Behind the VFX Magic: From Buffy to The Flash with VFX Supervisor Dave Funston

Ever wonder how those vampires on Buffy turned to dust? Or how Barry Allen's lightning trails look so convincing on The Flash? Dave Funston has been behind it all.

From humble beginnings making Mortal Kombat-inspired flip books to becoming an Emmy-nominated visual effects supervisor, Dave's 25-year journey through Hollywood's "golden age" of television VFX reveals the magic and mayhem that happens when creativity meets impossible deadlines.

Dave pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career, from his first big break on Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to developing the iconic vampire dusting effects for Buffy and Angel, creating Trueblood's memorable fang transformations, and orchestrating complex sequences for The Flash. His stories highlight how television VFX teams innovate under constraint, often accomplishing in days what feature films might take months to perfect.

One particularly harrowing tale involves a Van Helsing sequence featuring 18 vampires simultaneously disintegrating – a single shot that consumed four months of painstaking work. Dave explains how VFX artists often resorted to "brute force" solutions before modern tools existed, manually rotoscoping and animating elements frame by frame.

For filmmakers working with visual effects, Dave offers invaluable advice about planning, communication, and the critical importance of involving VFX professionals early in production. As he looks to the future, he shares thoughtful perspectives on how AI might transform aspects of VFX production while maintaining that the human element of storytelling cannot be replaced.

Whether you're a filmmaker looking to incorporate visual effects into your next project or simply a fan curious about how your favorite supernatural shows come to life, this conversation offers fascinating insights into the artistry and problem-solving behind the screen magic we often take for granted. Subscribe to VFX for Indies for more episodes exploring the intersection of visual effects and independent filmmaking.

Transcript

Paul: Take a peek behind the scenes on some of the most iconic genre TV shows of all time. Buffy, Angel, Firefly, True Blood, Smallville, The Flash, and more. This week on VFX for Indies. Welcome

to VFX for Indies. Podcast about the intersection of visual effects and independent filmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNigris, VFX artist, filmmaker, and CEO of boutique visual effects shop, Foxtrot X-Ray. With me today is Dave Funston, who, as I alluded to at the top of the show, is a VFX supervisor with an incredible resume going back almost 25 years to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Welcome to the podcast, Dave.

Dave: Thanks, Paul. Great to be here.

Paul: On this show. Our goal is to bring on guests like Dave to share their insights into visual effects and film production. Without going too deep into the weeds of tech talk with the goal of educating filmmakers who are relatively new to using VFX.

If you like what we're doing here, please like, and subscribe to stay updated as we release new episodes. And you can find our back catalog of episodes at vfxforindies.Com. Dave and I recently became acquainted through a mutual friend since his move here to Arizona. But because the VFX industry is incredibly small, we realized that we know more than a few people in common.

And we even almost worked together at one point about a decade ago, Well, I was living in L. A. I interviewed at Zoic Studios where Dave spent quite a bit of time before we get into your time at Zoic. Why don't you, Dave, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, your education and what brought you to the world of VFX?

Dave: Certainly, um, my background and education in animation. And my fascination with visual effects started, uh, you know, probably pre high school. I remember my grandmother buying me boxes of little, uh, notepads. And I began making flip books. And it started with an obsession of, of Mortal Kombat and, and fighting games like that.

And I would just draw stick figures, cutting each other's heads off in, in little flip books. And, uh, I would just go through notebook after notebook. Covering only 1 percent of the page. And then that notebook's done. Um, I also then remember watching The Abyss. Is 1 of my favorite movies and there was a behind the scenes.

On The Abyss, and this was in, I don't know, mid nineties, maybe, maybe late nineties. And, um, that really lit my, my fire about what's possible because, you know, they had that water, that tentacle monster, and they showed the CGI 3D stuff behind that, um, I then was fortunate in high school to have a, there was a tech school, it's called ATC at the time, Applied Technology Center, but they offered optional electives for the local high schools instead of your high school's electives.

Um, and there was class I heard about with these super high powered Macintosh computers. There were those, there were the beige G3, uh, desktops at the time. Um, so anyway, I took this class, it was called commercial design and it changed my life. Um, I wasn't quite sure what I was doing with my life at that time, but my teacher, Susan Cooke, who I'm still connected with today, um, she just saw the talent in me and was able to figure out where it was and how to get it out.

That's where we learned Illustrator, uh, Illustrator and Freehand was one at the time. Infinity was the 3D program that they had. And I, I just. Once she realized that's all I cared about, she just let me do my own thing, because all I was doing was learning, and she saw me accelerating my interest. We did a bunch of other stuff, too.

Four color printing press, and they had three Heidelberg four color printing presses at the school, so we were making our own plates in Illustrator. Printing them, transferring them, doing all kinds of all kinds of wild things, um, for a high school kid. But then we, uh, we did a tour in my senior year of downtown of Disney and they had in Florida and they had this program where you could go in and do cell animation and, um, it was very topical, but you got your, you got a chance to see a lot of cool behind the scenes, Disney animation stuff.

And at the time we toured Full Sail and, um, which is in winter park. And when I walked in that place. It was an absolute slam dunk. The 1st minute I walked in, they had all the equipment. It was all professional grade, high end facilities. And I knew it at that point. But that's what I, that's what I was going to be doing.

That's all that I can really say. It was just, it was a light bulb moment for me. Um, after I graduated, I went straight there and and my 1st day of class was January 3rd 2000. So it was the whole Y2K thing. It was weird. Uh, super weird, but guess what? Nothing happened, and, uh, I did a year and a half there for my associates degree, and I learned Maya.

I learned some compositing. I learned some basics and some other stuff, but it was basically I did the computer animation program. I think we're like the 3rd class ever at the time, and, uh, it was just a hardcore 3D Maya 8 hours a day kind of deal. That's really pretty much it. That's really where it all started for me.

Paul: As you may know, I used to teach college at a very similar type of school, very similar to Full Sail. So, uh, I want I want you to tell me the name of your, your teacher that that mentor do in high school again? Because I want to give her a shout out.

Dave: Oh, yeah. Her name is Susan Cook.

Paul: So Susan Cook, here's to you.

Like, you know, uh, teachers like you are what make the world possible. Really? I mean, everybody that's ever been a high achiever in the world, I believe has been mentored by somebody, maybe not in formal education, but they've been mentored by somebody. And, uh, and for a teacher like you to mentor someone like Dave, uh, and, and introduce him to what became his passion and his career, that is, Incredibly commendable.

So hats off to Susan Cook.

Dave: She's a heck of a lady.

Paul: That's fantastic. So you inevitably ended up in LA. Um, so why don't we talk about that? Let's, I'd love to hear about your journey from Florida, from Full Sail to Los Angeles. What got you that first gig working on, on Buffy and how you got into the industry from there?

Dave: Sure. Yeah. My, my journey from Florida to Los Angeles was. Pretty interesting, but also what you hear from a lot of people of like, it's about who, you know, so at full sail made lots of friends connections. And, um, once we graduated and I say we, because there was two other friends of mine that we all became pretty close, um, guy by the name of Eric Ebeling and another guy by the name of Christopher Strauss, Chris Strauss.

And, um, Eric and I, We graduated in March of a one and completely unrelated. My folks had moved from South Carolina to L. A. Unrelated. My mom got hired by this design company, um, and they decided to make the move when their only son had left for college. So they, we all kind of left the East Coast together.

Uh, we were like, hey, why don't we drive out? We can stay with my parents for a little while and try to find, try to find work. Okay. And then I think that was literally that's just where the work is. 2 students that didn't barely knew anything, but it seemed like the right thing to do. So we packed up a car and a small trailer and Eric and I drove from Orlando through many crazy nights and and can't find gas and and.

It was nuts, but we did a quick stop at the Grand Canyon. So the Grand Canyon for the 1st time was amazing. It snowed the next day. So we had to wait for the snow to melt, which I don't know if it's snow is that much up there. And then. We drove to LA and within maybe two weeks, we, um, Eric had reached out to a friend that we knew, uh, that previously graduated full sail.

And we just met up with him and another buddy of his for drinks, um, dinner. We weren't 21 yet. Um, and that was the other crazy thing is doing this at like 19, like, we just, you know, driving to a whole new part of the country. Um, but we met these guys and happened to have our reels from school. Turns out our friend's friend, who turned out to be Scott Metzger, who is a very, um, very well known figure in the visual effects, the visual effects world.

He, uh, we let him know that we just graduated and we had our reels and he was like, Oh, that's awesome. We're actually hiring at the place he was working. So, um, we gave him our reels, finished up the night. And then the next day he called us with his supervisor and they were like, we want you guys to come in.

We're we're in the middle of a film. We have a lot of work, and we want you guys to come in. So that was Eric and I, and we drove up to 3rd and La Brea to go to, um, uh, Metro Light Studios, and they're working on Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which was Kevin Smith's first major feature film. He'd done many films before that, but this one, um, had a lot of traditional visual effects in it.

And, you know. There was a lot of tracking, 3D tracking involved and, and lots of cool shots in that movie, especially for two kids out of college. And, um, basically Eric and I just hit it so hard and we were moving so quickly. Uh, they asked if we, if there were any other friends from school that we could call because we were doing such a great job and we did, we called Chris and he flew out from Florida and we're like, Hey man, you got to come.

This is, This is crazy. You got to come do this gig with us. So Chris and I and Eric finished the film. Uh, we got film credits. We went to the opening night. I got to meet Kevin Smith and Jason Hughes. It was wild. First job right out of college really set the, set the bar. But I think the more I look back on it, it was like the golden age of the like early golden age of Visual effects in L. A. was kind of ending, um, things just kind of changed a lot since then. It kind of turned into a new, you know, the whole Buffy and angel and all of the crazy television visual effects stuff. We'll talk about later. Just began to roll right after that. But we got in at the right time. The timing was perfect.

It was just who we knew. The timing of the industry at the time just at the right place at the right time is what it feels like.

Paul: Yeah, it sounds like the stars really aligned the fact that your parents move there. Uh, you know, when I was teaching, that was 1 of the things I always told students that, you know, the, the work is in L. A. You need to move there. And a lot of them didn't have that, that, uh, you know, safe place, you know, to, to, to, you know, the parents weren't living in L. A. Or they didn't know anybody. And, uh, and it was hard for some, some folks, some young folks to make that transition to, to say, I have to go where the work is come with me.

Uh, so you were incredibly fortunate, but you also made the most of that, right? The fact that you showed up to that, to that dinner with demo reels in tow, I assume on probably on DVD? V-H-S!, , I remember those days. ,

Dave: VHS... and I, and I hope that there were like, you know, the short play ones just for reels.

Not like a, not like a four hour VHS tape with like two minutes of reel at the head .

Um, I heard, I, I remember so many stories before and after we got there of, oh, hey, remember John? He graduated right after us. He drove out to L. A. Himself, and after six months, he went back, and now he's working X, Y, Z. I heard so many times.

That's why I feel so grateful and lucky to all these, all these people that were there. I mean, obviously, I knew what I was doing, and I could, I could do the work, but. It doesn't matter if you can do the work. If you can't, if you don't have that in, you know, just applying to a job is not going to necessarily get it.

You got to network network networking.

Paul: Yeah, networking is the key to everything. Uh, but to some degree, it is, it is a war of attrition, right? It's, uh, uh, you, the, the, the folks who go out there and they. They leave after six months could, could month seven have been the time they met somebody, you know, um, I always think about, uh, John Krasinski right before he got the, uh, before he got The Office, he was ready to quit.

He was ready to leave LA and his mom sent him money and. And said, honey, you just got to stick it out. Just, just a couple more months. I'm going to send you money, just stick it out. And like the next week or two, he, he booked the office career took off. Right. That's wild. Yeah. So it's a, it's a war of attrition.

It's it's knowing your stuff. It's being in the right place at the right time, being open to opportunities and and just having the persistence to stick it out. I think, is, uh, is the magic formula. You know, again, as a, as a former educator and still a mentor for a lot of these young people, I get asked, you know, what's the, what's the secret?

Well, that's it. It's, There is a formula. It's everybody's combination of, you know, of persistence and networking and skill is different. Um, it's a combination of all of those things. Oh, yeah. You're trained. You're trained. We'll come. You just don't know. It's hard to know when. Absolutely. So, so you transition from, uh, from Jay and Silent Bob strike back to.

And what, what studio were you at when you were working there?

Dave: Yeah, I, um, so I finished doing Silent Bob and, uh, like a week after that show wrapped, I decided, Hey, I'm just going to drive up to the, to the studio and say, hi, for, for no apparent reason, I just felt like I should. And Scott was there. Cause he was staffed, um, Scott Metzger was staffed.

He was working on something and, and I just said, I'm hanging out. He said, Hey, do you. Want to do a night gig for me because I don't want to do it and and I'm like, yes, and he said, here, I'm going to show you something and he pulled up Boujou. Nobody knew what it was at the time. And he's like, this tracks for you automatically.

We need to, you've got to do some tracking for this music video, this other place. So he showed me Boujou and it was really cool. Uh, cause I had been tracking in Maya live before that, which was like very interesting tool. Um, anyway, I go over to this place called 525, and I meet a few different people that I would ultimately know for decades after that.

That was kind of like the 1st domino falls there at 525, and it just kept going. So I worked on a Ginuwine music video, um, tracking some. Footage of like a set, just like a camera pushing upset. And we had to do a set extension on this apartment building. It was just one floor and we had to do a CG section.

I just did the tracking. I wasn't doing the CG at the time, but I, but like I didn't like an hour. It was, it was super fast and everybody was really impressed. Um, again, right place, the right time. I knew what I was doing, but Boujou helped. Um, and then I got called back and called back and then eventually I got called back for the smallville pilot.

They were doing that shot where the court where he had to catch the bus and the corn like lays down or spreads when he runs through the corn when Clark runs through the corn. And from that point on, um, I was a regular there doing all kinds of fun CG stuff, a little Bow Wow music video, all like a CG baseball flying into space, all kinds of fun, fun stuff.

And that facility, like I said, that facility, golden age of visual effects, it was a commercial house, high end commercial house. And it was at fifth street in Santa Monica. Um, you could see the rooftop was this, like, penthouse rooftop. They had a bunch of flame, flame bays, Henry bays, all this. Classic visual effects stuff and we could see sailboats on the water and it was crazy full kitchen.

It was, it was crazy. I've never been to a place like that since that was just like, tell where all the money was going. They had clients walking in. They had, like, I remember, like, a very serious musicians coming in to see their videos put together at the end and ultimately through those relationships. I would then go to work at Radium, L. A., and that's where I met these people, Lonnie Peristier, Chris Jones, Andrew Orloff, they all, um, Rocco Pascianino. These guys knew Joss Whedon. They had been building these relationships up to that point. I was working on Angel and Buffy, and I think the first season of Smallville carried over there as well.

So, uh, we're doing all 3, if my memory serves me, and this was in early 2002 and, and, and from that point forward, you know, I, I worked side by side with Andrew. He was another great mentor for me. He was from a 3D background. So we got along really well. And, uh, quick anecdote about that, that I mentioned that I wanted to mention, I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, um, prior to school and as a kid, you know, as a younger, as a younger person, and I remember sitting on the floor in my apartment in Florida, just about to start Full Sail.

And I remember seeing the shot where a knife floats through the camera and like stops in front of somebody's face. I can't remember what season it was. It was probably season four of Buffy or something. And I remember going, I'm going to work on that.

I want to do that. You know, because before I knew how to do it, but I remember, I remember distinctly seeing that and doing that.

And then through some crazy journey that my, that the universe has me on. I was. Nominated for an Emmy for working on Buffy, so it's crazy. Another thing that just like in the 4th, in like the 1st or 2nd year of my career, you know, being in the right place at the right time, but also helping develop the Buffy dusting effect.

We did it in Angel and Buffy. I did tests for the Blade tv series that didn't go at the time, but we were doing an upgraded version of, of that, of that effect. Um, there was fire involved and, and all kinds of fun, fun things. It was just, it was just an awesome roller coaster out of the gate.

Paul: Yeah. It sounds like it.

So you've thrown out a bunch of, uh, A bunch of names of, um, software and hardware, some of which I haven't heard in years. Like Boujou takes me back, Maya Live, um, and you mentioned Flame and Henry. So again, with the thought in mind that my, our viewers, our listeners are not super technical. They might not know what any of this stuff is.

