Sep 29 / Christian Bull

Film making beats VFX đŸŽ„

3 more unbreakable rules of VFX Mastery

This week, we’re continuing with our 10 unbreakable rules of VFX mastery! Starting with the unexpected number 6
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6. Film making beats VFX
Is eating fat good for you? I’m not a doctor, but I think that it depends.

The general consensus seems to be that it’s fine - as part of a balanced diet.

But if you eat 20 pounds of raw butter each day, it’s probably not going to do you any favors.

We can use the same logic in the argument of whether “CGI” is a force for good in filmmaking or not. It depends on how you use it.

So when I say “film making beats VFX”, I’m not talking about one being better than the other. I’m saying that filmmaking is the mother of VFX. VFX was born from, it wouldn’t exist without it, and is dependent on it.

The more that we can learn from film making, the more that we can learn about our own craft. Performance, lighting cameras, lenses, mise en scene
 the list is long and scary, but everything in film has a VFX equivalent.

So the more that you understand film, the more effective your VFX will be. Then you “just” need to learn the software and methods (I know, I know, that’s pretty hard. But I do have a course for it
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You’ll learn a lot about filmmaking just by getting on set, which you can do without any experience if you apply for a “runner” position. Or just getting your phone out, taking some shots yourself and starting to edit it together.

7. You NEED to learn to see.
Ok, try this. If you’re reading this at home or a familiar environment, pick a random spot to look at.

Describe it with a few words. Is it dark, lively, smelly, inspiring?

Now find some specific details about that that justify those word choices. That could be a stain, a cobweb, the way that it shines, or the way that it moves in the wind.

It’s quite likely that these details will be things that you’ve never seen before, despite your familiarity with the spot. That’s because you’ve never really looked at that thing before.

Practising this skill of seeing and identifying character is incredibly useful in VFX.

Not all details carry the same weight. Learn to find the ones that matter


The world has infinite detail and we can’t recreate it all. Learning to see helps you focus your time on capturing what really matters. Of course, this is also part of effective storytelling, which is also one of the cornerstones of VFX.

8. Complexity comes from simplicity.

Take a look at this network. We call this a tree, and it's the result of a “node based workflow” which is very common in vfx. In this case, it’s from Nuke, a compositing package.

Each node exists to perform a certain action; add a bit of blue to the background, remove the green screen, paint out a blemish on an actor, rotoscope out an unwanted leg of C-stand from set, etc.

Each of these actions is simple. Most of them could be easily explained to someone with no VFX experience at all. BUT to deliver a difficult shot, you might need to do tens, hundreds, even thousands of these simple actions, to the point where the end result looks staggeringly complex (I would say that the image above is of average complexity! It can get a lot more extreme!)

There’s a couple of key takeaways for us from this:

1. VFX gets complex but isn’t that complicated. That means that the barrier to entry isn’t that high, because you can get results from simple actions (Unlike being a doctor or a lawyer, for example, which are complicated roles)
2. If we know that VFX tends towards complexity anyway, we should avoid adding in any more ourselves. The question, “what is the simple option here?” goes a long way, and you should be asking it just about every day!
3. Problems can be solved by stripping back layers of complexity. Often it’s just one simple thing that’s gone wrong, but it’s buried. You just need to find that and resolve that.

Hopefully I will see you next week for the final instalment of the 10 Rules of VFX Mastery, and in the meantime, have a great week!