I recently had the pleasure of writing an article for Produced By, the official magazine of the Producers Guild of America.

Into the Virtual World explores some of the ways in which live-action film and television producers can make the transition into animation and visual effects. My interviewees included Jinko Gotoh, producer of animated features including Finding Nemo and Netflix’s Klaus, Philipp Wolf, executive-in-charge of corporate strategy and visual effects producer at DNEG, Brooke Breton, visual effects producer and co-producer of Avatar, David Prescott, senior vice president of creative animation production at DNEG Animation, and Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron.

“Pipelines are changing rapidly. Producers need to stay up to date and get hands-on experience with the new tools. CG environments and characters can be integrated right on the live action set using real-time composite systems — this makes the live shoot the middle step of the visual effects process, whereas it used to be the beginning … This is beyond previs — it’s the actual creation of the CG world, set extensions, character design and near-final animation.”

James Cameron

Read the complete article in the August/September 2021 issue of Produced By:

• Producers Guild of America