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.

Hosted by Foxtrot X-Ray’s founder and “chief pixel pusher” Paul DeNigris, who brings to the conversation 30 years of experience in both independent filmmaking and visual effects, as well as 20 years of experience in teaching all aspects of digital filmmaking at the university level.

For episodes, transcripts, and more, visit http://vfxforindies.com

For more information about what Foxtrot X-Ray can do for your film, visit https://foxtrotxray.com

Transcript

Meet VFX Supervisor Dave Funston

Paul DeNigris 0:00

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, a 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. Thanks, paul, great to be here On this show.

Early Animation Passion and Education

Paul DeNigris 0:58

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 vfxforindiescom. 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, while I was living in LA, 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 Funston 1:48

Certainly my background and education in animation and my fascination with visual effects started, you know, probably pre-high school. I remember my grandmother buying me boxes of little notepads and I began making flip books and it started with an obsession of Mortal Kombat and fighting games like that, and I would just draw stick figures cutting each other's heads off in little flip books and I would just go through notebook after notebook covering only 1% of the page, and then that notebook's done. I also then remember watching the Abyss is one of my favorite movies and there was a behind the scenes on the Abyss and this was in I don't know mid 90s, maybe maybe late 90s, and that really lit 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. And there was a class I heard about with these super high powered Macintosh computers they were the beige G3 desktops at the time. So anyway, I took this class. It was called commercial design and it changed my life.

Dave Funston 3:27

I wasn't quite sure what I was doing with my life at that time, but my teacher, susan Cook, who I'm still connected with today, 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, and, and she saw me accelerating my interests. We did a bunch of other stuff too four color printing press and, 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.

Dave Funston 4:27

But then we, uh, we did a tour in my senior year of downtown, of, of 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 first minute I walked in they had all the equipment. It was all professional grade, high-end facilities and and, um, 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.

Journey to Los Angeles

Dave Funston 5:11

Um, after I graduated I went straight there and, and, and my first day of class was January 3rd 2000. So it was the whole Y2K thing. It was weird, super weird. But guess what? Nothing happened. And I did a year and a half there for my associate's 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, for like the third class ever at the time and it was just a hardcore 3d Maya eight hours a day, kind of deal. That's really. That's really where it all started for me.

Paul DeNigris 5:54

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

Dave Funston 6:09

Oh yeah, Her name is Susan Cook. So.

Paul DeNigris 6:12

Susan Cook, here's to you 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 informal 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 Cuck.

Dave Funston 6:46

She's a heck of a lady.

Paul DeNigris 6:48

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

Dave Funston 7:12

Sure, yeah, 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 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 Ebling 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 LA. 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. Hey, why don't we drive out? We can stay with my parents for a little while and try to find work. And then I think that was literally that's just where the work is two 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 U-Haul trailer and Eric and I drove from Orlando through many crazy nights and and can't find gas and and it was nuts, uh. But we, we did a quick stop at the grand canyon, saw the grand canyon for the first time. It was amazing. It snowed the next day, so we had to wait for the snow to weeks.

Dave Funston 8:38

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. 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, very well-known figure in the visual effects, the visual effects world. He, 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 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.

Career Highlights and Iconic Shows

Dave Funston 9:51

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 third and La Brea to go to Metrolight studios and they were 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 had a lot of traditional visual effects in it and you know there was a lot of tracking 3D tracking involved 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.

Dave Funston 10:55

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 la was kind of ending. Um, things just kind of changed a lot since then and 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 was just at the right place at the right time is what it feels like.

Paul DeNigris 11:39

Yeah, it sounds like the stars really aligned. The fact that your parents moved there, you know, when I was teaching that was one of the things I always told students that the work is in LA, you need to move there. And a lot of them didn't have that safe place. The parents weren't living in LA or they didn't know anybody. And it was hard for some young folks to make that transition, to say I have to go where the work is come what may. So you were incredibly fortunate, but you also made the most of that right. The fact that you showed up to that dinner with demo reels in tow, I assume, probably on DVD, VHS, VHS.

