I’ve always been driven to make things. Write things. Create. For the last few years I’ve felt like I was no longer doing what I was meant to be doing. Granted, I was doing VFX for TV shows millions of people love. But the reality of that translates into long hours of sitting alone in a room, clicking on a mouse and keyboard. Yes, a small creative part of something great, but a long way from the over-all filmmaking created process. I was a carpenter not an architect. But I was a good carpenter. Successful. You can’t want something else if you are a success, right? You can’t derail a perfectly good train because you want to be on a different train. Can you?

Years ago, at the dawn of the computer animation age, I had a boss who would periodically walk around the workstations, and upon seeing an artist struggling with something he would turn off the machine with no warning! No changes saved, everything lost. And a funny thing happened. When you start again from scratch, you have the benefit of everything you’ve learned on v1.0, while no longer being mired by the mistakes and false-starts that might be baked into your work. The things you couldn’t possibly let go were the very things holding your creative process back.

Back to my career angst. My wife was pretty straight-forward supportive about my work struggles, saying, ‘This has been going of a long time. If you’re not happy doing what you’re doing, chuck it.” She didn’t say it exactly that way, but that was the gist.

And she wasn’t alone. I’ve talked with a lot of friends, all around 40 or 50, and this seems to be an extremely common notion. Many have told me that they’ve chucked their safe, lucrative career and gone after something they simply needed to do. They’ve walked away from a carefully built foundation of financial stability and followed a dream. And to a person, they are all happier on the other side of that decision. Uncertainty about the future turns out to be a lot less stressful than the certainty of not fulfilling your life’s purpose.

So with the full support (urging, actually) of my wife, who at every point in my career has been willing to take risks like these, we all took a risk and made a big change. I chucked it.

I want to make movies. So, we decided close the company, sell the house and come back to LA. If just to dip our toes into Hollywood and just see what happens. What is life if not an adventure? And from the moment we made that decision, things started to happen.

Doors opened.

I told some friends that we’d be back in LA for a while at least, and got a few interesting opportunities right off the bat. One of these eventually led to an offer to be an on-set VFX supervisor for the second season of Westworld. So before we knew it, we were not just going to be six month tourists in LA, I was arriving with a dream job in hand.

The kids took the move in stride. They resisted too, but they have been very happy here. I like to think we planted and sprouted them in Kansas City, but we’ve re-potted them here in LA and they are growing and thriving like never before.

The job has been amazing. I’ve replaced that lonely computer screen with 100 of the most creative, talented and knowledgeable crew I can possibly imagine. Every day on set has been a Masterclass of the filmmaking world. Relationships are forming that will be important to me for decades. I have loved every minute on set and there have been a hell of a lot of minutes!

My wife says she’s never seen me work longer and harder at anything, but never happier with my work/life balance. They miss me due to the long hours that a production like this demands. But when the day is over, I am home and relaxed.

So, thank you 2017, for pushing me to a place where I wanted to chuck it, so that I could get back on the path of doing what I was meant to do in 2018 and beyond.

We are back in LA.  

The constant through-line of my career has been to make cool stuff. I've been lucky to do work on VFX for shows like Breaking Bad, The Flash and Westworld, but also to be able to carve out time to write, direct and make stuff of my own.

But for the last few years I've felt that I was not progressing toward what I really wanted to do. Turns out, sitting behind a computer monitor in Kansas City is not the best way to build filmmaking relationships.

I love KC, but my gut told me that in order to do what I really wanted to do...

We had to go back. The plan was to be resident-tourists back in LA for six months to a year and see what happens. Shake the tree both for my own projects and in the visual effects world. An adventure for my kids, a new perspective for us, and the comfort that I had gone all-in on my dreams.

On a trip to LA in March I had lunch with a friend and VFX supervisor, whom I had worked for on countless shows as a vendor, and I told him of our intentions. A few weeks later, he offered me a spot as on set VFX supervisor for a pilot shooting in New Mexico and shortly after that the same position on Season 2 of Westworld. I accepted without hesitation, albeit a little trepidation. 

