Shooting plates for Stargate SG-1
List of Personl strengths, the closest thing this comes to a resume.
Selected Projects I Supervised.
Projects where I shot elements or directed the unit.
Fine selection of downloadable reels.
Stuff I do, did and done.
Emmy's, Geminis and Entrepreneur of the Year.
Seminars, Conventions and Festivals - Yup, I'm a Carnie...
Where am I now ?
For many years Canada's most sucessful VFX company
Collection of my favorite ideas. I'm waiting for more.
How did I get here ?
In 1986 I made a documentary about driving my movia across the country.

The creative part of almost everything happens at the very beginning. For me the art comes quickly and clearly. Then we spend the next year living up to what we promised in those initial meetings, and we do this though the miracle of paperwork.

I love setting up systems, designing the workflow that gets the jobs done. I built the database in ACCESS because you learn Visual Basic and SQL in the process. Actually I used Access not because it was easy but because it was hard.

My design goals were to get the information from the director as cleanly and undistorted as possible to the artists, and that you should never enter the same information twice.

1987 - 91:
2000 :
2001 - 04:
Database Design,
University of British Columbia.
2006 :

Capillano College : Web Design

There's something to this WEB thing, so I took the course and built this site.

The El Greko rotostand, named after the fancy wood trim we had around the shop.
John Gajdecki - Visual Effects Supervisor

I have many interests outside of Visual Effects but most are easily confused with work and I think that's because I've been able to turn my hobbies into my career. It seemed like a good idea at the time...

 

     
Hey, This kinda works ! Grade 8 My first VFX Scene.
 

Shooting an Asteroid Field on Super 8 film. I started thinking about building a Super 8 Optical printer after I saw Star Wars - didn't go as planned...

 
Grade 13 In 1981 a bunch of us were experimenting with CG when it was all about shiny spheres bouncing on tiled floors. We rendered to a high res. B&W monitor photographed through red, green and blue filters.

We thought this CG thing was going to catch on.
 
York University ; Third year Shooting
1984 - 88:
 York University, Toronto : Film Production Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honours.
1989 - 90:
 Ottawa University : Marketing, Business Law.
   

Shooting with a custom sound proofed camera housing I built, the Amazing Blimp-O-Vision. ...Yes, I made up a fancy graphic to put into the tail credits of my classmates films when they used the system.

Hand Tinted 35mm Frame 1994 - 96: N.F.T.S.A. : National Film, TV, Sound Archives
 

While at university I worked summers at the Film Archives in Ottawa. I learned about past and current film and video formats and was probably the world expert on 28mm film. For a summer or two anyway.
   
Motion Control - Built three rigs between 1991 and 1997

1991 - 2001 :

When I started you weren’t really doing effects until you had built your own motion control. A rite of passage, like making and loosing your first million…

We built and operated three very solid, very fast portable systems. In many ways the best I’ve seen.

35mm Film Rotoscope Projector

While on Friday 13th, The Series I designed and built our equipment to stretch our limited budgets, like these custom film rotoscope projector and a video roto projector, both based on legal office paper for economy.

Angle Off Meter

Working out the angle that objects subtend at the lens is a pain in the butt, so I designed this Laser Angle Off meter and had a bunch machined up.