Dave Funston 12:30

I remember those days, vhs, I and I and I hope that they were like you know, the short play ones, just for reels, not like, not like a four hour vhs tape with like two minutes of reel at the head. Um, I heard, I remember so many stories before and after we got there of oh hey, remember John, he graduated right after us. Um, he drove out to LA himself and and after six months he went back and now he's, you know, working X, y, z it it I heard so many times. That's why I feel so grateful and lucky to all these, to all these people that were there. I mean, obviously I, 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.

Paul DeNigris 13:18

You gotta network, network, networking yeah, networking is the key to everything, uh, 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 krasinski. Right before he got the, uh, before he got the office, he was ready to quit, he was ready to leave, la, okay, 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 gonna send you money, just stick it out and like the next week or two, he, he booked the office. Holy cow, his career took off. Right, that's wild's wild yeah.

Paul DeNigris 14:04

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 opportunities and and just having the persistence to stick it out. Uh, I think is, uh is the magic formula. You know people 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 secret? Well, that's it. There is a formula. Everybody's combination of you know, of persistence and networking and skill, is different, but it's a combination of all of those things, oh, yeah.

Dave Funston 14:41

Your train will come, you just don't know.

Paul DeNigris 14:43

It's hard to know when, absolutely so. So you transitioned from, uh, from Jay and silent Bob strike back to Buffy. And uh, what? What studio were you at when you were working there?

Dave Funston 14:56

Yeah, I um. So I finished Jay and 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 no apparent reason, I just felt like I should. And Scott was there Cause he was staffed 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? Cause 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 buju that nobody knew what it was at the time and he's like this tracks for you automatically. We need to. You got to do some tracking for this music video, this other place. So he showed me buju and it was really cool, uh, because I had been tracking in my alive 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 first domino falls, uh, there at five to five and it just kept going.

TV VFX Challenges and Lessons

Dave Funston 16:05

So I worked on a genuine 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 at the right time. I knew what I was doing but Buju helped Um and then I got called back and called back and then eventually I got called back for the Smallville pilot and they were doing that shot where the corn, 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.

Dave Funston 17:04

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. 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 just, 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 uh, 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 LA and that's where I met these people Lonnie Paris here, chris Jones, andrew Orloff they all rock with passion.

Dave Funston 18:02

You know 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 we're doing all three, if my memory serves me, and this was in early 2002. And from that point forward I worked side by side with Andrew Um. He was another great mentor for me. Um, he was from a 3d background, so we got along really well, um, 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 like through the camera and like stops in front of somebody's face.

Dave Funston 19:02

I can't remember what season it was it was probably season four of of Buffy or something and I remember going ah, I'm going to, I want to work on that, I want to do that. You know it was 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 is, I was nominated for an Emmy for working on Buffy. So it's crazy. Another thing that, just like in the fourth, in like the first or second 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, that, with fire involved and and all kinds of fun, fun things, it was just. It was just an awesome rollercoaster out of the gate.

Paul DeNigris 19:58

Yeah, it sounds like it. So you've thrown out a bunch of bunch of names of software and hardware, some of which I haven't heard in years, like Buju takes me back my alive. 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 Buju 3d tracking software. Um, not around anymore, right?

Dave Funston 20:28

it's. I don't think it's supported. I have a copy that I use often right on.

Paul DeNigris 20:34

Um, yeah, I haven't. I haven't heard anybody mention buju in a long time. It's been pretty much supplanted in the industry by like pf track and synth eyes and some other, some other stuff, but it's. It's basically 3d tracking software tracks the 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's still a top-end software. But you mentioned Flame and Henry. Just give us a little kernel of knowledge about what those were.

