The amount of prep time a director spends with the VFX Team is inversely proportional to the amount of money facility makes. The most money is made on shots that are fixed in post.
Dan Chuba
Biography
While growing up in Ottawa, I spent much of my time photographing scale models while my brother blew them up. You think this would have led to way more trouble. That's my brother in the picture to the right, the guy without the uniform.
Education
In the late seventies we were experimenting with computers when data was stored on audio cassettes and graphics were all about shiny spheres bouncing on tiled floors.
I was asked to spend an extra year in high school. I was making a 16mm animated film instead of studying and got some spectacularly low grades. I did much better the second time.
I built a rear screen projector to composite landscapes into my animated 16mm film. 
The final shot with the animated actors York University has a great four year film program. I must have liked it because I set up a Scholarship for fourth year students in 1998.
Shooting a second year film in my proprietary Super 8 format : Incredible Blimp-O-Vision. Of course I let my friends use it on their productions, the license fee usually included beer. - 1988: Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honours. York University, Toronto
- 1989: Marketing, Business Law. Ottawa University
- 2001,04: On Line Database Design University of British Columbia
Studios used to hand paint entire scenes for their movies to make them colour, but it could only be done one release print at a time….
I worked summers at the National Film Archives in Ottawa, leaning about past and current film and video formats and was probably the world expert on 28mm film. For a summer or two anyway.
Working for a living
I designed and built most of my own equipment, including this roto projector that started as a film strip projector. My first VFX Supervising credit was in 1986, on Paramount’s Friday 13th, the Series. It was my first real industry job, and I was one step above the guy who swept the floors in the VFX dept, which is what 4 years of film school prepares you for.
By the end of the season all of the grown ups had quit or had been shot behind the honey wagons and I was left in charge, the other thing York University prepared me for.”
GVFX
I always liked working as closely as possible with production, even when they’d drop me off on a mountain and drive away laughing. They’ll be back. They’ll be back. When Friday 13th wrapped I could buy all the equipment I designed on the show and start a company or take a really great vacation…. I bought the gear and set up GVFX, incorporating animation, miniatures and shortly, digital compositing and 3D.
We purchased the first Discreet Logic system in Canada, starting with Flints, then Flames and finally several Infernos. The software arrived on DAT tapes with hand written labels, a special feature for their very first customers.
GVFX office in Toronto. Avro Arrow model flying over reception. GVFX evolved into Canada’s leading full service VFX Facility, in Toronto, Vancouver and ultimately LA though my emphasis on putting the best tools directly into the hands of artists and working as closely with production as possible.
The Toronto and LA companies were closed in 2002, but not before representing over half of all Gemini Visual Effects Nominees ( Canadian Television Academy ) and being in Profit Magazine’s list of most successful companies for 5 years in a row.
There were good and bad times tucked in there, but I’m glad I didn’t take the vacation.
The Present
Perfect Job, searching the south Pacific for the perfect Island Establishing Shot – Eye of the Storm. VFX Supervising has taken me around the world and let me work with lots of occasionally sane people, usually over and over again.
Shooting rear projection for the L-Word. I talked myself out of the big greenscreen job, but it worked better this way. I’m one of Canada’s leading visual effects supervisors with a career spanning 20 years with both theatrical and television experience, a history of technological innovation, award winning creative, on-budget and on-schedule deliveries and a penchant for run on sentences.
I’m pretty lucky, since I love what I do and get to do plenty of it.
