befores & afters
The befores & afters VFX podcast from journalist Ian Failes, covering the latest in visual effects, animation and virtual production.
Episodes
Behind the role of a VFX coordinator
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to VFX coordinator Cameron Target, who most recently worked on 'Moana'.
'Stranger Things 5' visual effects supervisor Betsy Paterson on the show's landmark moments
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Betsy Paterson about the making of 'Stranger Things 5.'
All the surprising rock climbing and kayaking VFX challenges on 'Apex'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Apex' visual effects supervisor Enrik Pavdeja.
How those adorable sheep in 'The Sheep Detectives' were made
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.
The visual effects of Widow's Bay
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to production visual effects supervisor Brian Drewes about the visual effects in 'Widow's Bay'.
The VFX artist who changed my life
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.
This Wētā FX animation roundtable was a total hoot
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.
ILM's John Knoll reveals one of the toughest VFX sequences he's ever 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.
ILM's David Vickery on combining practical and digital
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.
ILM's Cary Phillips on the development of Cari for 'Dragonheart'
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.'
Crafting that killer oner for season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again
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.
Fire, explosions, water and deer: the visual effects of season 3 of 'The Night Agent'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Chad Wanstreet about the visual effects of season 3 of 'The Night Agent'.
The visual effects of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
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.
How to get the most out of the VES On-Set VFX Data Collection and Usage Guide
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.
Behind the visual effects of 'Ted' season 2, including the bear, and the deepfake Bill Clinton
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.
How ILM invented ambient occlusion for 'Pearl Harbor'
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.
A mysterious creature in a mysterious retirement community: the VFX of 'The Boroughs'
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.
A deep dive into the visual effects of 'Murderbot'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Murderbot' production visual effects supervisor Sean Faden.
The old-school show-within-a-show in 'Wonder Man' used some old-school effects techniques
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to production visual effects supervisor John Haley about 'Wonder Man', including on the use of forced perspective miniatures.
The art of CG ping pong balls and crowds in 'Marty Supreme'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Marty Supreme' visual effects supervisor Eran Dinur about crafting the ping pong match VFX in the film.
How to make a photoreal CG octopus: the VFX of 'Remarkably Bright Creatures'
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.
In-depth on the all the key explosive visual effects in Netflix's 'Man on Fire'
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.
How the artistic innovations behind the 'Spider-Verse' films led to a Scientific and Technical Award
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.
ILM's Ben Morris reflects on 'The Last Jedi' and 'ABBA Voyage'
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.
ILM's Rachel Rose on the R&D side of visual effects
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.
ILM's Jeff White breaks down that incredible oner from 'The Avengers'
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.
Rob Bredow shares 'Solo' stories, and how ILM inspired him before he was even at ILM
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Rob Bredow, Senior Vice President, Creative Innovation at Lucasfilm, about his time at ILM.
A deep dive into Wētā FX's visual effects for 'A Minecraft Movie'
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.
ILM's Janet Lewin reflects on more than three decades with the studio
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.
The creatures of 'Keeper'
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.
Our new ILM podcast series starts with Dennis Muren!
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
Alec Gillis on the practical effects design process for 'Predator: Badlands'
Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to creature effects legend Alec Gillis from Studio Gillis about his work on 'Predator: Badlands.'
How the in-house VFX process worked on s2 of 'The Sandman'
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.
Crafting 'Andor' season 2
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.
How on-set scanning of environments and actor capture works
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.
How Framestore helped make the creatures and cinematography of 'Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age' feel so real
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.'
Phil Tippett updates us on the state of his personal projects, and his view on AI
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).
What it's like to run a visual effects studio in China
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Base FX founder and CEO Chris Bremble about operating a VFX studio for 20 years from China.
The painterly art and tech behind stop-motion animated 'The Girl Who Cried Pearls'
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.
Infinite Realities on the path to 4G gaussian splatting in digital human capture
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.'
Saint Walker on the new Core Skills of VFX Handbook 2025
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Saint Walker, who is the collator of The Core Skills of VFX Handbook 2025.
Discussing a new era in visual effects with Phantom Media Group
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.
The art and tech behind the body morphing in 'Together'
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.
What the role of CTO involves at Wētā FX
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.
How The Roddenberry Archive is preserving 'Star Trek' history
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.
