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vfxserbia · 5 years

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Klaudija Cermak (born in Rijeka, former Yugoslavia) has over 33 years experience in VFX Compositing on high-end commercials, broadcast programmes and feature films and has worked at all the major post-production houses in London’s Soho including MPC, The Mill, Millfilm, Framestore, Double Negative and Glassworks. Her feature film credits include ‘Gladiator’ that won an Oscar for the Best VFX, ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, ‘Captain America’, and ‘Jason Bourne’. Klaudija is a member of VES and the author of the Kindle bestseller ‘How to Get Into and Survive Film, Advertising and TV Post-production – The Alternative Guide’.

Klaudija will share her insights through her CGA2019 talk How to Get Into and Survive Film, Advertising and TV Post-production on 2. November. (sold-out) and “Nuke Industry Workflow” Workshop (still some places left)

Welcome back to VFXSerbia! Last time we had so much fun talking with you.

Thank you for having me again! I love your site and now recommend it to everyone. The last interview was only 4 years ago and sooooooo much has happened since, I have to update some of the answers from last time.

First time in Belgrade and at CGA conference. What are your expectations?

Huge! Hahahaha… And on so many levels: 1: I am very much looking forward to all the talks from my amazing colleagues from all over the World and meeting everyone. 2. I have been watching some of the work coming from Serbia, and from the Serbian artists scattered around the World, and expect to be bowled over. 3. I am giving a talk at the Yugoslav Film Archive, one of the five most important film archives in Europe and one of the ten largest in the world. Wow! Just the thought that most of my childhood and youthood films are stored there fills me with excitement. 4. Belgrade! So much looking forward to visiting the Paris of Eastern Europe. Indeed, I have only been to Belgrade once before, and just to catch a plane so this will be my first proper visit.

On a more personal note, my grandfather had Piano shops on Terazije and Knez Mihajlova before the Second World War and we hope to stumble across one of the Cermak pianos. Also, I can’t wait to take my 24 year old daughter who was born in London to the Yugoslav Museum and prove that ‘Once upon a time there was a country’ wasn’t just in her mother’s imagination. Hahahaha…

Can you describe your role in Escape Studios/Pearson College?

For the last two years I have been teaching the classic 12 week full time and 20 week part time VFX Compositing courses (Foundry Nuke and now BorisFX! Silhouette) that have been feeding the VFX industry with new talent since 2002. Full time course has 5 hours of teaching a day, 5 days a week and we expect students to work hard outside classes to create a Showreel demonstrating the core Compositing skills soon after completing the course (within a month).

The aim of the Showreel is to get them an entry Roto/Prep role in the industry. This particular course is also part of the MA that is run by Allar Kaasik. MA includes another 6 weeks of Advanced Compositing which can be taken as an independent course too.

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Part time course is 2 evenings or 6 hours a week teaching and attended by students who either want to top up their skills, change career or are moving to Nuke from another software. A lot of VFX facilities send their staff to our courses so in the last part-time course we had 8 students already working in the industry. Both courses are filled with students from all over the World, who normally have a degree already, and classes are full of fun.

We get involved in outside Productions too. My whole class worked on a lovely short film ‘Turning Tide’ that won Best Post-production at the London ‘Lift – Off Film Festival’ this year. Last year we created VFX for a charity film ‘Superheroes’ for the Great Ormond Street Hospital and this year we are doing Production on it too.

Of course I also get involved in the development and have to keep up with the technological advances and new techniques, and that’s a full time job in itself. Hahahaha… I find teaching exhilarating, rewarding and really fulfilling, and while I sometimes miss large productions (my last project was Black Mirror for Netflix) I am really enjoying being organised and knowing when I will finish work. Hahahaha…

Warner Bros studio Harry Potter Exhibition with film crew names on the wand boxes, including Klaudija

Soon I will be moving to teaching BA/MArt The Art of Visual Effects which is a 3-4 year course headed by Davi Stein. On that course we make short films from concept to delivery. This year our Undergraduates won tonnes of awards for their short films. You can check them out on our Animation Blog.

What are the ways for young people to get into the VFX industry in the UK?

