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Episode 433 – HOUSE OF THE DRAGON – VFX Supervisor Mark Spindler
Mark Spindler is a Visual Effects Supervisor at Pixomondo in Frankfurt, Germany. He’s worked on feature films such as Midway, Justice League, Star Trek: Into Darkness, as well tv shows like The Mandalorian and Game of Thrones for which he received two VES Award nominations. His most recent work on House of the Dragon has also been recognized with an Emmy nomination.
He began his career path as a Compositor after finishing his Master of Arts in Media Production in 2012, then became a Lead Compositor and Compositing Supervisor before being promoted to his Supervisor position.
Besides his career as a Supervisor, Mark has also contributed to visual effects by developing several tools for Nuke. Some of those Gizmos, Python scripts and C++ plug-ins can be downloaded from the tools section on his website (http://www.mark-spindler.com/tools.html) or from Nukepedia.
In this Podcast, Allan McKay interviews VFX Supervisor Mark Spindler about his work on both HOUSE OF THE DRAGON and GAME OF THRONES; the pipeline, creative process and go-to tools of a VFX Supervisor; his career at Pixomondo, as well as the future of AI in VFX.
Mark Spindler’s Website: http://www.mark-spindler.com/about.html
Mark Spindler on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5595695/
Mark Spindler on Animago: https://www.animago.com/partner/mark-spindler/
House of the Dragon on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11198330/
EPISODE 433 – HOUSE OF THE DRAGON – VFX SUPERVISOR MARK SPINDLER
Hi, everyone!
This is Allan McKay. Welcome to Episode 433!
I’m interviewing VFX Supervisor Mark Spindler to talk about his work on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON and GAMES OF THRONES, as well as his career and the pipeline of VFX supervision. Mark has worked at Pixomondo his entire career and he has an immense amount of experience.
I’m super excited about this Episode. Mark and I talk about:
- Starting out at Pixomondo straight out of a university;
- Building a career at the same company – from compositing to supervising;
- Pluses and minuses of freelancing in VFX;
- The VFX tools used on Game of Thrones;
- How the complexity of VFX shots changed throughout the Seasons;
- Supervising House of the Dragon;
- The creative process of a VFX Supervisor;
- The go-to tools and apps for supervision;
- And the pressing question: Will AI take over VFX Artists’ jobs?
- And so much more!
Please take a moment to share this Episode with others. That would mean the world to me, thanks so much!
Let’s dive in!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FROM ALLAN McKAY:
[55:18] One of the biggest problems we face as artists is figuring out how much we’re worth. I’ve put together a website. Check it out: www.VFXRates.com! This is a chance for you to put in your level of experience, your discipline, your location — and it will give you an accurate idea what you and everyone else in your discipline should be charging. Check it out: www.VFXRates.com!
Okay, what did you think? I want to thank Mark for joining the Podcast. I really enjoyed everything we got into.
Next week, I’m interviewing Co-Founder of Crafty Apes, VFX Supervisor and an Entrepreneur Chris LeDoux about the paradigm shift of Artificial Intelligence: Its effect on the future of VFX, a productive outlook at AI as a way to optimized things, how to train it to your advantage and Chris’s own investments into AI entrepreneurship.
The way Chris talks about AI is how I think about the future of AI in production. It’s really applicable because of how much Chris has invested into machine learning. The only other guest who’s approached AI this way is Niklas Jacobson, the Co-Founder of Important Looking Pirates (www.allanmckay.com/396).
I’ll be back next week with this extremely valuable Episode. Until then –
Rock on!
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