Paul Franklin reflects on the VFX of 'Interstellar'
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 reco
Behind that crazy creature work in the finale of 'The Umbrella Academy'
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.
What exactly does the role of a visual effects producer involve?
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.
How they made the new 'Lilo & Stitch'
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.
The surprising use of visual effects in season 6 of 'The Handmaid's Tale'
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.
How Steamroller Animation made a 30 min animated pilot episode in Unreal Engine
Ian Failes chats to key members of Steamroller Animation - Adam Meyer, Josh Carroll and Dave Alve - about their pilot episode of 'Spice Frontier'.
Version Zero AI has a splines output solution for AI/ML rotoscoping
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.
The latest machine learning side of Silhouette
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.
AI and ML in VFX from a VFX artist/supervisor point of view
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.
Behind the development of Slapshot's AI roto and generative retiming tools
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Jon Mason, the co-founder and CEO of Slapshot, an AI-powered VFX toolkit.
Where Wonder Dynamics has now gone with its AI VFX tools
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.
The dream of AI roto with Electric Sheep
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Electric Sheep co-founders Gary Palmer and Richie Murray about their company's AI rotoscoping product.
How Rising Sun Pictures' REVIZE machine learning tech came to be
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.
Metaphysic's neural HMC performance injection tech
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'.
Wētā FX used its Loki state machine for muscle simulations on Red Hulk in 'Captain America: Brave New World'
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.
Why planes flying at hundreds of miles an hour is really tough to pull off in VFX
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'.
Sponsored: How Reallusion AccuFace was used on 'Love is a Championship'
Creative director, director & producer Geoff Hect discusses the use of Reallusion's iClone and Accuface for markerless facial capture and animation.
How the motion capture worked on 'Better Man'
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.'
The visual effects of 'Alien: Romulus'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Alien: Romulus' visual effects supervisor Eric Barba about the VFX Oscar nominated film.
Will Becher from Aardman on the old-school and new-school tech in 'Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl'
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.
The wide use of machine learning VFX techniques on 'Here'
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.
How the Academy Software Foundation works
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.
How to get VFX into your Sundance film
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.
Miniatures, puppets, lightsabers and Purrgils
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Industrial Light & Magic visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff about 'Ahsoka.'
How to make practical bubble effects
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.
How DNEG made the troll in s2 of 'The Rings of Power'
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'.
The virtual production behind 'Daddio'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Disguise VP of Virtual Production, Addy Ghani about the film 'Daddio'. The Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn film is unique because it is essentially one long taxi ride that was effectively fully shot on an LED stage.
How the wrestling scenes in 'Unstoppable' were made
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Thomas Tannenberger from Crafty Apes, and Landon Bootsma from Gneiss Stuff, about 'Unstoppable' and the incredible face replacement and other invisible effects work in the film.
In-depth on face replacement, environments and that crazy tennis ball POV shot in 'Challengers'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to ZERO VFX visual effects supervisor Brian Drewes about the tennis film, 'Challengers.'
Animation producer Jinko Gotoh on getting her start on 'Space Jam'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Jinko Gotoh about her animation career, and we preview her keynote session coming to SIGGRAPH Asia in Tokyo.
Sponsored: How ActionVFX assets were used in 'Godzilla Minus One'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Tom Cowles, Social Media & Community Manager, at Action VFX, about the use of Action VFX assets on Godzilla Minus One.
The visual effects of 'Dune: Part Two'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert about 'Dune: Part Two', including on the opening eclipse moments, the sandworm riding, the attack on the spice harvester, how Giedi Prime was made, the battle of Arrakis, and how the Fremen's blue eyes were achieved.
The making of 'Gladiator': a look back with VFX supervisor John Nelson
Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to 'Gladiator' visual effects supervisor John Nelson about the original film from 2000, including that very famous Steadicam shot of the Gladiators entering the Colosseum, the Rome builds, the amazing tiger fight, and the forest battle in Germania.
The VFX and stop-motion animation in 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' visual effects supervisor Angus Bickerton, and to Ian Mackinnon, stop motion supervising producer, and Chris Tichborne, animation supervisor -- covering sandworms, the plane crash and more!
The visual effects of 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians'
Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Erik Henry about the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, including the use of ILM StageCraft, and the creation of many CG creatures.
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