Since we spoke last time there have been some developments on that front. Traditionally it was either as a runner or taking an independent course or like me, by accident. Now a lot of VFX companies have their own Academies too. However you still need a Showreel to get into any of these. From our last Full time Compositing course all the students got a job in companies like ILM, MPC, Bluebolt, Jellyfish and Union and one got into one of the Academies. Some of them got Roto/Prep roles and some went in as Junior Compositors.

From the Evening Course some students got jobs as Runners but were within less than 3 months promoted into Roto/Prep or Junior Compositing roles. Escape Studios is very good at preparing students for the industry as the Lecturers are all from the industry and know all the workflows. We don’t just teach software but industry etiquette too. Our students also get the opportunity to go on the shoot, experience different filming roles and learn how to collect shoot data for VFX, with our DOP Clement Gharini. You would be amazed how many people work in the industry who have never had the opportunity to go on the shoot.

We are also increasingly aware of the challenging times we live in and its effects on the young people so we are incorporating more and more ‘soft skills’ into our courses. Andy Brassington is very active on this front and organises extra talks and workshops on the transferable skills. And we have very supportive Student Services who will assist students with any life challenges they may face too.

What is the advice you give to students when they start and when they finish your course?

I give a lot of work and life advice to my students throughout the course. They even know the quickest Harrods entrance (door 5) to the Deli counter and Hungarian salami. Hahahaha… One of my classes produced as a goodbye gift a booklet with the caricatures of me and my quotes. Hahahahaha….

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At the start of the course I still recommend Stella Cottrel’s personal development book ‘Skills for Success’ as we are increasingly losing the ability to stop, think and reflect both about ourselves and the World around us.

How do you see VFX in the present and how in the near future?

Well, a lot has been happening since we last talked. VFX is thriving at the moment. London is extremely busy and there are a lot of opportunities for all roles at all levels. This is greatly thanks to the streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon. A lot of Film and Commercials VFX facilities have opened TV departments, ILM, Dneg, Glassworks, then The Farm that specialises in Editing, Grading and Sound for TV has opened a VFX department, The Mill has reopened MIllfilm and there are a lot of new companies like Untold Studios being set up by ex employees of larger companies. Technicolor bought The Mill and MPC!

However some of the issues we mentioned last time, highlighted by Rhythm & Hues bankruptcy after winning the Oscar for Life of Pi, have not been resolved. The facilities’ thin profit margins due to flawed business model (especially in Film) while having to constantly reinvest into new technologies and R&D, artists not being paid overtime, short rolling contracts, no benefits etc. Let’s face it, the industry thrives thanks to the creative and passionate people like us willing to donate tons of overtime to keep it going.

Interesting article on the theme is here: VFX VOICE: GLOBAL VFX: STATE OF THE INDUSTRY 2019

Ha. The future. Technology wise we can expect the merging of real time and VFX. Epic’s Unreal Engine is shaking things up. So much so that I have started learning it. Hopefully the interface will be improved for people like me. Hahahaaa… Luckily there are a lot of experts around me as we are Unreal Authorised Training Centre.

Trends in animation and VFX at FMX 2019

What advice would you give to a young woman starting out in VFX?

Find a wife or marry a banker! Hahahaha… Sorry, joking again. Look, I come from a family where women made it happen with or without men so I would give the same advice to everyone, young men too, be kind, keep learning, develop wide skills, be flexible and do the best work you can. I never felt different because I was a woman. And luckily, when my daughter was growing up we didn’t have such strict Health and Safety and NDA’s so she could come with me to work, even sleep on the sofa when I had to work through the night and when my au-pair was ill, Runners would pick her up from school and bring her to work. That’s why she decided to study Maths as she saw nothing exact in the clients’ feedback. Hahahaha… Now I know I was different as we found out few years ago that women in the industry were paid up to 30% less than men. Last time we spoke the ratio of men vs women in the industry was 20:1. I think the problem arises when one becomes a parent. So how can one make it more appealing to mothers? Flexible working time, Creches etc. I know that Double Negative for example offers some flexible working time to parents. There is a lot of talk about inclusivity and diversity, and not just in gender, in VFX. Access VFX and some other organisations are making a great effort on that front so there is an increasing awareness of the need to make VFX more accessible. However this is a wider issue. To be truly inclusive you have to have a more even education system in Primary and Secondary Schools. I am talking here about class societies where there is a huge difference in resources between schools.

