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MillimeterFade to Black: Mat Beck, Director/Visual Effects Supervisor
Jun 8, 2007 3:43 PM, By Michael Goldman
Mat Beck calls the opportunity to direct last month’s “Prototype” episode of the TV drama Smallville a logical—if uncommon—evolution for a visual effects veteran.
Beck’s company, Entity FX, does the visual effects for the show, and in addition to supervising that work, Beck has also directed action sequences and second unit. “It’s a terrifically collaborative show, and working in visual effects, the creative process connects you to all the other things going on, so [producers] were very cool about just saying, ‘Sure, let [him] direct an episode.’”
“[As a visual effects supervisor], you think about many of the same things as the director, in terms of story and continuity and rhythm, and just general storytelling,” Beck says. “When you do effects for an episodic show like this one, you also work with the same people every day and get a kind of shorthand going with them. So, even while working on effects for the show, I’m thinking about a whole lot more than just a single shot or sequence. I’m constantly thinking about advancing the story, helping the characters, making it more compelling.
“Plus, I really knew the aesthetic of the show, which is very well established. I already knew what was going on, rather than reinventing the wheel. On Smallville, we show spaces and faces in wide shots, and then slam into close-ups. That’s an aesthetic I had seen during my years working on the show. You are working on an ongoing machine, with a crew you know well that will help you cover your bases.”
What is different about the two jobs, however, largely revolves around the fact that, for the director, everything happens fast. “For an action sequence, as a visual effects supervisor, I often get to plan them out ahead of time,” Beck explains. “But as the director, the time scale is much different. That is a big difference, along with working with actors.”
Another difference for Beck involved stepping away from his inclination to take charge of the visual effects. On the episode he directed, he says he left details of those shots to his colleague, on-set visual effects supervisor John Wash. But, Beck adds, having a visual effects background can help a director make decisions logically about how to satisfy a rigid shooting schedule.
“Obviously, my background was useful to make decisions about when we could cobble something together later,” Beck says. “It was an eight-day main-unit shoot, and two more for second unit, extended over the course of about four weeks, so each day was a busy day, and we had to get in a lot of setups. There was one scene that originally called for us to hang [actress Erica Durance, as Lois Lane] in a harness, adjust it, and so forth, and I said, ‘Let’s just do it greenscreen, grab the background, and put it in later.’ That saved us an hour. It was kind of a get-out-of-jail-quick card that I had in my pocket. Because you know how the [effects] process works, you can efficiently decide where to steal shots and where to move on.”
Beck was obviously confident he was qualified for the job the Smallville producers entrusted to him, but, viscerally, was he ready to take on that much added responsibility?
“‘Ready’ is a relative term,” he says. “Are you really ready when you get on a roller coaster, even if you have a pretty good idea what to expect? On one level, you are, but on another, you can’t possibly be ready. I can say, having gone through it, that on my next directing project, I will be three times more ready than I was this time. I’ll be ready for all the things that were a surprise the first time.”
