work for Disney. But when he got into the United States, all doors of opportunity opened for him. H...

There are professions where age is important, but with visual effects, it is never too late to become great and move up the ranks, which is proven by our guest Eran Dinur’s experience. According to him, “There is no limit to when you can start this.” So today we spoke to him about the VFX industry, changing careers, his book “The filmmaker's guide to Visual Effects”, and being an elder statesman f...

Ray Tracing is overhyped. At least this is what most visual effects artists thought when it took an ungodly amount of hours to render a single frame, including Chris. Years ago, rendering architecture felt endless. Today, technology has caught up. Where ray tracing on any rig used to be requirement heavy, now clean rendering is possible on a laptop.  Chris has worked on massive films like Aft...

Erik Weaver is a specialist focused on the intersection of cloud and the M&E industry and is currently running Virtual & Adaptive production for the Entertainment Technology Center@the University of Southern California (ETC).  Projects include Executive Producer on Ripple Effect and FatHead production focused on Virtual Production and ICVFX. Mr. Weaver graduated from the 3rd Unreal Fe...

As a director, Scott Squires has done national commercials for HP, Intel and many other high profile companies. Scott has also directed specialty ride films, VR films, music videos and shorts. One of Scott’s commercials was selected by SHOOT Magazine as Best Work You May Never See. Scott Squires is always thinking of story and how to make the most of visuals and humor. Squires has always been inte...

Phil Galler is the principal and founder of Lux Machina Consulting, he strives to push the boundaries of technology and design in the entertainment industry. Focusing on in-camera visual effects, real-time mixed reality, and the future of filmmaking and live broadcast, Phil has been fortunate enough to find himself at the crossroads of technological innovation and creativity.  Join us in this...

Simon Che de Boer is a renowned virtual reality content creator and photogrammetrist. He is the founder of realityvirtual.co – a visual effects technology company streamlining real-world encapsulation. His work has received international recognition and has been featured on places such as Forbes, NVIDIA, Autodesk and Epic Games, and is often cited as the gold standard for photo-realistic digital-t...

For the past 17 years, Brian J. Pohl has experience being a visual effects artist, layout artist, and previs supervisor. A veteran of George Lucas’ pre-vis team and Industrial Light and Magic's art department, he is credited for creating or supervising previs on over twenty-seven feature films. Pohl has also served six years within the software development industry; designing new tools that assist...

This week, we are joined by William Faucher. He is a 3D artist who now focuses on bringing high quality tutorials about Unreal Engine on Youtube. Today, he will share with us the importance of learning the fundamentals, why he chose to Unreal Engine, The future landscape of virtual production, and more. William has been in the entertainment industry for the past 11 years, starting as a 3D Modeler...

In this week’s episode, we are joined by Joy Lea. Her background in the video game industry has led her to be in the world of virtual production. She has worked on the Lion King, the upcoming Avatar Sequels, and more. Joy shares her knowledge on how to get better at virtual production, things to be wary of when mixing kits, her thoughts on Unreal 5 and more.   Highlights of the Episode: 00:00...

In this week’s episode, we have a proven XR content creator, VFX Technical Director in both Engineering and Design - Sally Slade. She contributed to the award-winning Virtual Production system used to create Disney’s The Lion King. She then designed and implemented a Vtubing app, Voltaku, and Vodcasto, the “Virtual Production in your Pocket”.  Sally shares her knowledge and experience from th...

Highlights of the Episode:   01:22 - Background of the Guest 05:02 - Wearing different hats 07:30 - Tools and Technology 11:28 - Strategy when starting the company 14:41 - Swiss army knife for virtual production 19:50 - Marianna’s take on Metaverse 25:57 - Fascinating things during the pandemic 30:07 - What is virtual production? 34:28 - Resources you can learn virtual production and virtual...

Erik “Wolfie” Wolford has worked in the film business since 1990. As a Director of Photography, Wolfie is known for excellent beauty lighting, an eye for color and composition, quick lighting setups, and a deep roster of “A Game” crew members whom he has worked with for years. Wolfie came up through the lighting department ranks in the 90’s, lighting features, music videos and commercials with suc...

Alex Grey, a visual artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner from the USA is known for creating spiritual and psychedelic paintings. Allyson Grey, a conceptual abstract painter has long been a mentor and influencer of the contemporary Visionary Art movement. Alex and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders of The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a non-profit organization in Wappingers...

This week's guest is John Mclnnes, an award-winning producer, writer, and director working in movies, games, AR, VR, and XR for companies like Sony and Netflix. He first gained recognition as a screenwriter in writing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the biggest selling videogame of 2014. He won the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars...

CG Podcast returns with a look into the world of Haz, a leader in the Virtual Production feature filmmaking space! Hasraf Dulull or known as Haz is the co-founder of Haz Film. His career began as a CGI artist on video games and then work his way up from compositor to VFX Supervisor for Moving Picture Company. After working on numerous high-profile feature films, he transitions to directing and pro...

  Tupac Martir is the founder and Creative Director of Satore Studio. Vogue has described him as “the visual designer and creative director behind some of the most important events in the world.” He has provided production design, visuals, and lighting direction for the likes of Elton John, Beyoncé, Danny Boyle, the Coachella Music & Arts Festival, and Serpentine Gallery. Tupac is renowne...

CGPRO Podcast Guest Bio: A cinematographer & creative technologist with a varied background in production, post-production visual effects, product design, and technology. Bridging technology and storytelling for all forms of content and products leading to valuable insight into trends in various markets.   Currently, project focus: virtual production, real-time experiences, creative direc...

Nick brings two decades of professional experience in visual effects, immersive media, and administration to the Digital Media Department at Drexel University. He will be discussing Virtual Production and its accessibility to everyone for a broad application of industries and ideas.   00:01:00:00  Inspiration for getting into the VFX industry 00:14:23:00  What is Virtual Production...

Aruna is currently a Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor at Digital Domain. VFX Veteran, author and more.  He has worked and supervised in multiple countries and has excelled in creating beautiful content for high profile feature films, episodic television, VR, AR, and most recently, video games.  Projects include Avengers, Maleficent, Star Trek, and Hellboy.  His&n...

Bruce is a seasoned movie veteran from the production side. Here he shares his journey, what makes a great producer, and how to be a great artist from a production point of view.

Kevin Mack, academy award winning VFX supervisor and world renowned artist joins us for this exciting episode. We talk about Kevins journey through art department, into VFX, pioneering CG, becoming an honorary neuroscientist and how that influenced both his work and the science community itself. A remarkable man and an inspiration on many levels. This was a true pleasure.

In this episode we meet Scott Rosecrans. A very talented veteran CG artist and Virtual Production supervisor, at the core of Zoic Studios Virtual Production department. We talk about the evolution of Virtual Production, the many things that it is, what its like to actually work on on it, how to get into it, how it can help production and much more. Scott highlights some real projects that have use...

Story. The tech is all important but the story is king. Join Josh Hayes story industry veteran, boarding over 5000 commercials and 50 movies, working on Lone Ranger, Rango and many more. He has worked with the best of the best. We discuss story pre-production and how Unreal Engine is taking the world of film by storm. (note this was a video podcast so a couple of the moments we discuss may not mak...