WE NEED MORE WOMEN IN VFX : AN APPROACH TO ENCOURAGING DIVERSITY IN FILM

I found your career incredibly fascinating while digging into your immense experience listed on LinkedIn page. How does your life as a Freelance VFX in London look to you when you look back?

I have been very lucky that I have somehow sailed from job to job for the last 35 years and when life threw some extraordinary events my way I was able to adapt and steer my career. If I had to pinpoint what helped me the most it was my upbringing and the ideas from the Pioneer’s Oath ‘to study and work diligently, respect parents and my seniors, and be a loyal and true friend.’ That’s the best advice one can get to survive VFX. We live in the times when we are constantly bombarded with the ideas of individualism and having to stand on our own feet but in VFX, and greatly in life, we can achieve very little on our own. It is all teamwork or a collective. Hahahaha…All in all we are lucky because the industry is filled with a lot of nice people.

https://vimeo.com/368367308

What inspires you these days?

I must admit I have a serious problem. Everything inspires me and I am always bursting with ideas. That is an incredible burden as those lacking ideas and then having one just pursue it and accomplish it. Hahahaha…

I paint, write and constantly think of the next thing I should learn.

So, I can tell you what I found inspiring today: Zivkovic’s ‘Playgrounds Berlin’ Titles and the wonderful Yugoslav Film Archive website. And the realisation that I can read Cyrillic as well as Latin writing because my father always bought me Политикин забавник in Cyrillic.

Isn’t life amazing?

My mother used to say “The purpose of life is a life with purpose”. I am a dreamer. I live in a bubble. I am the same girl that stood outside the cinema at the age of 7 and vowed to change the world after seeing Winnetou.

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What can our eager readers expect to hear from you on CGA2019 stage?

Good question. Who knows? Hahahaha… Joking again.

So, I have rewritten the talk few times already, as I want it to be informative, relevant and fun and different to anything I said so far. New and fresh. I have had an unusual career of moving constantly between film, TV and commercials. I have survived against the odds and I have learnt a few things along the way in the form of ‘soft skills’ that I would like to share with the audience and which I think are especially valuable in the Liquid World we live in that requires total flexibility.

Nadja Regin, Yugoslav Actress

But first we will remember Nadja Regin, a wonderful Yugoslav actress and author from Serbia who died this year in London and share behind the scenes story from ‘From Russia with Love‘ that she recorded for BELhospice last year. And the Yugoslav Archive is the most appropriate place to remember her. She will be delighted to be coming home.

Klaudija will share her insights through her CGA2019 talk How to Get Into and Survive Film, Advertising and TV Post-production on 2. November.

Klaudija Cermak – CGA2019 Interview Klaudija Cermak (born in Rijeka, former Yugoslavia) has over 33 years experience in VFX Compositing on high-end commercials, broadcast programmes and feature films and has worked at all the major post-production houses in London’s Soho including…

#CGA #CGA Belgrade #CGA conference #cgi #compositing #Escape Studios #VFX

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vfxserbia · 6 years

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Eric lives in Montreal, Canada where he works in the Entertainment Creation Products Division of Autodesk as a Senior Software Development Manager for Arnold, Bifröst and Maya where he’s been for more than 10 years. Before joining Autodesk, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Pierre Poulin at the University of Montreal in the LIGUM graphics lab. Eric obtained his PhD in Computer Science from McGill University where he specialized in computer graphics at the Centre for Intelligent Machines under the supervision of Gregory Dudek. He has also completed a Master of Science (computer science) at McGill and a Bachelor of music at McGill where he majored in jazz performance (saxophone) and computer science.

Great to see you back again Eric! Does this mean you had a great time at CGA conference last year?

Definitely! Last year was my first time in Belgrade, but I was spoiled since one of my close colleagues at Autodesk is from here (Nikola Milošević), and made sure that I got to see many of the special things Belgrade has to offer. It was clear from the outset that VFX Serbia and CGA Belgrade take this event very seriously and the organization and content are top-notch. It was great to hang out with everybody, make new friends, and catch up with others during the event. The presentations were great, and I had some good meetings with customers as well. The student participation is high, which is always encouraging to see at these kinds of events.

Developing the CG community must be very important to Autodesk as one of the main supporters of CGA conference from day one? How do you see your users worldwide?