So you mentioned Boujou 3d tracking software, um, not around anymore. Right.

Dave: I don't think it's supported. I have a copy that I use often.

Paul: Um, yeah, I haven't, I haven't heard anybody mentioned Boujou in a long time. It's been pretty much supplanted in the industry by like PF track and Syntheyes and some other, some other stuff, but it's, it's pretty much Basically 3d tracking software tracks that the camera, uh, Maya, Maya live was their version of, of 3d tracking.

Um, Maya is still around. It's still, still the sort of the flagship product out there for, uh, 3d animation, although there's, there's lots of others now, but it, it, it's a still a top end, uh, software, but you mentioned Flame and Henry, just give us a little, a little kernel of, uh, knowledge about what those were.

Dave: Sure. Um, so the Henry was a compositing tool. Um, I think back then, and even now with Flame and things, but the hardware and the software were designed together, not, um, Hey, is it windows or Mac? It doesn't matter what you put it on. Is the graphics card good enough? That's kind of what you talk about today.

When you talk about software capabilities back then, um, the Henry was its own thing. You bought it. By itself, and it was like, I don't know, 100, 000 just like insane money, but it was for doing 100, 000 music videos. It was for doing high end, um, commercial work. So it was compositing, but it had custom built tools that did tracking and color correction.

Um, all kinds of things like that and, and, um, Henry's definitely aren't around anymore. Uh, the flame is still around. That's a very, very popular, um, industry standard tool. Even still, though, those you buy the hardware and the software are designed together, so, um, it's basically, you can upload the footage into the system and then everything runs real time, like.

And not like a, not like an Unreal engine kind of real time. Like, you know, when you hit render and after effects or premiere and it goes that, that, that, that, that, that, or when you. When you try to like roto and then check your, your progress and the screen has to like downres to keep up and you see it upres and downres and nothing is, you can't see your work happening in real time, the Flame, the work happens in real time.

Like, you can color correct and edit and do things and it happens right away. Super powerful. Lots of cool little tools and things like that. So most commercials, music videos, all of those are, are conformed and finished on, on a flame, a flame machine. There's also smoke and smoke flame. There's a couple other ones that focused on one specific process or another.

Paul: Smoke, flame, fire. Yeah. Uh, uh, And those are all Autodesk now, that's all Autodesk. Right. And then they, for a while, they had Combustion, which was their, their desktop software. I used to teach that. Yeah. And then Foundry came in and they were like, Oh, smoke flame. We're Nuke. That's a great name. That's a great name.

Uh, Aside from what you've talked about, uh, and I'm going to circle back to Smallville in a second, but aside from what you've talked about, um, you know, what are some of your, your biggest career highlights? What are the, the, what are the things that you look back on and go, man, I'm really proud of that shot or that show or that sequence?

Uh, or I'm really, and you've mentioned a few names. I'm really grateful that I worked with, uh, You know, this person or that person, just like really briefly looking back, what's like your top two or three things that you would, that you reflect on as being super proud of?

Dave: Yeah. You know, um, meeting those guys, Lonnie, Chris, and Andrew and Rocco that really got me going on Buffy and Angel.

And then, and so those shows are just so near to my heart. Like I found some swag, uh, as we're going through our storage. Yeah. Room I have this to do with it, but I have this messenger bag. It's black line with red inside and it just has Buffy the Vampire Slayer embroidered on the front of it. It's like, it's like a legitimate 20 year old perfect condition like that show just means so much to me.

Um, that's definitely 1 of my career highlights with the Emmy nomination, which we lost to. Firefly, which was ourselves like Zoic one for Firefly. I think we're up against enterprise and, um, uh, so happy that Zoic that Zoic one, it stayed in the family, um, a show that happened shortly after that, that I am also really proud of that.

Um, actually don't think about a lot, but True Blood. So I worked on the pilot for True Blood. That show turned into a massive show. Um, and I remembered working on the pilot and I got to do the shots. The shot where, uh, I believe Sookie first gets bitten by, by, um, Bill. And you see her teeth, like, pop out for the first time.

And she's like laying on her side and profiling. And I got to do these. They were like, how do the teeth come out? They don't just go chk. You know that we did round and round and round and round of do the teeth unfold? Do they shoot down? Do the old, do the, your original teeth disappear and the vampire teeth come in?

It was really fun process. Um, that was with Alan Ball who was famous for, um, Six Feet Under. So True Blood was a huge show to work on. We would have viewing parties at my house and everybody would, we'd all get to see, um, my work.

Paul: Golden Age of HBO right there.

Dave: Golden Age, oh man. Right?

Paul: Six Feet Under, True Blood, The Wire, The Sopranos.

Yeah, it's.

Dave: Yeah. Yes, absolutely, man. What a again, just like crescendo like this, this awesome thing. And then, and then everything changed as, as I'm getting my, like, Netflix DVD in the mail, you know, all stacked on the, on the desk by the door. Those little paper envelopes. Right? My gosh. Um, there was a string of features that we got to work on because there.

There was a time before the tax incentives and all of that were really, really pushing work out of, out of LA in the United States for post. Anyway, um, Van Helsing was a feature film that I got to work on. Um, Spider Man 2, I got to work on, um, Premium Rush, which was a remake of that Kevin Bacon movie called Quick Silver.

It's basically Joseph Gordon Levitt on a bicycle in New York city. And there were all kinds of cool shots that we did. Um, I'm a huge car nut and we got to do all of these CG cars for that show. Um, they would have Joseph Gordon Levitt. He did a lot of his own stunts. Um, they just put down sandbags in the road.