As I said in my storytelling in VFX talk, my work is often about face-to-face human connections in a world where computers and technology make that harder and harder. This is my career, too. Leaving the lonely screen behind for the busy set (on a show that digs into the subject matter of humanity colliding with technology to boot!).

So here we are, back in LA. Working long, hard days and nights with a great crew of like-minded, creative people on a huge show.

Feeling again like we are in the right place, doing the right things. Creatively engaged, learning, growing and connecting. 

And if you are one to believe in signs from above...

...after months of stressful packing, moving and apartment hunting... this was hanging in the house we ended up renting!

Bring yourself back online, indeed.

I was honored to be able to recently give my talk to GuildIt and the KC Library. It was a great audience and a nice opportunity to meet a lot of interesting and enthusiastic people before and after.

I was also lucky to be paired with the other speaker of the night, Jason Aaron, writer for Marvel comics from Thor to Star Wars. His presentation was personal and fascinating (see it here). A few months later I found myself onset in New Mexico working on the television pilot for a show called Scalped. When I got the script, I saw it was based on Jason's Darkhorse graphic novel that he mentions in his talk. It took me far too long to put 2 and 2 together. Jason came to set and we shared some beers and same far too hot tacos in Sante Fe. 

In fact, the Visual Effects Society didn't even nominate it for Best Visual Effects or even Best Supporting Visual Effects! The usual standard bearer for prediction, Todd Vaziri's VFX Predictionator, placed it dead last in the category to win a VFX Oscar, and his formula has only failed to predict the winner twice in 25 years.

So what happened? I figured it would be a toss up between Star Wars and Mad Max. And with Max's sweep of the earlier technical awards, I figured it was a lock. I would not have even been shocked at The Revenant winning. The bear was incredible. Ex Machina didn't have an underdog's shot with these beasts in the category and I doubted most Academy voters had even seen this under-appreciated movie.

There has been a lot of talk about non-CGI visual effects, and how Mad Max and Star Wars have moved away from relying on CGI by re-embracing traditional models and in-camera techniques (but watch the endless CGI names in the credits and you'll see this is not entirely true). Interstellar won last year's VFX Oscar riding this non-digital narrative.

Perhaps all this has caused a backlash in the perception as to what is and is not a visual effect.

So in the case of last night's winner, Ex Machina, one thing is certain: When looking at the main character of Ava, she is without a doubt, a visual effect! She is beautiful and alien. You can see her inner mechanics and robotics. She lives on the far side of the uncanny valley and you cannot take your eyes off of her. She is the heart of the story, and the movie falls apart if you neither feel for her nor believe she is a robot. This, in addition to the aforementioned flawless work, is what gets the vote.

All this goes to the central flaw or strength of awards. The award goes to the sum parts of the whole, not the specific craft being awarded. I benefited from this very thing with a Breaking Bad Emmy nomination for the single long-take of Gus's demise in season 4. There was a lot of great work that year, but that single haunting shot was so well set up within the whole of the show's entire series narrative, that it resonated with the public and with Academy voters.

So, kudos to Double Negative and buck-up to the other deserving nominees. The VFX work this last year has been frightening perfection. But I think, after the surprise has settled, I am rather happy to see a smaller movie like Ex Machina take home this award for such a high quality of work that so directly and specifically serves the story.

The Academy got this one right.

The original design of our favorite pirate ship was to be a longer more traditional ship. You might recognize the cone shaped cockpit and the radar dish. 

But just before principal photography was set to start, Lucas got a whiff of the Eagle spacecraft from the television show Space 1999 and he felt (rightly so) that a ship as important to the story as the Millennium Falcon needed to stand on its own visual aesthetic.

So this original design underwent a minor facelift by changing the cockpit to a "hammer-head" orientation and a significant boost in scale. Thus, the original Falcon became the Tanitive IV, Rebel Blockade Runner, the first ship we ever saw in the Star Wars universe.

For the over-all look of the Millennium Falcon we know and love, the myth says that George Lucas was inspired by a hamburger with an olive next to it. Much like the mythic family dog origin of Chewbacca,  I'm skeptical of that story. I suspect the same George that gave us Crystal Skull said, "Make it look like a flying saucer!"  A sketch of what would have been the Blockade runner makes be think George was somewhat stuck in a 50's sci-fi thinking. 

