The Unreal Fellowship with Brian Pohl from Epic Games Ep 17

For the past 17 years, Brian J. Pohl has experience being a visual effects artist, layout artist, and previs supervisor. A veteran of George Lucas’ pre-vis team and Industrial Light and Magic's art department, he is credited for creating or supervising previs on over twenty-seven feature films.

Pohl has also served six years within the software development industry; designing new tools that assist the digital artist's workflow. He can provide creative and managerial skills capable of directing small to large sized teams in either film or commercial production environments.

Currently, he works at Epic Games as a Technical Program Manager for the Media and Entertainment industry in order to provide artists and clients the training they need to integrate the Unreal Engine into their creative pipelines. He also acts as the academic Dean for the Unreal Engine Fellowship Program.

Highlights of the Episode:

 
00:00 - Introduction

01:23 - Introduction of the guest

02:11 - Background of the Brian Pohl

10:51 - Working at EPIC Games

13:03 - How EPIC took care of their employees through COVID

13:48 - The Fellowship: How EPIC made the company better

16:37- Creating opportunities through the fellowship

19:10 - Zero to Competent: 5 week fellowship

22:17 - Problems that the fellowship has conquered and their 2022 plans

26:57 - How Real-Time affected the Pre-visual workflow

33:42 - How animation studios get the value of Real-Time

35:25 - Why you should invest in a virtual production department

38:16 - Virtual Production in the Work-From-Home set-up

39:25 - Innovation as it happens

40:44 - The barrier to start Visual production is getting lower

44:15 - The surprising uses of Unreal Engine

48:21 - The rebirth of Virtual production with Unreal Engine 

49:42 - How Virtual production departments will evolve in the future

53:55 - How green screen works in Unreal Engine

56:01 - How Unreal Engine Is affecting screen-writing

59:47 - Brian’s thoughts on the Meta-Verse

1:03:26 - Ability to have a multi-user session in the Meta-Verse

1:06:20 - Brian’s knowledge about audio in Unreal Engine 5

1:07:34 - Advice for those entering and re-entering virtual production 

1:15:00 - Outro

Quotes:

“If you’re reskilling, feel encouraged. I don’t think the industry is leaving you behind if you are willing to take another step out. Right now, we are experiencing a drought of talent, so there’s huge opportunities for you if you want to learn this technology.”

“Choose an area of interest that excites you most. There’s nothing wrong with specializing.”

“You can make anything you want, you just have to detach yourself from your perfectionistic nature.”

Connecting with the Guest:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pohlbrian/

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/edgevisualCG