befores & afters

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.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor and VFX artist Andreas Maaninka about his take on the wave of AI and ML tools and techniques hitting the industry right now.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Jon Mason, the co-founder and CEO of Slapshot, an AI-powered VFX toolkit.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Nikola Todorovic, co-founder of Wonder Dynamics, about the latest AI-related aspects of the tool, including motion prediction. 

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Electric Sheep co-founders Gary Palmer and Richie Murray about their company's AI rotoscoping product.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Rising Sun Pictures President Jennie Zeiher about the studio's machine learning toolset called REVIZE, used on many projects for face and body replacement.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Jo Plaete from Metaphysic about the use of its neural HMC performance injection tech, including for the character Rook in 'Alien: Romulus'.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Wētā FX VFX supervisor Dan Cox and animation supervisor Sidney Kombo-Kintombo about the character played by Harrison Ford.

Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Hanzhi Tang and digital effects supervisor Ryan Duhaime about the Celestial Island dogfight sequence in 'Captain America: Brave New World'.

Creative director, director & producer Geoff Hect discusses the use of Reallusion's iClone and Accuface for markerless facial capture and animation.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Wētā FX visual effects supervisor Luke Millar and actor Jonno Davies about the motion capture in 'Better Man.'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Alien: Romulus' visual effects supervisor Eric Barba about the VFX Oscar nominated film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Will Becher, supervising animator and stop motion lead at Aardman, about 'Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl' and the tech used in the film.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to VFX supervisor Kevin Baillie about the Robert Zemeckis film, 'Here', and its use of machine learning de-ageing techniques, virtual production and other ML approaches.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to David Morin, who is the Executive Director at the Academy Software Foundation about the VFX software packages the ASWF encompasses.

Ian Failes chats to VFX supervisor Alex Noble, who is the founder of Wild Union Post, about visual effects for independent films, including those submitted for the Sundance Film Festival.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Industrial Light & Magic visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff about 'Ahsoka.'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to director, cinematographer and VFX artist Christopher Webb from FX WRX about practical effects in two recent projects, including one involving water and bubbles.

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to DNEG visual effects supervisor Greg Butler about his studio's work on season 2 of 'The Rings of Power'.