This series unfolds our Academy trainers’ journey at Technicolor Group. Highlighting industry experts who bring their real-life experiences to recent graduates who want to break into the VFX industry.
Hi Bhaskarachari! Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I am a Principal Compositing trainer and Lead compositor at MPC Technicolor India. With almost 16 years of total experience in the creative VFX world, 12 years in digital compositing, in which around 6 years of strong working knowledge of compositing training.
My work experience includes high-profile feature films, animation films, and Hollywood Oscar-nominated films. I am an excellent educator, who enjoys teaching compositing, and gains satisfaction by helping others succeed in this VFX field. In addition to my creative skills, I am also a technical problem solver, passionate about photography, and interested in exploring different types of movies, I love to work on them too.
What drew you to Compositing?
Obviously, the answer would be movies, which mesmerized me and lead me to this creative field! In fact, in the beginning, I never imagined myself as a compositor who would work on VFX for movies. I was completely unaware of this job, even though it had existed for many decades. But when I delved deeper into it, after experiencing the joy of success, I gradually fell in love with composing.The satisfaction and respect I received from various people boosted me to the next level!
How would you explain what Compositing is to someone who has never heard of it?
It’s a bit difficult of a job to explain to a layman, but we can try to correlate it to a tasty recipe that contains a lot of secret ingredients – the end results of the final Compositing is an eye feast on the big screen for the audience. It contains a lot of skills involved with it to produce photo-realistic output.
What was your favorite part about working on Transformers?
There are many of them that are my favorite, including: a few shots in which we worked on a dangerous watch – an old man explaining the seriousness of it, the underwater sequence with some crew searching for the powerful stuff that was buried with Merlin’s body, and the last one is an unknown material surfing on the overall body of the hero!
What sort of existing skills should someone have before joining the Compositing course at The Academy?
It involves two very important factors: fundamentals of technical and creative skills in compositing software, and communication skills. Since digital composition is the finalizing department, it depends upon the support of other departments. However, as professional compositors, we must possess many skills such as:
1. Rotoscoping (which separates FG and BG)
2. Prep (removal of track markers, ropes, and rigs unwanted crew/shooting equipment…etc)
3. Grading (need to match the source color with the reference color)
4. Keying (Bluescreen and Greenscreen are the replacement for live-action/CG backgrounds).
5. Tracking (2D and camera tracking)
6. 2d_Element_Comp (working with Pre captured, or computer-generated elements like fire, smoke, rain, etc.
7. Retime (for matching edit refs and speed up speed down the source footage)
8. CG_Comp (working with computer-generated images)
What’s your favorite thing about being a part of The Academy?
The desire to learn new things and the joy of sharing knowledge manifest in sharing and caring about everything.
How would you describe your VFX career journey, so far, in one word?
The experience is similar to a voyage! (An adventure boat journey in the ocean). Initially, it will be a bit challenging, but once we master the skills necessary for composting, it will be facile! Similar to how tidal waves have a negligible effect on a boat in the middle of the ocean but on the seashore, it will have a pronounced effect.
Discover more about our fascinating talent here.
