Directing & Improvising Visual Effects: An Article in Creative Cow Magazine

I was interviewed for an article in Creative Cow Magazine (again).

The first article was about Creatiing Visual Effects from the standpoint of a director telling a story.  The new article is about Improvising visual effects while directing.  The thoughts are really targeted at directors working in the new era of filmmaking.

If you live in the United States, you can order a free printed copy of the magazine here:

Free Magazine If you live oustide the United States or you prefer to live a digital life, you can download a free PDF of the entire magazine or read it online here:

Download Magazine 11 (Visual FX) from this link

The article is all about the improvisation of visual effects for the Fallen Video

Which can be seen in high quality here:

High Quality Fallen

or on YouTube below:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONa5t8w1hmc&fmt=18 Below is an except  - the very last question of the article.  If you've been reading my blogs over the past year, you will not be surprised by the ideas.  In fact, the article was not only inspired by the Fallen video, but the blogs about improvisation.

Enjoy!

What would be the single guiding principle any director should follow when faced with an effects emergency on the set?

Focus on your story, then follow your instincts.

Don’t make choices out of fear. This not only applies to improvising visual effects and improvisational acting, but it really applies to all creative and non-creative life activity. The more time you spend questioning yourself, the more time you’re wasting.

Sometimes the people who have had a tremendous number of accomplishments have also had a lot more than the average number of failures - but if you’re goals are clear and you’re making even slightly educated guesses, then the odds are on your side. It’s just a matter of volume.

The worst thing a director can do on the set is be frozen by fear while unsure about something. If I’m directing an actor and I give them a note which just simply doesn’t work, I have no problem in saying “totally ignore than note, it was wrong, let’s do this instead.” It’s okay to be wrong as long as you keep moving.

Same with visual effects. Even if you had 10 years of experience with visual effects, you aren’t going to be able to predict all the thousand possible problems a shot might have — so just make sure that the effect has value and purpose for telling your story and it will have been worth doing.