Changing Careers to VFX and Virtual Production with Eran Dinur Ep 23

There are professions where age is important, but with visual effects, it is never too late to become great and move up the ranks, which is proven by our guest Eran Dinur’s experience. According to him, “There is no limit to when you can start this.” So today we spoke to him about the VFX industry, changing careers, his book “The filmmaker's guide to Visual Effects”, and being an elder statesman for an industry thought to be dominated by younger people.

Eran’s career in visual effects started with a fascination for creating 3D natural scenery. Through his early works, he became well known as a Vue expert and innovator. He then joined ILM Singapore where he created visual effects for films such as Iron Man, Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Terminator Salvation.

After moving to New York, Eran worked at Framestore NY on Salt and Clash of the Titans and then Joined Brainstorm Digital, where he has been a senior VFX supervisor since 2011. In this capacity, Eran won a Primetime Emmy Award (Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Supporting role, Boardwalk Empire), and two Visual Effects Society Awards (Outstanding Compositing and Outstanding Modeling in a Broadcast Program, Boardwalk Empire).

Eran has been leading the Brainstorm team on numerous film and TV projects, including The Wolf of Wall Street, Boardwalk Empire, The Greatest Showman, Wonder Wheel, Cafe Society, The Lost City of Z, Triple Nine, The Men Who Built America, Sons of Liberty, Delivery Man, The Heat, and The Immigrant.

Eran's book, The Filmmaker's Guide to Visual Effects, was published by Routledge/Focal in April 2017. It is a practical, detailed guide to visual effects for directors, producers, editors, cinematographers, and other film professionals, as well as film and VFX students.

Eran is passionate about teaching, learning, and sharing knowledge. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts, has created several online courses at fxphd, and presented at various international conferences such as Siggraph, NAB, Fesmak, and Mundos Digitales.

This episode is packed full of knowledge. Tune in!

Highlights of the Episode:
0:00 Introduction
0:46 Introduction of guest
1:42 Journey into visual effects
02:30 TrueSpace is friendly to new users
05:55 Working as a professional musician studying CG
07:14 Getting an email from ILM Singapore
08:36 What's compositing?
09:53 Moving to New York and joining Brainstorm Digital
11:55 Is it too late to get into a new career?
14:47 Advice to somebody who’s considering a career transition
19:20 Eran’s second book
24:11 We’re imitating cameras
28:22 Evolution of technology and getting predictable results
35:28 Technology costs people knowledge sometimes
38:39 Real-time technology
45:18 Software that Eran would recommend people to start learning
50:14 Green or blue screen?
51:57 AI, machine learning, algorithms, deep fakes, and how they're helping visual effects
59:38 The filmmakers' guide to VFX: basic to fundamentals or does it go deep?
1:02:19 What makes a good visual effects supervisor?

Quotes:

“Just do stuff and post it wherever because you never know who’s gonna watch something that you did.” - Eran Dinur

“You can be an amazing CG artist or 2D artist and never go to school so you can literally start it at 40 or 50 if you want.” - Eran Dinur

“If you came from the on set experience you have to really understand what the artists are doing, if you come from the artist side you have to learn the on set experience” - Eran Dinur

Connecting with the Guest:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eran-dinur/
Website: https://www.erandinur.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/erandinur?lang=en

Connecting with CG Pro:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/becomecgpro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomecgpro/
Website: https://www.becomecgpro.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/becomecgpro

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#virtualproduction
#becomecgpro