They'd have him like chaotically weave around the sandbags. And then we had to put in all of these cars, taxis, all different kinds of CG cars. And we used, um, craft simulation director. It was a vehicle simulation tool and it was a plugin for Maya, at the time. Um, And Maya eventually bought that and I think they wrote it in.

Um, but that was a huge show that a buddy of mine and I, Scott Rosecrans got to really just do that whole show ourselves. We did the pipeline. the animation, how to export animation and import it in for lighting. And, um, that was a really fun project to work on. Um,

Paul: what, what year is that? It was in the two thousands.

That's pretty, that's almost a decade after like the digital cars and, uh, the Matrix Reloaded. Uh, it feels like sort of a natural extension of, of the work that was done for that movie, right? I mean, we, we sort of take digital cars for granted now. Totally, you know, um, yeah, but if you think about everything that we do, it's, it's a continuum, right?

We're, we're talking about, you know, the, the, the evolution of, you know, from flame to combustion to nuke, et cetera, the same thing. It's all of these, all these techniques, all of this, these tools, they, they continue to migrate from one studio to another from one, one production to another. And it sounds like.

Sounds like you got kind of pigeonholed in the vampire genre for a little bit there probably because you guys were the vampire guys

Dave: I believe so. I mean, we would see the films come out like Blade two, when Blade two came out, we were seeing, we're seeing that work when the vampires would burn and, and actually, and I think that was 3d studio max.

And what was the tool at the time? They had a dynamics tool. That was awesome. We were still using Maya, just off the shelf, Maya particles. Um, But, you know, the budget in time, that was just what we had. That was what, that was what we could do. The turnaround was, those were like. 10 day turnarounds on those shows, too, which is unheard of, um, today.

So, yeah, the tools were just the tools just kept trickling down. Um, and, and, you know, from Paul, you know, going way back, like, Paul's work with his HDRI process for lighting and capturing an environment. Um, I remember when that kind of came through, and when we all realized that we were lighting wrong, and we had to, we had to light a linear, you know, in linear space, and, and because we were like, in the beginning, we were lighting in srgb space, which.

Basically, you're just working with only a quarter of the range that you really could be working with. Um, so many, so many things that just that just developed along the way trial by fire. I remember that was something else that I complained about in the off times or in that maybe when, when in the fire was there was never any time for dev.

There was never any time for research. It was, hey, this job booked, it's due in 3 weeks. Mm hmm. Go figure it out. And so you would just have to figure it out in production. Um, things change later on, but that's how it was back then. We were comping our own shots too. We were. We were delivering the shot from beginning to end.

And, uh, that's also how you learn how to be efficient because you're either going to fail or you're going to figure it out, move on, figure it out, move on, figure it out, move on.

Paul: I mean, this is, this is a great example of why I like to bring TV. Folks on to this show, right? The mission is VFX for Indies.

It's really geared for independent filmmakers. And so maybe the correlation between television and, and indie film isn't, isn't super apparent to people who haven't worked in both like I have. But what you're saying is it's the same stuff we deal with in the indie film space, in the low to medium budget film space, there's never enough time.

There's never enough money. We're using off the shelf software. We don't have time to write. New plugins, new purpose built simulations or whatever for the vampire disintegration effects, the stuff that they were probably writing new tools for, for blade two, you were having to do. With off the shelf Maya for True Blood or whatever, right?

It's the, it's apples and oranges, trying to compare a TV budget and timetable to a feature film budget and timetable. But at the same time, especially now, viewers are so accustomed to things looking great, that when we tune into the latest Marvel show on Disney we expect it to look as good as Avengers Endgame.

Right. It's, if it doesn't, you're like, ah, yeah.

Dave: Jump on Reddit, see the CG in that show last night.

Paul: Exactly.

So, you know, what are, what are some of the lessons you've learned working on TV that are specifically about how to, how to deal with those limitations of time and money? What are some lessons that you've learned you think could apply to the indie film space?

Dave: Yeah, I mean, regardless of your time and budget, right? You, you, if you have visual effects, you, you must get a visual effects professional involved as soon as possible. Now, speaking for myself. I tell people I love to talk shop all the time. You don't need to pay me until you need me on set, you know, at midnight helping, you know, shoot plates, but I I'll break.

I think most visual effects people will be this way. They'll, they'll, they'll help you. They'll, they'll maybe read. Sections of your script, or you tell them about an idea that you have and and just getting the getting the knee jerk reaction from a seasoned visual effects professional supervisor artist to help you understand where to shoot something, how to shoot something, maybe use something you don't need to shoot.

And I think that will, that will obviously help you at the end of the day, because. You won't have a bunch of footage you didn't need to shoot or you'll have the footage that you needed to shoot and didn't. I think that is kind of the most broad advice that I could give. Um, you know,

that was, that was really, I think, the best, the best advice. And then once you, once you have someone, then you just got to plan the hell out of it. Even the smallest thing, even the smallest thing. Um, because that visual effects person is gonna. Know how something turned out after filming it, working on it, getting it to screen.

There's so many variables between the beginning and the end. And it's just super important to have someone to guide you.

Paul: What do filmmakers consistently get wrong about visual effects, regardless of their budget, regardless of, of the, the size of the project? What, what do you see filmmakers, directors, producers, whatever, consistently getting wrong.

And I know you've seen this. You've been in the business long enough that you've seen some trends. I'm sure.

Dave: The thing that I see often, whether it's on a, a small series or, or even the biggest, the biggest series is planning for how many visual effects cuts you're going to have at the end of the day.