Thankfully, the boys at ILM used their genius and in a few short weeks, incorporated that saucer into something truly remarkable. As construction of the interior cockpit set based on the original Falcon design had already began,  they retained the cockpit as well as the radar dish, and the over/under gun turrets used by Luke and Han. The result is an iconic ship that's "got it where it counts."

It is fascinating to see how these random decisions, these "oh crap" set backs and totally unexpected outside forces (or FORCE) can align to create things that inspire people, shape lives and make careers. So much of the original Star Wars movies works because Lucas was not able to complete his full vision. The limitations created greatness. His genius was focused through a limited lens of reality. Years later, we found that with the advent of unlimited CGI and without those physical limitations, his original vision probably would have been less inspiring.

Which Falcon do you prefer?

"Magic is just someone spending
more time on something
than anyone else might
reasonably expect."

This is filmmaking to me. It's an insanely complicated task, sometime taking years to blend ideas, artistry and technology into a work that emotionally transports people out of their own lives.

Two movies have recently felt like magic to me: Fury Road and Ex Machina.

The visual action, pacing and spectacle of Fury Road never once mis-fires. It never once gets tiring. Every shot is perfect and justified. There is a sequence where we see 5 shots of a gear shift. A GEAR SHIFT! And every single one of those shots advances the story and raises the stakes. This movie is so perfectly paced it seems to unfold ahead of the audience like a curvy road that appears in the headlights just where it should be, but never late or early. The logistic accomplishment of this movie boggles my mind. And not losing touch of the human element that actually makes us care about the story in the midst of this is a miracle.

With Ex Machina it was the writing, acting, art direction and VFX that had me waiting for the moment when a film like this inevitably takes a wrong turn. It never does. The characters and the ideas they explore are both nuanced and reality-shattering. The script is perfect as it teases and reveals on its way to the perfect and earned ending. As a VFX person I can tell you the CGI work on the semi-transparent, robotic Ava is so much more complicated that it might even look. Yet it never takes center-stage and says, "Look at me! I'm CGI!" She is a visual effect perfectly placed in an Oscar worthy screenplay. Always reminding us she is not human, but begging us to fall for her.

I loved both of these movies... 

And yet, part of me hates seeing movies like these!

I am nearly driven over the humbled cliffs of despair by such brilliant work. Who am I to bring my ideas into the world while it comes with such ease to truly gifted filmmakers like these? Alex Garland and George Miller are working on such a different level that we should all just give up.

But I remind myself of the Teller quote above. 

They have put their time in. They have slaved. Im sure there are numerous drafts of Ex Machina that are not that good. There are hundreds of early rough cuts of Fury Road that probably don't work. The lesson is: They put the time in. As the quote says, more time than you can possibly or reasonaly imagine.

There were 100s of talented VFX artists and art department personnel on Ex Machina. Post production took more than a year. Fury Road has been in development and production for more than 17 years, and the shoot lasted nine grueling months in the desert. Yet when you watch those two hours of condensed brilliance, it's magic. 

 I am not taking anything away from the genius of these filmmakers or their work. I am here to praise not only the artistry and intellect of these guys, but also the persistence of vision to craft such entertainment one shot at a time. To not loosing their vision along the way. And to us, the audience, it seems effortless.

So, I try to remember after toiling away late at night on an edit. Or with a small, unpaid crew of likewise hungry filmmakers, on a short film. If my work sucks today, I have not put enough into it, yet.

Soon, it too, and all these years of practice may seem to be magic to someone else. 

But the revelation of the day was our little star, Phoenix Smith. Everyone says working with kids and animals is the worst. But 7-year-old Phoenix was anything but. One of the best actors of any age I've had the pleasure working with. Many industry people to whom I've shown rough cut material have said, "She needs to be in Hollywood."  I agree. But let's finish Bully Mech first!

Chris Blunk and Jeremy Osbern of Through-A-Glass productions served as Producer and Director of Photography respectfully. We are shooting with Jeremy's set of insane Lomo anamorphic lenses. I love the look for this project. Our locations look like post-industrial Russia, so it fits that our lenses should come from there, too. 

Look for more soon #BullyMech.

But two other crazy things happened in relation to those 'hoax' videos that I am extremely proud of.  

Firstly, the spider in the ear video story that was picked up all around the world has made it to the TOMO News network. The South Korean agency famous for making mo-cap reenactments of not-news stories like Conan's feud with NBC to serious stories like the riots in Ferguson.  

Anyway. Thank you TOMO for making a reenactment of what didn't happen when I didn't find a spider crawling out of my ear. The actual reenactment of me sitting in front of a computer would have been much less exciting. I do, however, always animate with no shirt and super-tight jeans. So you got that part right!

The Second badge of honor, (or scarlet letter depending on who you talk to), was that the drone video was picked up and officially debunked by Snopes.com!

Snopes is the go-to web site people turn to for the definitive explanation over whether something is true or not. 

I think I will take a rest from the hoax videos for the time being and get some real work done, although you never know. Think twice about the next UFO or hoverboard video you see. Always be skeptical.

My initial intent was to make something visually interesting. To tell a story, frightening as it may be. I think it worked. And you guys are really mad about it! 

I know many multi-rotor pilots and almost all of those pilots are responsible and meticulous. They don't take risks and safety is always on their minds. They maintain their investment in hardware, carry liability insurance and constantly practice their flying skills to be better pilots.

But the funny thing is, they all seem to know that one day some idiot is going to fly a drone into an airplane and make big news. They all seem to know that one day someone is going to throw a prop and drop a heavy rig on baby in a park. They dread that day.

But the last thing they want is to embrace some sort of license or regulation that might prevent this actual thing from happening! 

So my video, simulating that very thing, has become a surrogate event for something likely to soon happen. It has uncorked this pent-up expectation and sent a large number of drone hobbyists and professionals my way to vent their anger. Read the YouTube or LiveLink comment sections. "YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE DAMAGE YOU'VE CAUSED!!!", reads about 40 emails in my inbox right now. (Most have more exclamation points, but you get the idea.) Maybe they are right. Maybe I don't understand.

You guys are so concerned with the public's perception. But you knew this was going to happen. Now it has... Only it hasn't! It's not real!

Perhaps we have the ability to make sure it never happens without having endangered anyone?

I flew RC planes many years ago. In those days, I had to join a club and pay $75 a year for a club license that insured me in case my 20 pound, fixed-wing toy smashed a car window, or gave a fellow pilot a concussion. I had to read a short pamphlet and take a test about the rules of the air and of common flying sense. I co-flew with a more seasoned pilot on a buddy-box until I could take off and land responsibly by myself. And I could only fly it in unpopulated areas or designated RC fields. Most of you respect your hobby like this still. But some don't. 

So, this outraged response of the drone community (excuse me, UAV community, as I have been corrected more times than I can count) has changed my mind. I now believe that some sort of regulation like this going to be necessary. You have to take a test and qualify to be able to drive a car or fly a plane. Why not some sort of qualification of your ability to fly a heavy piece of carbon fiber with spinning blades around civilians? Why not have visible registration numbers or RFID to keep multi-rotor pilots responsible and traceable to the aircraft they've purchased? The people who treat this as a business will not be the problem. Those pilots are self-regulating and playing by similar rules already for their own safety and those around them.

And it's likely not the hobbyist who buys a micro or a Parrot or Phantom will cause anything more newsworthy than a black eye or chopping off Enrique Iglesias's fingers.  

It's the guy who buys the biggest, most expensive toy he can find - one he has no respect for, nor skill to fly - who accidentally kills someone with it. He will be the guy that changes this argument forever. It's that guy who is going to ruin your business and ground the industry, not my visual effects shot.

So maybe all of the professional UAV people who 'can't believe the damage I have done' should reconsider. You're basically saying, "I wont kill anybody, but if someone else does, that's not my problem.!" But it will be. Get on the right side of this now.

After all. This wasn't real.

No one was hurt.

The real thing has not actually happened....

Yet. 