Yes, at Autodesk we try to support the VFX community as much as we can. We sponsor many conferences as well as events worldwide and also host some of our own community events in various cities to try to keep the local communities thriving. We understand that people are using many products to accomplish their ultimate job of making art, and are happy to do our part to try to keep the ecosystem healthy.

Judging by your research publications, your interest in computer graphics has started, for most of our audience, in the early days. How do you see the 90s compared to almost now 20s in the CG industry and the software development?

Yeah, I guess I’m old! Hehe 🙂 I can still remember seeing some of the earlier renders with global illumination for the first time and how amazing they were! They were using all kinds of approximation techniques just to make the rendering tractable on the Silicon Graphics machines at the time. Fast forward, and we have things like deep-learning-based denoisers for Monte Carlo renders that are performing remarkably well for static images. This would have looked like science fiction back then!

Blade Runner 2049 by Framestore

One of the things I find really cool looking back is that Marcos Fajardo bet his future on pure Monte Carlo path tracing when it wasn’t the popular thing to do at the time. As CPUs got faster and started having higher thread counts, and recently as GPUs are starting to exist with dedicated path tracing hardware, pure path tracing is proving to be the most widely adopted approach to final frame rendering for Film & TV. It’s really impressive that Marcos committed to that idea early on, and didn’t stray from it while others kept adding different approximation features which made many of the renderers more complicated to use. Arnold’s ease of use and artist friendliness stems from that commitment early on to Monte Carlo path tracing. It’s also great to see that while rendering could be considered to be a mature research area now, there is still a lot of great research work going on in light transport, material representation, participating media, etc.

Thor: Ragnarok by Rising Sun Pictures

Programming and jazz music, how do they play together?

“The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians” – Steve Jobs.

There’s really some truth to this 🙂 Most people I knew when I was studying music were immensely talented at mathematics and computer science, and most computer scientists that I’ve met along the way have shown a serious interest in music. I think jazz musicians are even more adept at dealing with abstract problems, and reacting to the system around them since that’s what they’re always doing when they’re playing. I guess jazz musicians would make great pipeline engineers 🙂 While software development can be seen as being methodical, there is definitely art in programming. And even more creativity in debugging! I’ve always enjoyed pair debugging with someone to observe how they tackle a problem, and what “tools” they’ve built up over their career. The same way it’s really fun to watch a shot and figure out all the details of how the plate was filmed, lit, and how the CG elements were added to it. Sometimes on interviews I show candidates short selected clips from movies and ask them to tell me what they’re seeing – it’s a great way to see how people think and communicate about what they’re seeing 🙂

Moving from a programmer to a lead and manager role, what is the difference for you? Do you still have fun?

Yeah, I guess I’ve just continued to scale through our organization, first moving from an individual contributor, then to the lead of a small team, then a bigger team, then a few teams, and now I have an organization of around 50 people in my group. It’s really a lot of fun – I have people on my team all over Europe, the US and Canada, and a lot of very interesting people who have deep specializations in rendering, simulation, pure mathematics, systems programming, etc. As I’ve moved up the ranks, I’ve also been able to visit a lot more of our customers all over the world which is really inspiring since it’s great to see all the great work people are doing. While I manage a large team now, I do still get to have fun and find the right places to have an impact. Sometimes it’s through architectural work, sometimes it’s just about social engineering; putting the right people together so that the sum is greater than the parts.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 by Framestore

Is your team all in one building or on multiple locations, how do you manage to support them on the distance, what are the tools to keep the whole team up-to-date?

I have larger teams in Montreal, Toronto, London, and Madrid, a few people scattered in Scandinavia, and then other individuals a little all over the place. We always try to use video for our meetings (currently using zoom for video conferencing which is great!) because that somehow bridges the divide, and lets you get all the non-verbal. We do try to bring people together at least once a year for bigger planning meetings and team building since it’s always easier to work with someone remotely after you’ve met them in person. We use a bunch of online tools like trello, mural, jira, etc., but I have yet to find something ideal for whiteboard sharing. I think that’s what I miss the most when doing a remote meeting with people vs a local one – I really like to use a whiteboard.

At the last year CGA conference, we had the honour to get the first-hand update on Arnold development from Frederic Servant, Arnold celebrity. What can we expect this year?

Arnold celebrity … hehe. Love it! Fred’s awesome – I’m sure he has something exciting up his sleeve. He’s a French rendering nerd with a British sense of humour, so his presentations are always fun.

