befores & afters

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats with two Framestore artisans on The Sheep Detectives: visual effects supervisor Graham Page and chief creative officer (and second unit supervisor for the film) Tim Webber.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to production visual effects supervisor Brian Drewes about the visual effects in 'Widow's Bay'.

Ian Failes from befores and afters chats to ILM compositing supervisor Todd Vaziri, who via his VFXHQ.com website in the late 90s kickstarted Ian's career in VFX journalism.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to members of Wētā FX's animation team: Dan Barrett, senior animation supervisor, Stuart Adcock, head of facial motion, and Dave Clayton, animation supervisor. It's a hilarious discussion about previs, mocap and where you can even see these crew members as performers in films they've worked on.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to ILM Executive Creative Director John Knoll about the advent of digital VFX tech at ILM, and then goes in-depth on the maelstrom in the third Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to ILM creative director David Vickery about his experience combining practical and digital dinos on recent Jurassic World films.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Cary Phillips, who is Director, R&D Engineering Architect at ILM, about the development of Cari for 'Dragonheart.'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Daredevil: Born Again' visual effects supervisor Gong Myung Lee and visual effects producer Fahed "Freddy" Alhabib, to break down the oner, the ship VFX, and the other invisible effects this season.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Chad Wanstreet about the visual effects of season 3 of 'The Night Agent'.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman about virtual production, digital characters, space scenes and motion graphics.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Sheena Duggal, and VFX supervisor and virtual production supervisor Jim Geduldick, about the newly released VES On-Set VFX Data Collection and Usage Guide.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Ted' s2 visual effects supervisors Hoyt Yeatman and Blair Clark about the creation of the main character, and the deepfake work that went into the appearance of Bill Clinton.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to ILM's Ben Snow and Hayden Landis on the 25th anniversary of 'Pearl Harbor', looking back at key ILM innovations, including ambient occlusion, from the film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Tara DeMarco about 'The Boroughs', and the creature, environment, TV distortion effects and other VFX in the Netflix show.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Murderbot' production visual effects supervisor Sean Faden.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to production visual effects supervisor John Haley about 'Wonder Man', including on the use of forced perspective miniatures.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Marty Supreme' visual effects supervisor Eran Dinur about crafting the ping pong match VFX in the film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Remarkably Bright Creatures' visual effects supervisor Chris Ritvo about Untold Studios' delightful octopus in the film and how it was made.

Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to 'Man on Fire' visual effects supervisor Kevin Lingenfelser about the residential tower destruction, the lear jet sequence and that signature 'man on fire' moment with the main character, John Creasy.

Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to the Sony Pictures Imageworks recipients about their Scientific and Technical Award stemming from stylized and artistic innovations on the 'Spider-Verse' films.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Ben Morris, creative director at ILM London. Here we jump into two of the large projects he helped oversee at ILM, which were Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and ABBA Voyage. We go into the innovations required on those projects, and we explore ILM's move into things like immersive concert and other experiences.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Rachel Rose, Director of R&D at ILM, about the development of virtual production and real-time tools, like StageCraft, and her work on the tools Block Party for rigging and Fez for facial animation.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Jeff White, now creative director at ILM Vancouver, on his roles on the Transformers films, the development of BlockParty, that New York oner in The Avengers and the creature work in Kong: Skull Island.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Rob Bredow, Senior Vice President, Creative Innovation at Lucasfilm, about his time at ILM.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Wētā FX visual effects supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and animation supervisor Kevin Estey about 'A Minecraft Movie', including the character Malgosha.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Janet Lewin, senior vice president, general manager and head of ILM, on her 30 year-plus history with the studio.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Keeper' production visual effects supervisor Edward Douglas and to Jenn Taylor, Image Engine's visual effects supervisor on the film, about taking the practical creatures further.

Today at befores & afters, we're launching into a special 10 episode series with Industrial Light & Magic as part of the release of the new book. For the first episode, Ian Failes sits down with senior visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, a multiple VFX Oscar winner and someone who has worked on some of the most influential visual effects films in history - from the original Star Wars saga, to E.T., Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.

Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to creature effects legend Alec Gillis from Studio Gillis about his work on 'Predator: Badlands.'

Ian Failes chats to 'The Sandman' s2 production visual effects supervisor Ian Markiewicz, as well as Henrique Reginato and Cristian Slavik from NOX VFX, which acted as the in-house team on the show.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to VFX supervisor Mohen Leo and VFX producer TJ Falls about the creation of 'Andor' season 2, including the opening TIE Avenger escape, bringing K2-SO to life again, and the Ghorman massacre.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats with Clear Angle Studios US Head of Capture, Brian LaBrec, about photogrammetry booths, LiDAR scans and other capture on big projects. 

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Framestore and production side visual effects supervisor Russell Dodgson about the Apple TV+ and BBC Studios Natural History Unit series 'Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age.'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Phil Tippett about a couple of projects he has in the works - including what could be a follow-up to MAD GOD, ie. MAD GOD 2. There's also Pequin's Pendequin, and the Sentinel feature Tippett Studio already crafted a test for. Plus Tippett shares his candid thoughts about AI (they may not be what you think).

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Base FX founder and CEO Chris Bremble about operating a VFX studio for 20 years from China.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'The Girl Who Cried Pearls' filmmakers Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski and Éric Pouliot about the making of this stop-motion animated film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Infinite Realities' Lee Perry-Smith and Henry Pearce about the company's journey into the world of scanning, photogrammetry, videogrammetry and now 4D gaussian splats, including for the holograms in 'Superman.'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Saint Walker, who is the collator of The Core Skills of VFX Handbook 2025.

In this special sponsored episode, Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to the leadership from Phantom Media Group, or PMG, which now includes PhantomFX, Spectre, Tippett Studio, Milk VFX and Lola Post.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Framestore visual effects supervisor Josh Simmonds about the Michael Shanks film, 'Together', diving into Framestore's body morphing work for the main characters played by Allison Brie and Dave Franco.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Wētā FX CTO Kimball Thurstan about being a CTO of the revered visual effects studio. We discuss a range of topics, including rendering, de-noising, data flows and…yes…AI.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Mark Spatny, now VFX supervisor and VAD supervisor at OTOY, about his work at The Roddenberry Archive. This is an archive dedicated to preserving the legacy of Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin, who reflects on what he was doing 10 years ago, which was just after his VFX Oscar win for Interstellar. We dive into the scientific research, the CG and the miniatures side of that film. There's a whole lot of fun anecdotes I had never heard about before. This is a special ep of the podcast that was originally recorded for Hugo Guerra's 10th anniversary Hugo's Desk stream.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'The Umbrella Academy' production VFX supervisor Everett Burrell about the final episode 'End of The Beginning' and the impressive creatures.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to VFX producer Lynzi Grant to help demystify the role of a visual effects producer. Lynzi has worked on such films as Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Hocus Pocus 2, Spiderhead and Extraction.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Lilo & Stitch' visual effects supervisor Craig Hammack, from ILM, about stuffies, stand-ins, CG animation and all the challenges of making the live-action film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Brendan Taylor from Mavericks VFX and the VFX of season 6 of 'The Handmaid's Tale', including the opening train scenes filmed with an LED wall, the wedding scene, which had an interesting object removal challenge, muzzle flash work, crowds, that dramatic plane explosion and the final Boston environment shots.

Ian Failes chats to key members of Steamroller Animation - Adam Meyer, Josh Carroll and Dave Alve - about their pilot episode of 'Spice Frontier'.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Version Zero AI co-founders Chad Wanstreet and Allan McKay about their new platform and tool that utilizes machine leaning for roto, matting, clean painting and paint.

Ian Failes chats to Marco Paolini and Paul Miller, two names synonymous with rotoscoping tool Silhouette from Boris FX, about the machine learning developments now implemented in the tool.