Cinematography has been a lifelong passion for me. I’m always happy for opportunities to apply my extensive experience with photography to the virtual worlds of VFX and/or Animation projects.

King Arthur—Legend of the Sword (2015) was a very creative, fun project. The small animation team at Framestore had vast creative control to develop a few sequences in the film. The results were beautiful compositions of landscapes, castles, and elephants. The physically realistic camera moves fit the show’s cinematography.

There is something special about photographing imagined worlds. In the crocodile sequence for Peter Pan (2014), the restrictions came from working with plates, which were not shot in a wild stream but on a stage. Most of the raft’s movements were created in a virtual canyon set afterward.

Digital Doubles of the human actor have been my constant companions since I met them on the doomed deck of J.Cameron’s “Titanic”. For digital stunts and doubles, I work with keyframe animation and (usually heavily) manipulated motion capture.

Even vehicles need clever animation. I love studying movement, in these cases below, that of mechanical and physical machines. A hovering helicopter has its subtleties that make it feel real in a movie scene. A metal drone disconnects from its compartment with a certain sequence of small moves before it can accelerate in a way the design allows.

There are many unseen details to the perception of reality of Lightjets and Motorcycles, to a swaying then collapsing Eiffel tower, or an Accelerator Suit, which assembles itself from smaller, mechanical, self propelled pieces. A scenario which is difficult to be convincing.

Many of these situation can be helped with simulations, and often the final result is a combination of creative animation and technical simulation.

In the end it’s all about telling the story through gravity, inertia, drag and resistance, that of air or that of water.

animation vfx