Lately, I've been looking for little videos to make with no budget, an iPhone and some CGI. After shooting this footage of NYC as we were climbing out of Laguardia (thanks FAA for finally letting us keep our phones in airplane mode during take-off), I thought it might be a challenge to make something go by or even strike the wing. This is the same air corridor that Captain "Skully" ditched his Airbus A320 in the Hudson after a double bird strike, saving all on-board. 

But I chose to make a drone zip past instead of a bird and tear off a section of the winglet. 

Below is a short breakdown of the shot.

So as the internet has figured out, despite it being on the same YouTube page as "There's a Spider in my Ear" and the company name on the wing...

Gotcher stars Michelle Davidson, Darren Kennedy and Davis DeRock. It was shot by Andy Romero.

We hope you like it enough to inflict it upon (share it with) a friend or two.  Enjoy.

<<<DON'T SCROLL FURTHER BEFORE WATCHING>>>
<<<behind the scenes discussion and spoilerage below>>>

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The origination of this short came from playing this silly trick on my kids. "I got your nose!" It occurred to me that kids actually believe it for a time. Those little minds actually think you are capable of taking the nose from their face. And that concept through an adult perspective is just terrifying. So the Gotcher man was born. 

The short was shot over two days in Kansas City on the Arri Alexa. We thank the Unity Temple on the Plaza for letting us use a meeting room and apologize for setting off a building-evacuating fire alarm. (if you're reading this, yes that was us)

Their are many visual effects in this short you might not notice. The Reagan/Bush election sign, the big wheel, the long hallway at the end are all VFX additions and manipulations. But the main effect that is as plain as the nose on your face is the digital nose removal. The technique comes from our experience doing gory shots on the television shows Fringe and Breaking Bad.

Tracking marks were used on each face so that we could isolate and recreate the head movements relative to camera. These motions were then applied to six unique nose cavity models created for each featured character. 3D modeling was done using Lightwave 3D. Many layers or passes were rendered with shaders representing diffuse and specular lighting, bump and normal maps, cgi based skin and photo mapped skin surfaces. 

And finally, like a well cooked meal, these ingredients were then baked or composited together using Blackmagic Fusion.

The entire project took a couple days to shoot, and about 3 weeks of editorial and post production.

We are getting close to shooting a big, bad, spec PSA short film called Bully Mech.  

On the surface it is the story of a scared little girl befriending a giant battle-mech. But peal away some layers, and it is a powerful anti-bullying message.

Stay tuned for more updates  on this one soon.

I went swimming at Lake of the Ozarks last weekend and got a super painful ear infection. Totally blocked ear canal. Tried to use my phones camera to see if I could see anything.  Found this!

Gross isn't it?

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Okay. So, yeah. I don't really have a spider in my ear. I did have a hell-of-a case of swimmers ear and that was the inspiration.

Eric Bacus, Sean Joseph, Aileen Murray, and Linden Stirk have all grown to be capable artists I would trust with any shot. With some luck, I hope we might work together in the future again.

It is bittersweet, but such is the flavor of the visual effects business these days. A job you love, but an economic system that does not love you back. So as more and more television post production follows tax incentives to Canada, I decided it was finally time to tighten the hiatus belt in order to ensure the ability to fight another season. 

This sort of hiatus lay-off is the norm for most VFX companies. Network shows end in May and pick-up again in August with no promises or contracts. Keeping a full crew over these dry spells has been an minor miracle over the last nine years.

But make no mistake, I am still here, Branit FX is open for post production business, and we are preparing to staff up this fall on a couple of very interesting projects.

Until then, as this new page and blog imply, I am officially pushing my production and post production knowledge into another realm. The directing and creative development of vfx and non-vfx material.

I am currently in the search for a partner in representation, and open to offers to get more "at bats" behind the camera.

About 50 yards from my office door in the Crossroads of Kansas City is a building that has had a hard time finding a long-term tenant. I think the building, the neighborhood and a suitable business have finally found one another.

In the last 3 weeks I have had nine meetings at the Up/Down KC. It is a throwback 21-and-older gaming bar with plenty of places to sit and talk.

Between meetings this week, you may find me there playing Tron or Defender. Should I find it ironic that of the usual crowd, I am probably one of the few who actually played most of these games in their day.