Dave Funston 21:16

Sure. So the Henry was a compositing tool, I think back then and even now with Flame and things, but the hardware and the software were designed together. Not, 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 the Henry was its own thing. You bought it by itself and it was like I don't know a hundred thousand dollars, just like insane money, but it was for doing a hundred thousand dollar music videos, it was for doing high end 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.

Hardest Shot: Van Helsing's Vampire Massacre

Dave Funston 22:14

Um, 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, or when you, when you try to like roto and then check your, your progress and the screen has to like down res to keep up and you see it up res and down res 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 um, and it happens right away. Super powerful, um, lots of cool little tools and things like that. So most commercials, music videos, all of those are conformed and finished on on a flame flame machine.

Paul DeNigris 23:19

There's also smoke and smoke flame.

Dave Funston 23:24

There's a couple other ones that are focused on one specific process or another Right, smoke, flame, fire, and those are all Autodesk now.

Paul DeNigris 23:36

That's all Autodesk, right. And then they for a while they had Combustion, which was their desktop software. I used to teach that. And then Foundry came in and they were like smoke flame, we're Nuke. That's a great name, it's awesome, it's a great name. So, aside from what you've talked about and I'm going to circle back to Smallville in a second but aside from what you've talked about, what are some of your biggest career highlights? 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, or I'm really and you've mentioned a few names I'm really grateful that I worked with 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 Funston 24:32

Yeah, you know, 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 room I have this. Not 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 a legitimate 20-year-old, perfect condition Like that show just means so much to me. That's definitely one of my career highlights. With the Emmy nomination which we lost to Firefly, which was ourselves like Zoic one for Firefly, I think we were up against enterprise and so happy that Zoic, that Zoic one, it stayed in the family. A show that happened shortly after that that I am also really proud of that.

Dave Funston 25:36

Actually don't think about a lot but Trueblood. So I worked on the pilot for Trueblood. That show turned into a massive show. 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.

Dave Funston 25:42

Um, and I remembered working on the pilot and I I got to do the shots. The shot where 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 profile. And I got to do these. They were like, how did the teeth come out? They don't just go. You know that we did round and round and round and round. 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. That was at Alan Ball, who was famous for um six feet under Um. 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. Uh, golden age of HBO right there, golden age.

Paul DeNigris 26:35

Oh man Right, six feet under true blood, the wire uh, the Sopranos. Yeah, it's yeah.

Dave Funston 26:42

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, like all stacked on the on on the desk, 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 that were really really pushing work out of out of la in the united states for post anyway.

Dave Funston 27:17

Um, van helsing was a feature film that I got to work on, spider-man 2, I got to work on Premium Rush, which was a remake of that Kevin Bacon movie called Quicksilver. It's basically Joseph Gordon-Levitt on a bicycle in New York City and there were all kinds of cool shots that we did. I'm a huge car nut and we got to do all of these CG cars for that show. They would have Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He did a lot of his own stunts. 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 these cars, taxis, all different of cg cars, and we used um craft simulation director.

Dave Funston 28:05

It was a vehicle simulation tool and it was a plug-in for maya at the time and maya eventually bought that and I think they roped 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, what, what year is that it was?

Paul DeNigris 28:34

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?

Paul DeNigris 28:48

I mean, we, we sort of take digital cars for granted now, totally you know yeah, yeah but if you think about everything that we do, it it's, it's a continuum, right, 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 it 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 Funston 29:22

I believe so we would see the films come out like Blade 2. When Blade 2 came out, we were seeing that work when the vampires would burn and ash away 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. But you know the budget and time, that was just what we had. 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 to, you know, going way back, like paul the bevics work with his hdri process for lighting and capturing an environment. I remember when that kind of came through and when we all realized that we were lighting wrong and we had to light linear, you know, in linear space, 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. So many things that just developed along the way trial by fire.

