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MillimeterSupervisors Step Up
Jul 1, 2008 12:02 PM, By Ellen Wolff
Hollywood sees an influx of former visual-effects supervisors directing.
Director Eric Brevig—whose visual-effects credits include Men In Black, Total Recall, and Pearl Harbor—solicited advice from such veterans as James Cameron and Barry Sonnenfeld while trying his hand at directing Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Photos: Murray Close © Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Walden Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
When the visual-effects extravaganza Iron Man became a massive hit, scant notice was paid to the fact that its director, Jon Favreau, came from the ranks of actors — not typical training for digerati. But when the 3D film Journey To The Center of the Earth appears, you'll likely see mention of Director Eric Brevig's prior credits — creating visual effects for such films as Men In Black, Total Recall, and Pearl Harbor, the latter of which earned him an Academy Award nomination. It seems obvious why Brevig, who formerly worked for Industrial Light & Magic, should get the chance to direct an effects-filled film such as Journey, but visual-effects supervisors have had an uphill climb to the director's chair. With the notable exception of Andrew Adamson, who toiled in visual effects in the 1990s before directing the first two Shrek and The Chronicles of Narnia films, few visual-effects supervisors have made the leap.
“I was trying to get a directing gig for almost 15 years,” Brevig says. “Either the project didn't get green-lit or the studio people changed.” While having digital skills might appear to be a selling point, Brevig says, “People with technical chops can be driven crazy by the politics. Perhaps having a psychology background would be more useful. The reality is that it's luck more than anything else.”
Being hired based on visual-effects skills can actually bring burdens, says Adamson — whose latest film, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, is one of this year's biggest visual-effects movies. “Effects films, by their very nature, have higher budgets and a large number of concerned people attached, so you can end up in the position of making a committee film,” he says. “I was lucky to start with Shrek, because in animation, you tend to storyboard and workshop the movie over and over. I probably made three bad versions of Shrek that never saw the light of day. That was my boot camp.”
Adamson, who began his film career at PDI as a technical director on Barry Levinson's 1992 film Toys, subsequently supervised effects for three Joel Schumacher films before getting a crack at Shrek.
“Andrew passed through the visual-effects phase of his career rather quickly and gracefully,” says Jamie Dixon, PDI's digital-effects supervisor on Toys. “He used it as a steppingstone, and clearly he had the desire and the ability to direct.” Dixon, who cofounded the visual-effects studio Hammerhead Productions and directed Bram Stoker's Shadow Builder, notes the importance of building upon relationships. For example, Toys producer Mark Johnson (an Oscar winner for Rain Man) went on to produce Adamson's Narnia films, while action-movie impresario Jerry Bruckheimer is backing the directorial debut of visual-effects supervisor Hoyt Yeatman with 2009's G-Force.
“I've been very fortunate,” says Yeatman, an Oscar-winning supervisor on The Abyss. “No one else on the planet besides Jerry would have taken this step with me.” But Yeatman, who supervised effects for Bruckheimer on such hits as Armageddon and Con Air, says his chance might not have come unless he had conceived the original idea for G-Force, a live-action film with CG characters.
“When I made a decision to try to go in that direction, I felt that no one would hand me a screenplay and say, ‘Go direct this,’” Yeatman says. “I felt I'd have to earn that position by coming up with my own idea.” Having now finished shooting G-Force, he says, “That's been beneficial to me because I'm very confident about the story and how I'd like to tell it. It's a grounding I might not otherwise have.”
On both the Shrek and Narnia franchises, Adamson earned script credits, and he says he thinks such experience aids a director's communication with actors and crew. “It certainly helped give me control — to make sure that the project I was making was what I wanted it to be,” he says.
Having authorship can also foster credibility with actors, which is an area where visual-effects supervisors can be perceived as being less well-versed. Adamson's experience directing voice performances of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy in Shrek certainly prepped him to direct the live-action performances in Narnia.
