I interviewed a lot of people for this seminar and the Art was what Directors, VFX Supervisors and Producers was what they talked about the least.
John Gajdecki – on VFX for Above the Line Crowd
Selected Films
The Hole 3D
- Feature
- Bold Films
- Supervised the shooting of STEREO greenscreen elements, ensuring Interoccualar distance and convergence will work with previously or subsequently shot plates.
Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2
- DVD
- Disney
- Second Unit director for all 26 shoot days.
- Worked with animal trainers during prep to ensure dog stunts and specific performances were going to work on the day.
Flicka Two
- DVD
- 20th Century Fox
Dolittle 4 & 5
- DVD
- Fox
- Directed all Animal Unit, Splinter / Second Unit and VFX Unit for both pictures. I think they also made me direct traffic once.
Slapshot - the Junior League
- DVD
- Directed inserts with extras, crowd elements at two arenas and assorted elements.
Fallen
- Miniseries
- ABC Family
- Directed / DP’d 5 days of Fire Elements. A stunt actor re-performed each action of each shot from each fight scene, with a burning sword.
Stargate Atlantis
- Pilot
- MGM
- Water elements for city raising from beneath the sea were shot on HD, and high speed 35mm.
Coors Light
- Commercial
- Mustard UK
- Shot large-scale miniatures with avalanches crashing down mountains towards unsuspecting alpine dancers.
Santa Clause 2
- Feature
- Disney
- Third scale North Pole punches though ice scape
- Assorted falling snow and ice elements for composites
- Tenth scale elf houses for use as 3D textures
Other Side of Heaven
- Feature
- TriMark
- Full scale fishing boat in a storm shot in Auckland naval dry dock.
T Digit
- Commercial
- Hanover Expo, Cine +
- Designed and executed methodology for shooting and posting moving multi camera rigs to deliver up to 32 tiled screens
Bait
- Feature
- Pyro elements to composite into plates of general destruction.
- Really BIG pyro.
On Hostile Ground
- DVD
- Atlantis Alliance
Stargate SG 1
- Multiple Seasons
- MGM/Showtime
- Large scale miniatures, Pyro shoots and assorted elements
Warriors of Virtue
- Feature
- Law Bros Ent. / MGM
- Large-scale miniature shoot, with a week of shot specific elements.
Final Descent
- MOW
- Columbia Tri Star
- Eighth scale Beachcraft falling right to camera and exploding. We dropped it on cables to control its position at the moment of explosion very precisely.
- We also built a third scale 767, just the front third, for a scene where a passenger plane lands with collapsed forward landing gear.
Lifeline to Victory
- Miniseries
- We shot this 10th scale WW II corvette in late February on Lake Ontario. We got great believability in the waves and lighting, and we all got pneumonia.
Ordeal in the Arctic
- DVD
- True story about how economical VFX saved a movie of the week through great miniature work.
- Crashed a 1/8th scale C-130 Hercules transport aircraft in the arctic.
- Great fun actually.
Airwalk
- Commercial
- Big City Films
- Large-scale model pyro shoot.
- (We didn’t really set off the pyro during the crew photo…)
Welcome to the Parade
- Feature
- I was Co-DP on this picture with John Joffin. We shot in Toronto over 20 days in some rather colourful locations.