Dave Funston 30:52

I remember that was something else that I complained about in the off times or in that, maybe, when I'm in the fire. There was never any time for dev, there was never any time for research. It was hey, this job booked, it's due in three weeks, go figure it out. And so you would just have to figure it out in production. 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 DeNigris 31:36

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 indie film isn't super apparent. People haven't worked in both like I have.

Future of Visual Effects

Paul DeNigris 31:56

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, too, you were having to do with off the shelf Maya, for true blood or whatever. Right, it's the, it it's apples and oranges can try 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 plus, we expect it to look as good as avengers endgame. Right?

Dave Funston 32:53

it's. If it doesn't, you're like, oh yeah, jump on reddit.

Paul DeNigris 32:56

See the cg in that show last night, exactly, 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 that you think could apply to the indie film space?

Dave Funston 33:19

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'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 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 is something you don't need to shoot. That'll 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.

Dave Funston 34:24

I think that is kind of the most broad advice that I could give. Um, you know, yeah, I, I, that was. That was really, I think, the best, the best advice. And then, once you have someone, then you just got to plan the hell out of it, even the smallest thing. Even the smallest thing, because that visual effects person is going to know how something turned out after filming it, working on it, getting it to screen, 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 DeNigris 35:06

What do filmmakers consistently get wrong about? Visual effects, regardless of their budget, regardless of the size of the project. 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 Funston 35:24

The thing that I see often, whether it's on a small series or even 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. A director wants no, we have to see this effect more than three times. It must happen this many times. And then they talk about budget and then eventually they're like no, we're just going to see it three times, that's it. 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 $1,000 each and it comes back and there's 12 cuts of that effect. And it's between the visual effects supervisor and the producers and the director to have the best round of communication.

Dave Funston 36:31

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, technically speaking, and being honest about the budget and what's going to be in the show ahead of time is a big variable.

Dave Funston 36:57

That I see is very inconsistent. More often than not, the cut that comes from the editor after filming is done, but before visual effects has started. The budget changes a lot, and 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 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 are visual effects budgets? Only $100,000, but this budget's at 250. Thousand dollars, but this budget's at 250. Well, hopefully, the visual effects people told you how much to what to expect in the beginning.

Paul DeNigris 37:46

That's a perfect scenario, but that's what I see often, yeah, it's always a challenge when, 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 a medium shot for for the effect to finish. Okay, that's three shots. It's all guesswork. Uh, that's why I tell people previous, previous, previous storyboards right, I'm not saying everybody needs to be pixar, but look at the way pixar a movie.

Paul DeNigris 38:37

Right, they make the movie dozens and dozens of times. Right, because they're starting from. We're recording voiceover, and then we're laying out drawings, we're doing an animatic, 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 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, yeah, you know they've made the movie, they've seen 20 iterations of the movie. Before you know they, they click final render.

Dave Funston 39:18

So yeah, not saying, not saying of an indie filmmaker needs to do that, but, man, that is a good model for at least for your vfx sequences it absolutely is, and I got to experience that heavily on the flash, on the last couple 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 it, how many shots is that going to be? How many cuts? I was doing storyboards for them, for the full cg action shots 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.

Dave Funston 40:25

Right, like 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. Nobody cuts a movie or a sequence like that. You have to establish the character. Those are just patterns, that are just basic and understanding. That is getting the chance to work with a team that all understands that together it becomes fun and 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 it's a wonderful experience.

Paul DeNigris 41:09

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 of 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 director's vision, right, and to be able to understand yeah, this is not two shots, this is six shots to tell the story. And that's again. That's one of the challenges. 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.

Paul DeNigris 42:09

I've had clients who want to. They, 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 did a film, or a teaser for a film where we were working from the page, from the script, and the director 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.

