See how inexperienced artists created extraordinary results
Exclusive First Look at Our Latest Showreel
We’re thrilled to give you an exclusive first look at the brand-new VFX showreel from Screenclay FX, the VFX production sister company to Shoot First!
Before I do that, I’d like to give you a bit of backstory to Screenclay, and how its path influenced Shoot First. When I set up Screenclay, I was intent on standing it on 3 columns - Create, Teach, Learn. Each one of those is important to me, personally, and is a driving factor in any major decision that I make.
CREATE
I’ve known from early in my career that the industry approach to VFX has always been too anti-creative for my tastes. When you have so many artists working on a single shot, the energy tends to get polished out.
My focus has always been on art-directed results, and making sure that the creative power gets into the hands of creatives. I’m optimistic about AI because I think that used by creatives for creatives, it can be a powerful tool.
TEACH
I knew that if I hired industry professionals, I would need to untrain them in the inefficiencies that I saw in the industry. Rather than do that, I hired artists with little to no hands on VFX experience, and trained them from the ground up.
The results that you see on the showreel are NOT from grizzled industry veterans, but rather terrified quivering juniors - some of whom had never even opened VFX software before starting, because they were traditional artists. My ethos was that anyone who was willing to dedicate themselves to a creative path could be trained in VFX.
Turns out, I was right. It was really, really hard, but it worked! I formalised the processes and techniques that I used to train the Screenclay team, turned it into lessons, and that eventually became Shoot First.
LEARN
I never started VFX to become a boss or any sort of leader. I just wanted to learn to create amazing work. It’s the teamwork of film that I enjoy, and the part of Shoot First that’s most rewarding is the overlap with you guys, the students and subscribers. It’s rewarding to be able to help, but selfishly, I also learn a lot through doing it.
SO if there’s anything that you see on the reel that you’d like to have a deeper dive into, to understand how or why we approached a challenge in a particular way, just let me know, either through here or Discord.
Without further ado, here’s the reel: