A Love of Film with Carolina Jiménez García, Lead Layout Artist, Scanline | TVAP EP25

This week Daniel caught up with Layout Artist who has 7 Oscar Nominated films, as well as an Emmy and a Goya  under her belt!

Many of our Spanish speaking audience may already be familiar with Carolina as she runs an incredibly popular VFX and film Youtube, blog and Twitter account as Okingrafia. Carolina is a Lead Layout Artist at Scanline, most recently on projects like Free Guy, Moonfall and Eternals. Her career spans the Globe and major studios such as Dneg in London, Scanline in Canada, and Weta in New Zealand where she fulfilled her dream by working with the Lord of Rings crew on the Hobbit trilogy.

In this episode we roll back the curtain on the Layout Department, a little understood and vitally important part of VFX and animation pipelines. We find out what it takes to become a Layout Artist and Layout Lead, hear Carolina’s advice for artists, learn a little about working in Canada and find out about her favourite projects.

íDisfrutamos!

Timestamps:

00:00:00  : What to expect and Intro
00:02:25  : Meet Carolina
00:05:47  : He's a pandemic dog
00:06:48  : Layout and overview of the department
00:12:29  : The start of Carolina's Career
00:15:16  : Software used in Layout
00:18:03  : OKinGrafia - Carolina's filmmaking channel
00:19:50  : A snippet from OKinGrafia (Spanish)
00:20:15  : Carolin'a research for her content channels
00:24:06  : Favourite Project to Work on: The Hobbit Trilogy
00:26:39  : Taking those first steps in the industry
00:28:04  : Planet of the Apes
00:30:20  : When your work gets cut from the movie
00:31:59  : Overtime and keeping the team happy
00:33:01  : Working in different countries
00:38:23  : Different perspectives on filmmaking
00:39:20  : Typical working day and working from home
00:41:15  : Why working from home is more productive
00:44:05  : Blended working
00:45:24  : Vancouver
00:46:47  : Are Leads involved in recruitment
00:47:55  : Maya, custom tools and the pipeline
00:51:00  : Layout for Animation vs Live-Action
00:52:02  : The hierarchy and approval process
00:53:49  : Reshoots
00:55:06  : Where to find Carolina online
00:56:56  : Goodbye and outro

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Links:

Geek is the New Sexy, blog (Español)
IMBD
Courses (Español)
Twitter (Español)
Instagram (English)
Youtube (Español)

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Transcript

0:00

i didn't know anything about leia and i was i panicked at one point because you're supposed to pick what what department what speciality you want to have and i didn't know i like everything a little bit and i didn't know which one to choose and it turns out that's good news because in layout we do a little bit of everything we have to we have to build the scene in a way that it is presentable to the director because the reason why i decided to do what i do was when i saw the the extended edition dvds for the lord of the rings because i was in it was in a moment in my life when i didn't know what to do with my life and i loved movies but i didn't know making movies was an option and when i saw that that dvd with the with all the documentaries on how the movie was made this was a movie that i loved that that's when i had the idea of okay you can make movies using that computer that's what i want to do so they were the ones that inspired me wet weta in in new zealand the one the ones that inspired me to leave everything i was doing because it was not making sense for me and and jump into animation vfx so i was sending i i sent them my reel in my resume million times since i finished school and and obviously they didn't respond at first because i didn't have the any much to offer but i kept insisting until they finally replied one day and they they um made me an offer and i got to join them and it was by chance they were working on the hobbit so i had i had i was fortunate enough to to move to new zealand and work on the hobbit trilogy with the same team that inspired me to start doing what i do so it was like like perfect circle i could i could close the circle and it was a dream come true for me we're even more productive in many ways than from the studio because because there's no commute there's no excuses to get laid there's no long coffee breaks and you can even when when you're when you need to attend a meeting that you don't need to participate but you need to be listening to what's happening you can you could be listening to the meeting while you work hi so welcome to the vfx artists podcast this week we have catalina jiminez garcia i hope i said that you're pronounced dead really well i'm impressed oh thank you hello daniel how are you doing i'm doing really well um so we've got you can see the time zone difference uh calolina is in canada and he's now canadian actually i saw yeah so you're a canadian citizen like a couple of weeks ago was it some months ago no it was uh last year like six months ago so yeah so finally finally after a few years i'm originally from spain but now i'm canadian also so double citizenship very cool very cool yeah jules city is the way to go um yeah so and i'm here it's night time so you can see i'm in the dark and i have my coffee with me yeah i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna have hot chocolate in there and tell us a little bit about yourself what you do and um how you got started um hello everybody i'm i'm carolina and i'm a layout artist and in vfx for movies and tv shows now we do a lot of tv shows now uh due to the pandemic as well we can talk about that later and and yeah i'm specializing in in layout in the layout department i'm originally from