Paul DeNigris 42:56

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. Absolutely, yeah, 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 Funston 43:38

Uh, and, and you know what was the problem and how did you solve it? Oh, 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 time, there's not time to build a tool for that. That. A lot of my career has been brute force, which is funny because I like brute force as 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 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. So, for example, van Helsing I think I only did Zoic, only did a handful of shots for that movie, but I was handed, being the vampire expert, I was handed this big shot in that movie where they're at a masquerade ball and, uh, van helsing and and his partner's identity have been compromised and now all 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'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 four second, five second 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. Wow, and I think the bones disintegrated too. I think the bones disintegrated too.

Dave Funston 45:57

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 animated in 3D all 18 of those characters.

Dave Funston 46:45

And then 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 retime the cache and it's going to be fine. You couldn't do that, 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 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, five shots one 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, zoic was using combustion and Helsing was 2004. Cow Zoic was trying out combustion. Cow Um Zoic 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 one of them.

Dave Funston 48:17

That was one of the biggest early achievements. That was just an absolute nightmare of a shot to pull off Because of all the layers, like it was like four and five and six people on top of each other. And when you have to erode somebody behind four other people, what do you erode from? Because there's four people and we weren't painting clean plates of these people. We weren't like re 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 onto 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 glow and smoke and dust and that's kind of. That was kind of a big shot yeah, it sounds like it uh, it's pretty impressive.

Paul DeNigris 49:02

I have to go back and re-watch 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 do you like?

Dave Funston 49:33

Oh yeah, the challenges and the next 10 years for visual effects. You know, right now everybody is talking about generative AI. Oh yeah, the challenges and the next 10 years for visual effects. You know, right now everybody is talking about generative AI. Some people think it's going to take over, Some don't. You know, right now I don't think it will, because 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. It's being used in production right now, but in a very narrow use case. However, in 10 years, there's some really amazing things that are out there right now that I think will be adopted.

Dave Funston 50:19

You know, a lot of the face generation and recreation seems like a technology that is not going away and I think it'll get changed and kind of adjusted into the pipeline 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. You know, back to the camera tracking. I think that camera tracking and utility things are going to continue to improve. There's so many cool uses of AI in Nuke, in compositing packages that are coming out right now, like depth maps, 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 thousand frames of a person. You know like honestly that technology can be, that 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 a chance to actually do what you wanted to do or even give the client what they really wanted. So 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.

Dave Funston 52:01

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 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 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 DeNigris 53:06

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.

Paul DeNigris 53:15

That's a good example, yeah, right, and if you think about it, um, 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 pinkman, 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 pink you know four episodes in and it and doesn't it just isn't the show that we, that we know and love.

Dave Funston 54:25

Wonderful example. I have a. I have a short example too. 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.

Dave Funston 54:40

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. But look at this scene that it was born from it it's like that that is literally the only scene anybody remembers from that exactly, exactly.

Paul DeNigris 55:07

You see this watch yeah, like man, the leads are weak and you're fucking weak and he could act that way because of how he grew up.

Dave Funston 55:18

You know it's it's. 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.

Paul DeNigris 55:32

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 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 remarkably like Lana Lang from Smallville.

Dave Funston 56:02

Tell us about it. It is yeah. So when I worked Zoic in the early days, I worked with this incredible artist named 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 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 DeNigris 56:59

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 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 Funston 57:23

yeah, absolutely. Um, I have a new website updated, dave funstoncom. Um, I have a little company as well, desert pixels that I'm getting up and running, um, and that's desert pixels creativecom uh, that's, and that's desertpixelscreativecom. That's really where it is right now, working on getting some new gigs going on, just like everybody else right now, as the business is still in the lurch from the strikes. But there's stuff going on, but that's generally it. I'm on, but, uh, but that's generally it. 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 DeNigris 58:08

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. Well, everyone, that wraps up this episode of VFX for Indies, for Foxtrot X-Ray and our little show. Here. I'm Paul DeNigris, the host, and if you liked what you heard slash saw on the show today, please like and follow, leave us a comment, tell us 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 VFXforindiescom. Thanks so much for your time and attention and I will see you next time. Thank you.