Hey all, I’m Tom. I’ve been meaning to join this site for years; I don’t know what took me so long! I’ve been working at Digital Domain for the past 7 weeks as a compositing intern on the upcoming Percy Jackson & the Olympians. It’s been incredible so far; I’m under the direct guidance of VFXTalk’s own Aruna, which is basically the best possible scenario.
I have been compositing for a few years on student projects, doing background replacements, basic greenscreens, roto, and incorporating simple CG elements. I’ve also studied film editing and photography. I wrote my thesis on what makes certain effects stand the test of time.
Aruna and I are working through all the tenets of feature film compositing in order. I started with paint, doing marker removals using frame-by-frame handpainting as well as procedural painting. We moved from there to roto and then keying. This might sound like basic stuff (that you’ve done before), but trust me, it’s a whole different world when there are so many people (and companies) working together to make one seamless project. It can’t just look good. It has to be pixel perfect, down to every last color value and keyframe.
Aruna has eagle eyes; he catches everything. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard "You’re eating into the edges in the red channel of your key" or "I think that <insert object here> is a little too transparent." He doesn’t hold my hand and I don’t ask him to. He is teaching me to be incredibly thorough, checking every possible part of the image, in different viewing conditions, etc. The whole team of compositors here at DD is dedicated and very precise. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to learn directly from them.
Here’s my student reel, the same one I submitted to DD at SIGGRAPH 2009.
Thomas Dane Wagener – Student Reel 480p QuickTime
It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff, so I’ll ask Aruna to offer some feedback on why they chose me, what they liked about my reel/resume/interview so that maybe you all can benefit from it. Digital Domain’s new internship program seriously rocks. Mike Lusby set it up, and there are 12 of us spread between the different departments. We’re not coffee-cup fillers; we’re doing real work on the show and you’ll see it onscreen in February.
Cheers, Tom