spain and now i live in canada in vancouver in rainy vancouver today's super rainy actually i i took the the pup out before this recording just to make sure that he's napping while we record because he's a puppy and he can be noisy and and it was pouring rain but that's fine that's this is raincover so that's that's fine and it was a long trip on a long journey until i get here because i i've been bouncing around the globe uh chasing work like many of us have i'm not i'm not the only one yeah you ruined wetter as well right because those are your hobbits and your real um wondering yeah so you see that yeah literally everywhere around the world like spain new zealand yeah it's been it was madrid australia then london then new zealand and then here so it's been quite a journey but it's it's the vfx journey right it's it's what many of us do and it's been really interesting it's been really interesting i had the uh i i feel very lucky i feel very fortunate that i i got a job that allows me to travel around the world and learn other languages and and meet all the cultures and and get other nationalities so so i i think we're fortunate in that in that way and i've been in vancouver the longest i've been after getting out of spain which has been seven years almost and and yeah so so far and i'm staying here for a while because it's moving from country to country it's it can be painful at times but yeah it's been quite a little bit it is i mean you know there's an excitement um and obviously i think the younger you are though the more fun it is and the the more you want to settle down you know then the more things you get like a dog even a pug alone kids um but i mean even a dog right once you get a dog wait how are you gonna hey i can take my dog whatever i want yeah yeah he's he's at us as adventurous as i am i'm hoping but he's a puppy's tail but yeah he's a pandemic dog when you're working eight nine hours minimum every day at the studio there's there's no way you can have a dog it's going to be home alone waiting for you so but now we're all working from home so now i could have a dog so yeah it's another pandemic dog long as you say you keep the panda my dog the pandemic dogs are not just for pandemics they're for life no obviously obviously it's i've been wanting to have a dog for i had dogs all my life and i've been wanting to have a dog for a long long time but but yeah work didn't allow me so now yeah great um so asking about layout so i mean i've always associated layout with more with match move and but actually a lot of the shows and a lot of shots i've seen on your reel um you know they they when they're completely cg so your layout is actually you know coming you're in that you're doing the camera work you're creating the camera from nothing really so um tell us a little bit about how you approach now and um how it works yeah layout it's sometimes especially when you're when you're at the beginning of your career it's one of the departments that's probably less understood in general because it's not it it's not in the name what we do everybody knows what animation does or what what modeling does but what's layout i didn't know what layout was when i got out of the animation school because no one no one told me but yeah our main um responsibility and our main um work is the camera the camera is the main product of the work that leo does if if we have a track camera if we have a plate then uh sometimes it's just a track camera we don't change much sometimes we have to use the track camera as a starting point so we can use the plate and then modify that camera in in the way that the shot needs and when it's a full ce shot like you say then we have complete freedom and to place the camera and animate the camera the way we want and not only the camera obviously we have two plays in front of the camera everything that needs to be in front of the camera we get uh a clean plate with with everything with all the green screens removed and everything that doesn't need to be there removed and then we have to add everything that needs to be there it could be environments to be characters and everything everything that needs to all the set dressing and we do an animation blocking which means that everything that moves we move it as a chess piece animation we don't do detail animation but composition of the shot it's our responsibility as well so if things move it affects the composition so we do on animation blocking and then all those assets and all those elements that we put in front of the camera and the camera we pass to the other to the next departments in the pipeline usually after us comes animation and they do the detail animation we don't we don't pay a lot of attention and moving um detail fingers or obviously faces anything like that so we said that's that's why we call it chess piece animation things move from point a to point b at the right speed and and at the right place and then we pass that to to animation and they do they yeah so so i'm guessing so for example a character enters a room in a wide shot um they while the other character is speaking they they pace across the room and when they reach um their line of dialogue they're in a close-up and so it's a close-up shot of them and they delivered their line of dialogue so you would make sure that they that they're probably properly framed and that they move the right speed and they're the right distance from the camera and and if it's a dialogue it's pretty easy but when we're talking about i don't know car chases or uh monsters fighting or outer space madness then there are a lot of things moving and everything it's going to everything that moves is going to affect the the framing and the composition so we have to make sure that the camera does the right thing at the right speed and everything moves at the right speed so that becomes the reference that the other department's special animation used to do their their thing and so as you move up through the ranks from like your first job as a in layout and to senior and to lead how how does that role evolve i think that's probably like in every other department uh you start as a junior and then you you work hard you get more experience as you get experience you get more responsibilities and and then you get in charge of maybe a sequence and then you can charge maybe a shot at a complete uh show maybe and then you get a team that you have to supervise and help those who have less experience than you do and and it's it's a journey but i think it's the same for everybody right oh yeah absolutely that is um absolutely true i more specifically though i mean so i guess you would start you'd be given layout shots um and they probably more be from match move because it's a little bit simpler to to follow and as you are more senior they entrust you to actually you know perhaps manipulate the camera more and move things around and yeah exactly you you train your juniors not only in layout also in the pipeline because every studio has a different pipelining they need to get comfortable now on how to or the steps you need to take to bring everything you need to your scene and how how to move everything well how to move everything and how you train your eye for composition for for framing and all that stuff it also comes with time but then also how to package everything to publish to other departments that's more technical than than artistic probably and and and that's something you need to learn every time you start in a new studio because every studio is slightly different but artistically yeah you start with with simpler things and then and then you you challenge the juniors slowly to to purge them to to learn what yeah step by step yeah it's it's interesting is because probably the ultimate goal is to be able to to work on a full cd shot that's long and crazy and be able to deal with it by yourself and those can be challenging and also a lot of fun we have the most fun with with full gd shots obviously yeah because you've got the the freedom to to well to be be the cameraman exactly so you studied that you studied animation uh in madrid did you study in madrid which um where did you study it was kind of a long time ago now damn they were only back then and i say back then as if it was yeah but it was it's more than a decade ago and there were only like two schools in madrid that because everything was super new and this was uh this was not very popular yet and so it was there was not a lot of options out there now it's easier there are a lot of schools and you can study online and there are universities are offering this kind of thing but back then there were only two schools and and they would teach us a general i did like a master curse where they teach us almost a bit of everything because there were not enough people to to divide us in groups for for different different departments so i learned a little bit of animation modeling lighting so it was a bit of everything which was good because that's what a layout artist needs to be a good generalist i didn't know anything about leia and i was i panicked at one point because you're supposed to pick what what department what speciality you want to have and i didn't know i like everything a little bit and i didn't know which one to choose and it turns out that's good news because in layout we do a little bit of everything we have to we have to build the scene in a way that it is presentable to the director that means sometimes we need to do a little bit of modeling a little bit of texturing is not final textures but so we don't present things in gray shaders we do a little bit of texturing we do a little bit of lighting it's not fine on lighting but we need to figure out where light comes from especially if it's important for storytelling so we can show uh a better looking a beauty pass of what the show is going the shot is going to look like to the director so we do a little bit of everything and that's super fun so how does that relate to like previous and post phase are you are you connected are you pulling stuff in oh yeah previous is basically our reference so we get when we start a new shot we usually have obviously the director's syndications from the vfx soup and we have the previous version of of the shots of the movie or the sequence at least the sequences that we're going to work on we have a previous version that it's it's just a reference but it's a good reference because the director likes it and that's our starting point so previous is what we use as reference but it's we need to use the proper camera and the proper plate and the proper assets um to use in previous starting point build the shop so given that you're quite generalist at just generalist department are you um are you mostly working are you mostly working maya i mean i presume yeah and they and do you think that's always going to stay the same or are there any sort of things on the horizon at school i learned 3d studio max oddly enough and my first movie was an animation was planet 51 it was completely done in 3d max and then i switched to well my second movie was uh happy feet 2 was also animation and then i switched to vfx and then i had to learn uh maya but i started with 3d studio max and i have i've used maya since then and i don't think it's going to change we in skyline we also use 3d studio max because the the the fluid simulation that we use in some of the lighting is based on 3d studio max so we use both but not in layout and layout is just it's just maya and i haven't used much else the rest of my my career so and i don't know if that that really that will change i'm not sure do you think the real time sort of stuff might get involved in yes that that that's coming that definitely is coming and influencing what workflow and and the ideas that the new ideas that the technology is given to to filmmakers but i don't know if we're going to implement it um in our workflow in in the pipeline with maya i uh we're still we're still figuring those things out exciting exact times i guess and and as a lead that's going to be a big part of your your role to look at these possibilities if they start yeah for now it's just it's more of a curiosity thing and the studio wants us to know what it is and and there's um already training options so we understand what might come our way but but still not uh we're not using it daily but yeah we're starting to learn what what it is and what it means and we could what will mean in the future probably near future yeah because i mean if you even if you're putting stuff out that's not final quality effective access to things like mega scans and and this crazy stuff that is just looks amazing um and even if you're gonna put something else in it's it's still way better than what you would have put in before right so you know and mega scans trees looks like a tree you don't have to do much more to it yeah it's gonna definitely affect the way we do in the way we present things and and so like that yeah interesting times you have a really strong knowledge of um transmission the history of the industry i mean i followed before i knew specifically what job you did so that you have a very strong um twitter channel it's a spanish language channel yeah um aimed at a generalist audience i'd say but it's kind of a big deal i mean it's like something like more than 70 000 followers on on twitter and mostly i don't i don't go in in depth or in detail into vfx technical stuff it's more filmmaking it's just because we love film obviously we i do what i do because i love what i do because i love films and filmmaking so i'm i'm investigating how they do stuff and how technology evolves and how the history of film and film history how everything started what what those who started inventing and investigating the technology of how cinema started and how everything evolved technically i find all of that super interesting and and relevant to what we do because those are the fathers of of the things we do or all the tricks we use so i it's easy to share it out with with other people are interested in the same things in in social media and apparently people like it yeah no they do um so um what um do you want to give the um the hashtag not the hashtag the oh my god the name of the account yeah it's it's a bit it's a bit tricky because it's okay in photography it's in spanish i'm sorry guys we will write it down later but it's brilliant we'll put we'll post a link but if you speak spanish or if you're learning spanish or interested in spanish it's brilliant photography it for you if you if you need to to into english you can you can give it a try yeah you can use google translate and translate it but i found like for example even though i'm still sort of you know intermediate i speak italian so i kind of guess there you go it's close plus yeah but you did one about um some of the the volume stuff used on the mandalorian and i found it was actually one of the better explanations i found um and easier to follow that you know and it gave me a better sort of understanding of the sort of weaknesses and strengths compared as just as a complete introduction then a lot of stuff that was in english even though that's my native language when when i learned there was new technology that was being used in the mandalorian there was important it was important for me to understand what it was and why it was new and what everybody was talking about it so i did my own research and the way i understood it is the way i i tried to explain it so i try i try to explain things the way i would like people to explain things to me and i do it in spanish because usually there's more information um in english in general so i try to to pass all this information to the spanish speaking community in the world which is huge and and i enjoyed very much so so yeah thanks very cool i if anyone on the podcast can hear stomping that's my end that's my children um hopefully i better get all of those stompings out but unfortunately they're children they stomp this is life hey my my dog is asleep that's why you don't hear him but you could oh we had a cat jump into the last uh the last recording i did so we've had you know we've had all sorts um yeah so i that's that's really cool i will post a link to that and i think um you've used it very effectively because the threads are quite informative and they're all quite tightly um themed and the account itself is is quite clear like it's all about that and i've noticed that you're when you want to do something actually something else it's on a different platform like your instagram is totally different it's not related at all yeah and i think that's really clever i think that's something that anyone that's sort of interested in expand their social media presence can look at and go oh this is great you know i can post my my selfies and you know my stuff on instagram and my cosplay and all this corner cool fun stuff more more personal more day-to-day life and in twitter is more to talk about movies and filmmaking and and even though sometimes we all go be personal why not but but yeah and youtube is more for longer educational videos that i take time to make and stuff like that yeah every every option has something different to offer yeah yeah i think i mean obviously you could use any platform for any one of these things but i think it's a good idea if you are um building some kind of business to you know specialize each one each platform into a into something so the people kind of have an idea of what they're following what they're what they're in for what they're what you're about um and of course they can if they wanna if they're interested in you and they wanna learn more about you in general they can follow you everywhere you want to see pictures of my dog then that's instagram so there's a lot of them way too many brilliant um never too many that's so true thank you yeah actually the producer i work with who loves pugs and we gave her what she left we gave her like a pug pendant i think so yeah so she'll probably be following your account now um so anyway um going back to sort of layout and stuff like that so what um has been your favorite project by far the hobbit trilogy right and more more than technically or artistically or professionally professionally for sure but it's almost personally because for me it was like a dream come true because the reason why i decided to do what i do was when i saw the the extended edition dvds for the lord of the rings because i was in it was in a moment in my life when i didn't know what to do with my life and i loved movies but i didn't know making movies was an option and when i saw that that dvd with the with all the documentaries on how the movie was made this was a movie that i loved that that's when i had the idea of okay you can make movies using that computer that's what i want to do so they were the ones that inspire me wet weta in in new zealand the ones that the ones that inspire me to leave everything i was doing because it was not making sense for me and and jump into animation vfx so i was sending i i sent them my reel and my resume million times since i finished school and and obviously they didn't respond at first because i didn't have the any much to offer but i kept insisting until they finally replied one day and they they um made me an offer and i got to join them and it was by chance they were working on the hobbit so i had i had i was fortunate enough to to move to new zealand and work on the hobbit trilogy with the same team that inspired me to start doing what i do so it was like like perfect circle i could i could close the circle and it was a dream come true for me yeah and i think we've all experienced that a little bit as you get more senior in in the industry is that you start out and it's so difficult you know you you send out your bill and of course you maybe you haven't got any professional works you know and and you don't get a reply um and then you or maybe you are working but you're not quite in the the sector or the the kind of projects that you want to to work in and so you haven't got anything that's similar to what they do to show them in your real um but eventually you hit a point where it's like you've got everything and they they and suddenly they go from like not even like replying to like sometimes coming for you and you haven't even applied to them um and it's interesting it is quite a sort of gratifying feeling when you realize oh wow i've i've come somewhere i've we all start from the bottom obviously and and the first steps are really hard to take because like you say you you don't have much to show and to be hired to do what you want to do because you haven't done it before so you have to keep trying until someone sees something in you that that fits what they're looking for and or they desperate in desperate need for hiring people which is also a good thing because because when when they hired juniors at least back then when at the end of a production we need to give a last push and sometimes they they hire more people at the end and when they're not they don't have many options they they get the people that might work but don't have that much experience and that's when you you get your first chance and and then once you you're in and then you get more experience you have more things to show and that things get a bit easier it's easier to find other opportunities in inside the industry once you're in but getting in it's it can be tricky and it took me a few years like like everybody i guess yeah no it it i think it's much harder to find it your first job than to find any other job i mean unless you unless you really mess it up exactly exactly but but yeah but that's that's the same for everybody in every industry probably beginnings are tough it's just but it's still worth it so keep trying you're out right and also you worked on the planet uh i think it was dawn of the panic yes in between hobbits we worked in a couple more more uh shows in between the hobbits yeah but yeah i mean there's some really great you know work in that movie i mean i think that was fun no it's funny it's where they really push the the boundaries of what of realism i think you know in terms of some of the quality maybe from the layout perspective that doesn't change that much i guess whether how real the the final lighting and compositing works perhaps although does it change the way your the way they're expecting you to move the cameras and things like that cameras in didn't change much the experience for us on on on planet of the apes specifically but what i remember that was challenging for for planet was the set dressing i remember you remember the the california street charge where all the apes are uh riding horses and shooting guns and you know that stuff well in layout we had to do all the set dressing for that that street entire street and it's it's an abandoned uh los angeles and it's been abandoned for for years so we had to put every like vines um uh crawling up the buildings and and there was grass growing in every crack in the in the road and we had to put the grass bits one by one just to make sure that every everything was detailed and and it took it took a lot of time and then by the end everything is dark and there's a lot of smoke and explosions and you don't see the grass but we spend a lot of weeks making sure that every piece of detail and every piece of grass and all the the the junk and all the debris that's around what's there so you don't see it but it's there believe me it was it was challenging i didn't miss a meme like that it was talking about blade runner 49 and it's and it was like look at all the detailed city i built and then the composites like about that and then it shows the big smoked out scene of los angeles i mean i guess that happens to you guys a lot right like i mean it's not an uncommon experience but it happens to all of us we sometimes entire shot or in time sequence gets cut out so you work you're working in a shot and you you put your your soul and your heart in it for for days and days and then in in editing gets cut out because that those things happen and you're like where was my it's supposed to be my shot there it's not there anymore so it's not that you don't see the grass he says you don't see the shot but that that's how movies work right so that happened that has happened to all of us and that's fine yeah no it's you've got to take that the heartbreak with the the fun what can you do what can you do and i guess as a as a lead as well there's something she got i mean the juniors might not be quite as tough at that stuff and you've got to keep them excited when you know you're like well yeah i know you did that great work and they're not putting in the movie and now you need to do some more great work which will go in the movie and this is the first time that happens to you but it's not going to be the last so you better deal with it yeah no that's that's yeah that's how movie works and this happened since since films exist so yeah sometimes your your part gets cut out yeah you must be harder when you're when you're an actor it must be much harder yeah i i i i had a friend in and he they had a he had a really awful contract where he's like his payment was dependent on being in the edit so not only was he cut out of this commercial but then he was no longer being paid oh my god no at least we get paid for all the hours we put in at least yeah well most of the hours uh i know you're in canada so you get paid all the hours that you work yeah you're in london so you know sometimes you do so don't you know yeah that's part of the industry together it's getting better there are companies like to pay overtime and generally companies are asking you know are not pushing for all of that unpaid overtime like a few years not all that long ago um and i think that might just be because it's harder to get artists and it might be because um i think they're realizing that actually the quality of work is better if you don't miss people about it obviously obviously if you keep if you keep your team um well taken care of and happy then the results are going to be better as well and we deserve to be paid for the time we put in if they're going to ask us to put extra effort and time we deserve to be complicit everybody does deserves to be compensated yeah the industry has gotten much better with the years you would agree with me yeah it was yeah slowly we're getting there slowly and how has it compared um obviously to the students but you've actually see did you ever actually work in spain yeah my first movie well the first uh project that i did was a tv show that was the first project that i could do in the right direction instead of just doing i don't know anything other than doing actual things that got me to where i wanted to go and so my first uh show was a tv show and then my first movie was in spain after that i i moved to australia so yeah a little bit i worked a little bit so how how does how have you found the work culture compares in these different countries is it is there things you sort of like in one place that you would like to bring to other places you've worked for more than countries the difference is not so much in between countries as in between studios i think because in the same in the same country you change to another studio and the the work ethic or cultures could be quite different so and and in spain i only work in one studio so i don't have all that much to compare with and same with with new zealand with australia so uh more than changing countries i feel like i changed studios i changed companies and here in canada i've worked in in two companies and they were quite different from each other as well so i think at least from my my experience the differences come from studio studio within country to country when at least work wise living wise yes it's different living in in london is very different from living in new zealand and very different from in australia or canada but the work itself is not that different i i find and i guess the people are often the same right wherever you go you meet the same you see the same faces sometimes you say yeah exactly and and there you have co-workers from all around the world we all speak english but we have a million different accents and and we do our best to communicate and and there's not one culture per country because