Like you'll have an early production meeting. The director wants, no, we've have to see this effect more than three times. It must, it must happen this many times. And then they talk about budget. And then eventually they're like, no, we're, we're just going to see it three times. That's it. They haven't, we haven't even filmed yet.

And they're like, no, it's three times. And then in the budget, they go three visual effects shots. And those shots are a thousand dollars each. Then we shoot the editor, gets their hands on it, director's cut, and it comes back and there's 12 cuts of that, of that effect. And, and it's between the visual effects supervisor and the producers and the director.

To have the best round of communication. Now, it's not always possible because sometimes the producers, you know, they know what they're going to need at the end of the day to hand over to the studio for their show, because at the end of the day, you're making the product for the people that are paying for it.

Tech, technically speaking, and being honest about the budget and what's going to, and what's going to be in, in the show ahead of time is a big, is a big variable that I see is very inconsistent. Um, More often than not, the cut that comes from the editor after filming is done, but before visual effects has started, um, the budget changes a lot, and it, and it's, it doesn't have to.

Sometimes it does. But honestly, I've worked on enough shows that have gone both ways and, and having everyone on the same page, having meetings early. Um, and you're going to, everybody's going to have a better idea of what to expect instead of having a big surprise at the end with like, what? Our visual effects budget's only 100, 000, but this budget's at 250, 000.

Hopefully the visual effects people told you how much, what to expect in the beginning. That's a perfect scenario, but that's what I see often.

Paul: Yeah, it's always a challenge when, uh, when somebody comes to us with a script and says, I need a VFX budget for this. And it's, it's just words on paper at that point.

You know, we can make educated guesses. We could go through with the highlighter and highlight the things that are going, that surely seem like they're going to be VFX. And we can make a guesstimate like, Oh, it's, you know, this, this guy disintegrating is probably going to be, you know, a master shot. You know, and then a close up of his reaction and then maybe, uh, you know, uh, medium shot for, for the effective finish.

Okay, that's three shots. It's all guesswork. Uh, that's why I tell people previs, previs, previs storyboards, right? I'm not saying everybody needs to be Pixar, but look at the way Pixar develops a movie, right? They make the movie dozens and dozens of times. Right. Because they're, they're starting from we're recording voiceover and then we're, we're, we're laying out drawings.

We're doing an animatic, you know, it's just the boards really. And then we'll do rough animations and then we'll revise the script and we'll do new voiceover. And then we'll cut in new storyboards as sequences change and then new rough animations. And it is this living, breathing, moving document for years.

Before they start clicking final render on stuff, you know, they've made the movie. They've seen 20 iterations of the movie before, you know, they, they click final render. So yeah, not saying, not saying of, uh, an indie filmmaker needs to do that, but man, that is a good model for, at least for your VFX sequences.

Dave: It absolutely is. And I got to experience that heavily on The Flash on the last couple of seasons of the flash, which was just a year or two ago. Um, I got very, got on a very good page with the producer, the post, um, the post supervisor and producer, um, Jeff Garrett, and we were, we got to like, texting relationship.

We're like, oh, what about that shot? How many shots is that going to be? How many cuts? I was doing storyboards for them for the full CG action shots and, and it was a wonderful, wonderful relationship because him and I would, we would speak the same language where, oh, well, if Barry, Has to land, throw a lightning bolt, turn and run.

Well, we know he has to land, start the throw, then you're going to cut to the other side of him. We both understood the cutting pattern for the show and what to expect. And that's something I put that in my resume because I feel proud of it, right? I have a good understanding of action cutting pattern sequences from an editorial standpoint.

Because you don't just go, he throws a lightning bolt and it hits the guy. It's not two cuts. That's it. Nobody cuts a movie or a sequence like that. You have to establish the character. There's just patterns that are just basic and understanding that is, um, getting the chance to work with a team that all understands that together.

It becomes fun. And that's what that's what we want as stressful as the deliveries are and the budgets are when you can speak the same language with a different department. Um, It's, it's a wonderful experience.

Paul: That's one of the reasons why you see filmmakers, directors working with the same VFX supervisors, the same cinematographers, the same editors for their entire career, because you develop that shorthand, but also visual effects people have to have some basic knowledge of filmmaking. Right. They, it's, we have to know all of the technical stuff. We have to know all of all the match moving and compositing and all of that. But we also have to understand camera work, editing, you know, the line of action continuity. We have to understand all of that sort of stuff to be able to serve the, the director's vision.

Right. And to be able to understand. Yeah, this is not two shots. This is six shots to tell the story. Uh, and that's again, that's, that's one of the challenges when you're, when you're looking at just the written page, you're looking at a scene and trying to understand, especially when you're working with a new, a new client, a new, um, team, just trying to understand how are they going to tell their story?

You know, is it, I've had clients who want to, you know, they want to do rapid fire cuts and I've had clients who do these long meditative shots in slow motion. We just, we just did a film, uh, or a teaser for film where we, we were working from, from the page, from the script. And the director, um, storyboarded and he cut the sequence with music with the storyboards to, to show me this is the pacing.

So I knew, okay, this sequence of the character falling through the black void, this is not you know, 10 cuts. This is one long slow motion shot as he, as he falls. Okay. So that changes how I have to shoot it, how I have to bid it, all of that sort of stuff, and it really comes down to communication, you know, and that's what you're talking about, the, this shorthand, this, that you developed with, uh, with the producers on the flash, um, uh, you know, the, the communication to be able to make sure that, you know, everybody's on the same page and the longer you work together.

The, the shorter, the more and more shorthand you develop and the, and the, the easier communication becomes.

