VFX/PDX:  Being a Compositor myself, when I think Bent Image Lab I immediately think of you as the Randy I came to know when I started working there, when you were Head of Compositing. But really you did quite a bit more during your stay at Bent. When you were first hired, what was your title and how did that progress?

The same weekend I graduated from CalArts in 2004, I proposed to my wife Lisa and proceeded to freeload off her for most of the summer trying to find animation work and completing a bunch of projects I never finished while in school. Eventually I got an unpaid internship at Bent Image Lab as a part time office assistant. It was a pretty small company then, less than a dozen people were working there when I started because they were in between projects, but as they ramped up production on an Oregon Lotto spot I saw the company double temporarily. When I started they had me doing odd office jobs that had nothing to do with my previous 7 years of animation and school, but the pattern of ebb and flow in production created a lot of opportunities, and I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time in front of the right people. Eventually I did some basic Photoshop work, then had a chance to do stop-motion animation on a short that aired on Saturday Night Live, then I started to learn After Effects and became more involved in productions. I was able to lead a team of compositors and stay organized, so they started hiring me as a post-production supervisor and eventually they felt like the compositors needed a department head.

An unintentional self portrait at work

This progression took a couple years and it wasn’t smooth sailing the whole time, I made plenty of mistakes and worked long hours to fix them. I had to learn to manage the expectations of the producers as well as all the artists in my department, I was a middle manager in that way and sometimes the middle manager is the one who gets caught in the pinch.

As Bent grew, so did the roster of directors. Chel White and David Daniels, Bent’s original two directors, set the bar high for amazing creativity and production value. They really helped me out as I began to take on the director roles, and other fine directors like Rob Shaw, Paul Harrod, Ken Lidster showed me how their personal style could be expressed creatively in the Bent environment. I started with small projects as a director, usually international spots that had very low budgets and little room for creative input. With time I started directing commercials for larger clients, domestic spots with a least a modest budget and some room for creativity. All my previous experience as a compositor meant that I could steer the production in a way that was as efficient as possible on the post side but still look interesting because I knew all the tricks. It really helped me manage the expectations of my producers as well as my clients.

VFX/PDX:  Wow, really a sounds like you were maturing right along with the studio and got in at the ground level.  This might be a hard one, but what project stands out from the rest at Bent?

Deep Green was a feature documentary about climate change and Bent produced a series of animated segments that were incorporated into the story. I directed and animated one of the segments called “Trees” that featured some brilliant character design by Huy Vu and the voice talent of Tom Kenny of Spongebob Squarepants fame. The visual style was influenced by Lotte Reiniger who created wonderful silhouette animated films back in the early days of cinema. It’s a good example of how my professional work was influenced by an experimental animation education. It was a dream project and I’m still rather pleased with the results.

Also, there was “Fartfest 4000.”

VFX/PDX:  🙂  On the digital side, you’re pretty handy with After Effects. When did you start working with it and is it your primary tool?

I learned After Effects in early 2005 and got to know it very quickly since I started using it on jobs every day. I have to give credit to Jim Clark and Gretchen Miller, a director/producer team who worked at Bent at the time but now own HiveFX. They supported me in my early days and put me on lots of compositing jobs even though I was still pretty green.

Oddly enough, I was hired to teach a class in After Effects before I had much experience. Teaching is a great way to learn a piece of software, because you need to figure out how to explain a tool or concept to a room full of people all with different learning styles. You end up understanding many aspects of the program that you wouldn’t know if you only trained on the job. Teaching in the classroom paid off big time when I was managing jobs at Bent because I was able to communicate what I needed to a room full of people and trouble shoot technical problems really quickly.

I don’t have a favorite tool necessarily, but I do like how you can do simple editing as well as elaborate compositing in the same program. I have completed many projects entirely in After Effects because it’s so versatile.

I know After Effects sometimes gets passed off as pedestrian when compared to Nuke or some of the other node-based packages out there. I don’t feel loyal to AE in any way, but it’s the tool I know the best because I have yet to get the chance to really learn a node-based program on a job.

VFX/PDX:  Ah, Nuke vs. AE.  Well, yeah – I think you do appreciate parts of each once you’re handy with them both.  I’d take AE any day for the animation & design heavy work, when it’s time to create.  But Nuke does smoke when it comes to more assembly line shot based VFX work.  Just being able to repurpose mattes quickly and pass templates back and forth easily between shots with a copy/paste is gold!  But there’s a ton of overlap.  I’d be interested to hear what you think once you have that first Nuke project under your belt.