Behind the Scenes with Smoke artist Matthew Johnson
November 3, 2014 Nov. 3, 2014The post production trade website PostPerspective interviews Company 3 Smoke Artist, Matthew Johnson.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR COMPANY?
Company 3 provides high-end post services to feature film, commercial, music video and television clients. Our services include all aspects of post production, including color correction, editorial finishing and some visual effects compositing.
WHAT’S YOUR JOB TITLE?
Smoke Artist
WHAT DOES THAT ENTAIL?
I use an Autodesk Smoke Advanced system to complete the editorial finish of our clients’ projects prior to color grading. I primarily work on features and trailers. My job begins with the conform, where I rebuild the edit using the highest resolution camera files or film scans, visual effects, stock footage and title elements. It then continues into creating any opticals, editorial effects, stereoscopic fixes or additional titles that are needed. From this point on, it becomes a constant process of editorial changes and visual effects updates until the project is finished. This often includes compositing fixes that come up as the clients view their project in our theater.
WHAT WOULD SURPRISE PEOPLE THE MOST ABOUT WHAT FALLS UNDER THAT TITLE?
While a good Smoke artist has to be a skilled editor and compositor, so much of the job requires an immense amount of technical knowledge. As the hub of the digital post process, all elements come through this department to be integrated into a timeline. That means we have to understand film and digital cameras, aspect ratios, resolutions, color spaces and all the issues inherent in stereoscopic 3D.
Additionally, we need to be involved in designing efficient finishing workflows requiring an understanding of production, visual effects, creative editing, stereoscopic conversion and all kinds of tape and datacentric post workflows. And since we typically handle a project from the feature deliverables all the way to various home video delivery formats, we have to understand the delivery requirements, workflow and technical specs for film, digital cinema and home video.