What is the latest news in the Bifröst world of particles and liquids?

The work we’re doing on Bifröst is really exciting. Our adaptive data structures and new solvers that run on top of them are making for really impressive high-resolution volumetric simulations for a fraction of the memory (both during the solve and for the cached result). The same adaptivity applies to the other elements in the scene like colliders and emitters, so we’re able to get some great improvements in efficiency. Check out our SIGGRAPH paper presented by Michael Nielsen from this year for more details! The main thing we’re working on right now is making really nice artist tools for people to be able to do arbitrary procedural work using the Bifröst visual programming language. Keep checking The Area (http://area.autodesk.com) for the latest updates, or join the Bifröst beta for a sneak peek.

Leading the team on both Arnold and Bifröst, can you tell us about their relationship? Any juicy gossip? 🙂

Bifröst and Arnold are definitely in a relationship, and it’s not “complicated” 😉 Expect a baby Arnold Bifröst procedural sometime soon …

The latest trend in deep learning is to go into the computer graphics. Has this buzzword the same interest in your team too? Where do you see deep learning implementation in the rendering technology in the future?

I think there are a lot of interesting possibilities using deep learning for rendering. But at the same time, I think it’s important to understand that it’s not a panacea: the main drawback with AI today is that while it can do things that are very impressive based on good training data, it’s not possible to fine-tune the result. In our industry, that’s a pretty big problem since artists are always looking to tweak things, create variations, and to creatively go from one variation to another. AI-based denoising is a great example of how you can assist a look-dev artist by allowing them to iterate faster since they can render at lower sample counts, and therefore reduce their iterative render time while developing the look of the asset. It should also be possible to use AI in other ways as well to assist artists; for example to catch a mis-configured scene before spending time rendering it, or helping to light a scene from scratch based on a bunch of a priori scenes used for training. I think those areas are actually quite interesting and exciting. Another would be to use AI to help choose optimal paths for light integration in a Monte Carlo path tracer. But my hesitation will remain around general use of AI until we develop ways to fine-tune deep networks and to understand what’s in the black box to a point where you can push it artistically in a given direction. Otherwise, there will be too many stressful moments when the director asks for that last minute change 😉

You’ve been to Belgrade for the first CGA Belgrade conference; how was your experience? What are your thoughts on our local talents and Serbian CGA scene?

I had a great time at the first CGA Belgrade for many reasons. I liked the intimacy of the event; it really felt like you could talk to everybody, and the events surrounding the conference were a lot of fun. I still recall an impromptu dinner where we had Mikhail from Mainroad, Szabolcs from Digic, a few guys from the Foundry, and a few of us from Autodesk. We had a bunch of great food, good laughs, great stories, and some fun competitive banter 😉 I also got a chance to visit Nordeus, where Ivan Stojisavljević treated us like royalty. It was a great experience, and some local artists like Igor Žanić and Dušan Ković attended and gave us feedback on the direction our products are taking. There’s obviously some very strong talent in Belgrade if Igor’s FX work and Dušan’s look-dev work are any indication.

Oh, and please, let us know – are there any places that you would love to visit in Belgrade again this time? What’s your impression of the city? How would you describe the flavour of Belgrade? Anything to recommend to our new guests?

I got to do a lot of fun extra-curricular stuff last time, and hope to again this year! We got to see a basketball game between Serbia and Austria last year, accidentally met Novak Djoković and his wife, walked all around the ruins, ate too much great food, found the best bartender in Belgrade, maybe even in Europe in my opinion, had some great espresso at a few different discerning coffee shops … and I might have had a bit too much rakia 😉 If I can do half as much this year as I did last year, it will be a success for me! Now, to find that bartender, since I heard he left Bar Central …

Once again, November becomes the month of computer graphics, as CGA Belgrade hosts its two-day journey through the latest news, trends and developments in the VFX industry. We have worked especially hard this year to expand our main program, which we are proud to announce will feature two separate tracks! For big-picture thinking and groundbreaking ideas, make sure to look for the Know It All sign. For hands-on training and insider tips & tricks, don’t miss the Know How stage.

Eric Bourque, Autodesk (CGA2018) Eric lives in Montreal, Canada where he works in the Entertainment Creation Products Division of Autodesk…

#Autodesk #CGA #CGA Belgrade #CGA conference #interview

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