Dave: Absolutely. Yeah.

Paul: Thinking back, what's the biggest challenge or maybe the toughest shot in your career? The one that, that, you know, you really pulled your hair out about, uh, and, and you know, what was the problem and how did you solve it?

Dave: I, I was thinking a lot about this and I don't like to say, however true it is that. Like I said, there was a lot of, Oh, we just have to figure it out kind of thing. And there's not a, there's not time to build a tool for that. That a lot of my career has been brute force, which is funny. Cause I like brute force is like a global elimination process.

It's kind of a fun, fun analogy because I don't have time to bake all my lighting. And I don't have time to do all of these tricks to make my scene render faster. I like the way it looks now render. And then hopefully it's done in the morning. That's kind of the way things have gone in a way. Like. So, for example, Van Helsing, um, I think I only did, Zoic only did a handful of shots for that movie, but I was handed, being the, uh, vampire expert, um, I was handed that, this big shot in that movie where I They're at a masquerade ball and, uh, then he'll sing and, and his partner's identity have been compromised.

And now all of the vampires at this party are chasing them. They run upstairs into this room and he has this, um, basically just like a grenade, but it's a UV light bomb grenade. And he runs in the room, sets it down, starts it, and then they jump out the window. But at the same time, it's like 18 vampires.

Burst through the door, and it's this low camera angle. The camera pulls back as they all as they all run into the door and the bomb is right there at the bottom of frame. So it was maybe like a 4 2nd, 5 2nd shot, but we were using off the shelf. Maya. It was also had a slow motion moment, so they would all run in the bomb would start and then we would.

We would stop to slow motion and then everything would go like this. The light would come out. You would see their skin eat away to the bones all in slow motion. And then it would go to real time with all these bones crashing in front of the camera. And, uh, I think the bones disintegrated too, but. At the time, our process for Buffy was we had a rig.

We called him Dusty and it was a Maya character with a skeleton. Oh, I think we added a skeleton to that. So we added a human skeleton. And then there was a geometry. Polygon shell as the, as the thing. And we had different textures that we would render out from that skin geometry. Anyway, basically we had to by hand, Roto match, Roto animate, however you want to say every character in that scene.

And so I called my buddy, Eric, who was working across town at the time. And I said, I need you to come help me with this shot. And so him and I Roto, Roto animated in 3d, all 18 of those characters, and Once we got through that, which that probably took weeks and weeks anyway, while I'm developing the UV bomb on the side, but it was figuring out how to do this slow motion moment, which if you've ever worked with particles, Maya particles or particles in general, back then there was no like, Oh, just retain the cash.

And it's going to be fine that you couldn't do that. Um, so we had to like run it all real time. Then pick the section that was slow, re simulate all of it from scratch, because now it's four times slower than normal speed. It was just a massive four month long shot. One shot, four months. Not something I was used to, because I was used to You know, 5 shots 1 week, um, and it was a huge just task of patience of rendering and caching over again.

And Eric and I did it together, but it turned out looking really nice and funny about combustion at the time. So it was using combustion. Um, and Helsing was 2004 how, um, was trying out combustion. So, um, Chris Jones was compositing the shot by himself on combustion in the other room. And I remember many late nights of swearing and, and asking for different things and why is this broken and, and, and figuring it out.

But. You know, that was 1 of them. That was 1 of the biggest early achievements. That was just an absolute nightmare of a shot to pull off. Um, because of all the layers, like, it was like, 4 and 5 and 6 people on top of each other. And when you have to erode somebody behind 4 other people. We what do you erode from?

Because there's four people and we weren't painting clean plates of these people. We weren't like repainting these people like you would do today or just creating full CG versions of these people. That's that's what you do today, right? This was projecting. We just project the plate on the geometry. You get what you get, put some glow over it.

Uh, that's kind of glow and smoke and dust. And that's kind of, that was kind of a big shot.

Paul: Yeah, it sounds like it. It's pretty impressive. I have to go back and rewatch that movie.

So you've kind of been through the, the, the golden age of VFX as you, as you talk about it. And now we're in a, we're in a very weird period for VFX, especially in Los Angeles.

Where do you, where do you see things now? And where do you see the VFX industry in? 10 years, you know, what, what tech are you excited about? What challenges do you think the industry is going to face? I know this is a very broad question, so answer it. How you, how you like,

Dave: Oh yeah, the challenges and the next 10 years for visual effects, you know, right now everybody is talking about generative AI.

Um, some people think it's going to take over some don't, you know, right now, I don't think it will, cause I'm seeing uses for it. In production right now, it's being used in production right now, but in a very narrow use case. Um, however, in 10 years, um, there's some really amazing things that that are out there right now that I think will will be adopted.

Um, you know, a lot of the face generation and recreation, um, seems like a technology that is not going away. And I think it'll get changed and and kind of adjusted into the pipeline in some. In some form, but you know, an actor's likeness is really special and it's being fought for very, very, very strongly right now about who gets to use it and how, um, you know, back to the camera tracking.

I think that camera tracking and, and utility things are going to continue to improve. There's AI in Nuke in compositing packages that are coming out right now, like depth maps. Um, Normal maps, all of those things are going to be like, it's like just one of those parts of a process that now just becomes automatic.

You don't need someone to roto 1000 frames of a person, you know, like, honestly, that technology can be, that process can be done much more efficiently to make time for, for more of the art. That's what we always say in a process is like, Oh, that show was terrible because we spent so much time just solving problems as opposed to a show that your tools are working efficiently.

You can have fun and spend time on the art. On the storytelling, instead of, instead of just trying to fix stuff that's broken, you never get actually, you never get a chance to actually do what you wanted to do, or even give the client what they really wanted. Um, so in, in, in, in the next, I mean, God, man, the next 10 years, I would say.

There'll be a lot more generative 3d things working pretty well. Um, I don't know if modeling assets from scratch will really be a thing. That's probably going to become much more of just scan it and you're done. But the thing that I think that won't change, and a lot of people argue with me about this, we like watching stories told by other humans.

We don't like as, as there's so much cool stuff online right now that you see, but every single one of those images. Doesn't look like a person. It looks like a human, but I, but I don't think it looks like a person. I don't think it's going to be interesting to watch a story about that. I think, I think all of the greatest movies and shows that we all love were because of people's experience when they were a kid or when they were growing up or a hard time they had or an incredible experience that they had.

And I think that won't change. I just think the tools will will begin to make the storytelling easier. And that's a romantic, idealistic way to think about it, but that's how I feel about it.

Paul: No, I think you're right. I think, you know, it's the difference between reading your Wikipedia page and having a conversation with you.

That's a good example. Yeah, you're right. And if you think about it, a lot of what we love about the stuff we love develop because of happy accidents. Or things that happened that the creator could never have anticipated. Great example. One that AI would, would have rendered completely impossible is imagine a version of breaking bad where, where Vince Gilligan created the entire thing in AI.

What happens? He kills Jesse at the end of the first season. Okay. Sure. Totally different show. That was his original intent. The show became what it was. Because Aaron Paul and Brian Cranston had such magical chemistry between them that they said, we can't kill pink, but we have to keep him on. We love working with Aaron.

We have to keep him on. Right? So the version of breaking bad that Vince, that some alternate universe, Vince Gilligan cooked up with mid journey and chat. GPT kills Jesse Pinkman, you know, four episodes in and it doesn't, it just isn't the show that we, that we know and love.

Dave: Wonderful example. I have a, I have a short example too.

Um, this is not a famous movie, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. It might be famous in some, in some circles, but a friend of mine, yeah. Coffee's for closers. Exactly. Um, the scene with Alec Baldwin was not in the script and he ad libbed the scene. That scene is incredible. Yes. But, but you know why? Because Alec Baldwin is awesome.

And just because of the characters, incredible cast in that movie. But like, it's not a super special movie. Look at this scene that it was born from it. It's like,

Paul: that, that is literally the only scene. Anybody remembers from that?

Dave: Exactly. You see this watch.

Paul: Yeah. Like the leads a week and you're fucking weak.

Dave: And he could act that way because of how he grew up. You know, it's, it's like, It's exciting and frustrating too that, you know, AI can do what it can do just because it can observe and learn from. Everything that we've done up to this point. So it's like a, it's, it's very controversial, lots of cool things going to come from it, but, but we all just need to keep telling our own stories and I think we're going to be, we're going to get through it.

Somehow.

Paul: Absolutely. Uh, real quick before I let you go, I've seen that, that, uh, painting on the wall behind you. If, if you're listening on one of the podcast apps and not watching on YouTube, I'm sorry, this is not for you, but yes, that one right there that looks, uh, remarkably like, uh, Like Lama Lang from Smallville.

Tell us it is.

Dave: Yeah. So when I worked Zoic in the early days, I worked with this incredible artist named Jeff, uh, Jeff West, and he came from painting lightning on the power Rangers original series. So he was this specialist, incredible artist, and he came over as compositor and we connected on all things that we worked on.

And, um, we talked about Smallville all the time and he drew this for me. He just draw. Like you go in his office and he just has sketches just laying everywhere. He was like a serial artist, but he drew this awesome Lana Lang. It's in color pencil. It's, um, it's really special. Oh, wow. Really cool color pencil.

Um, that is fantastic. But, uh, Jeff is still Jeff is still kicking it. Um, he did some stuff for me a couple of years ago, actually. Nice.

Paul: That's very cool. That's a, that's a great, uh, memento of your, your time on the show and, and also celebration of your, your fandom of the show, uh, sounds like, uh, and a, and a good remembrance of your, your, uh, friend and colleague.

That's, that's great. Uh, anything you want to plug, anything you got going on or, uh, or how can people, you know, find out more about you or connect with you online.

Dave: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I have a new website updated davefunston.Com. Um, I have a little company as well. Desert Pixels that I'm getting up and running.

Um. And that's desertpixelscreative.Com. Uh, that's really, that's really where it is right now. Um, you know, working on getting some, some new gigs going on just like everybody else right now, uh, as the, the business is, is, is still in the lurch from the strikes. But, um, you know, there's, there's stuff going on.

I'm on LinkedIn too, Dave Funston on LinkedIn. You'll see me. And, um, this has been awesome chat, Paul. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Paul: Thanks for being on Dave. Really, uh, appreciate your time.

I'm sure my audience, uh, loved hearing your stories and, uh, and yeah, everybody check out, uh, check out Dave's website.

So. Well, everyone that, uh, wraps up this episode of VFX for Indies for Foxtrot X-Ray and our little show here on Paul DeNigris, the host. And if you liked what you heard slash saw on the show today, please uh, like, and follow, leave us a comment. Tell us, uh. What you thought of the show. If you've got further follow up questions that I can ask Dave and relay to you through the comment section, I'd be happy to do that.

And make sure you check out our back catalog, including last season's full length episodes, a series of shorts we've been doing about the VFX process and our special presentation about. VFX and gun safety that we released earlier this year. So check that out at vfxforindies.Com. Thanks so much for your time and attention, and I will see you next time.