eyeon talked to Sean Konrad about providing training to Prime Focus'
Mumbai facility and his position as supervisor on Bollywood pictures.
Q - Can
you tell me a little about yourself?
I've been compositing for a long time. I completed my first composited shot for broadcast at the age of 14 for a show on Canada's WTV (Women's Television Network). Throughout this time, I've taken an interest in technical aspects of compositing, such as the science/voodoo of color as well as large scale pipeline, which led me to work at eyeon.
Q -
What have you worked on in the past?
My last big project in the Western
market was Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3D. It was a huge technical challenge - fortunately a fun one. After that I was doing pipeline work on Dragonball Evolution and other big projects to optimize outsourcing of paint and roto to India as well as create internal tools relating to problems not related to individual project. Previous to that, I worked on The Core, Stay, Scooby Doo 2, Swordfish, and Cursed to name a few.
Q - Can you
tell me about the project in India?
The project in India was for a
Bollywood movie called Chandi Chowk to China starring Akshay Kumar.
The movie was a collaboration between the Chinese and Indian
film markets. It was significant because dialog happened
in English, Mandarin, and Hindi. The scope of the visual
effects work was extremely broad.
Q - Why were you chosen to work on
this project? What was your role?
Having
worked with Prime Focus in the past, I knew a bit about the organization. I was originally sent to do training but circumstances required a reallocation of my time to be spent taking over 2D supervision of a key sequence and to provide some technical and artistic direction on other shots in the show.
Q - How many
artists were trained during your time in India? How many
sessions did you complete?
This is difficult to estimate. Roughly 100 artists received training sessions from me but the majority of the sessions were completed with the compositing and roto teams, comprising between 45 and 55 people. The total number of sessions is also difficult to estimate. Roughly 30-40 sessions were completed with groups ranging in size from 2 to 30 people. I did this while providing individual help to artists who had difficulties completing active work due to technical issues.
Q - SWAT (SoftWare Artist Training) is
eyeon’s directive for the year. How do feel that artist
training will be beneficial to the VFX industry and individual
artists?
Recently a friend of mine was looking at taking courses for management through a Vancouver technical college so I took a look at the programs that were on offer in the stream. I was shocked to learn that 30 credit hour courses were on offer to be completed in one week periods and would run four times a year. The model that this school uses seems brilliant to me because it means that management professionals or programmers who feel they have gaps in their knowledge set can take a week off work and come back with new skills that will benefit the company. Unfortunately, VFX isn't a broad enough industry for a technical school to provide 'Tracking 101' or 'Fluid Dynamics - Waves and Splashes', so it's up to companies like eyeon to provide clients with ways to keep employee skills up to date. The benefit is obvious, artists with current knowledge will be able to do more complicated work with greater ease than competitors.
Q - What was
your basic training procedure? Did you have guidelines set out
by Prime Focus India or did you adapt your training material
to the group in each session?
I began training after supervision was over so I had an idea of where the major gaps in knowledge were. I took shots from movies that had been completed before I took over training and showed technical problems in a practical way, along with their solutions. There were no specific guidelines other than making sure people had a better grasp of keying techniques.
To make sure knowledge was retained, I would try to get artists to recreate the technical solutions on their own after each session and sit with artists as much as possible. Occasionally, I would redo sessions with groups where language had been a barrier or I realized I hadn't adequately explained something. Sometimes merely sitting with an artist and looking at a shot would spawn an idea for a training session.
Much of what I focused on in training was providing artists with a greater toolset to use in difficult tasks (such as keying, painting, and tracking) while ensuring they understood the technical reasons certain things worked or didn't work. Compositing can be a difficult subject to teach as much of the technical basis of the art is mired in very Byzantine language. More often than not, people begin compositing without understanding the technical basis of their art, which leads to major barriers in learning later. It seems to matter very little if the artist learns their craft formally through school, informally through manuals, or on the job. In India, or North America and Europe for that matter, a lot of people doing compositing might be coming from graphic design backgrounds or even from 3D, which gives a great understanding of the basics but leaves large gaps in the fundamentals. This is what I hoped I helped with the most.
Q - Can
you approximate the amount of time that you took to complete
training?
I spent around a month training. Approximately 1/6 of that time was spent on preparation. Half of the time was spent on individual help. The rest on actual sessions.
Q -
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced?
Language was occasionally a problem but it wasn't nearly as much of one as I'd feared. Most people speak English as well as Hindi or Marathi. More problems came with turns of phrases or technical terms. I remember one especially keen artist reading through Steve Wright's Digital Compositing for Film and Video and getting confused with some of the colloquial language.
The other barrier was the size of the group. I prefer to teach groups of people no larger than 4 or 5, both for the logistics of space and also to make sure that everyone is understanding. In a group of 15, people are less likely to ask questions, plus interrupting a lesson to look at a specific problem will likely alienate a larger audience.
The last challenge was making sure people understood that software can't do absolutely everything. 3D is an immensely powerful tool for set extensions and other works but knowing where its limits are is important so the team does not waste time.
Q - What was the most rewarding aspect
of your work in India?
Some of the artists at Prime Focus excel with the limited resources they sometimes have in crunches or last-minute changes. The level of creativity and ingenuity that exists throughout the Indian facilities is something to be admired. While fundamentals sometimes will make problems easier to solve, the kind of problem solving exhibited in India was nothing short of inspiring.
Q - What can
we expect from you in the future?
I'm currently on an extended vacation but afterward I'm planning on either getting involved in some serious large-scale pipeline projects or comp supervise a few more shows.
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