because the world each one of us is from different places and that's also the beauty of it yeah i think many canadians work in canadian studios because i i don't see many like when i look on linkedin and things like that maybe because it's it's a it's a big film industry in general there are a lot of schools so sometimes most times we try to to hire juniors from directly after school around here but leo for example i think from the time we were like 20 people in the layout around here in in scanline i think there were three four canadians that's it and everybody else was from from elsewhere so and and that's that's great i i think that's great people so for all colors sizes nationalities and yeah that's great cool cool cool um um so is ah so going back to canada actually so canada is you're working in film you're also doing tv now film obviously has this um the whole i think if it has the whole tax um credit thing that brings the projects in but like with london has a similar thing but then of course there's the advertising industry and things like the bbc so is there something similar in canada of a lot of sort of um canadian content that's getting made that would get made even if all the hollywood studios went away or if the government came and said we're not doing this tax thing actually i'm not sure because the projects i get to work on are not necessarily canadian projects they're they're made here and sometimes they're shot here but in general they're not canadian canadians so they're obviously there are canadian projects but i'm not sure how many or how how that how it works compared to london not sure i know when i fly with with air canada most movies in in the in the plane where you're flying are from canada and they do that and so i get to see what movies canada has made when i'm flying but in general i uh yeah our projects are more hollywood kind of projects yeah same for you guys because it doesn't matter right now where you are we all work in the same movies anyways oh yeah pretty much um i just started going back to advertising now so i'm going to be on different things so we'll see a bit of change change of pace um but yeah very often ish hollywood sometimes some british and european movies which is always fun especially if they get cancer and refreshing also refreshing i think it's good that you know it's not just hollywood dominating all the vfx movies i mean all the movies in general i mean i think it's just one way of looking at the world and sometimes it's nice to have different perspectives oh yeah enough you know enough budget to to market them and and to technically reach all the levels that they want to do and obviously it gets much harder with genres that need more money like sci-fi or whatever i mean but i like comedies yet more so but the i'd like to give us an example mad max fury road it's a movie it's an amazing movie it's very different from what we used to from hollywood because it's it was made by an australian filmmaker that i absolutely adore and and it's it's filled with vfx done by the same studios that usually work in the other kind of movies so it was so refreshing to see a different take because we we get so used to the hollywood structure of movies that we end up feeling that they're all more or less the same because they follow the same structure so when you get something different from from a different filmmaker from a different place it's really refreshing and you learn a lot but um yeah so going back to i guess what you do in your in your day-to-day um so how um how how would your day your typical working day kind of well now things have changed a lot in the pandemic so now we're all working from home so my day-to-day now is quite different from what it used to be before the pandemic so now we don't have an excuse to get to start late right because my my work studio is right there so it's i try to to go for a walk it's not now that we're working from home and we have to make an effort to get out and to get to exercise a little bit and to socialize uh in the same way with our our workmates i miss them a lot is the the i rather work from home now i enjoy it very much and we're we're very productive but i miss i miss the the coffee with the girls and i meet the meets the the department the meeting the department meeting every week and and and the feedback you get when you when you're working physically surrounded by your workmates and we can uh challenge each other and ask each other questions and stuff like that that's the part that i think is missing the most but everything else is basically the same only we have dailies online we have dailies once a day and and we work in our stuff and i try to to stay communicated with my with my team through um online chatting and video conferences and phone calls and stuff like that we have to make an extra effort because we're not physically seeing each other yeah especially with juniors i guess yeah exactly you have to to be on top of things and making making sure that everything everybody needs everything they need and stuff like that but other than that is do our shots and get together in together in dailies to see what we worked on and and yeah we've learned now is normal now it was so weird at the beginning but now it's it's what we do it has yeah and it was also considered impossible that you're told you can't work on these franchises from home because of security and you can't you can't do it but we find a way and we're we're even more productive in many ways than from the studio because because there's no commute there's no excuses to get late there's no long coffee breaks and you can even when when you're when you need to attend a meeting that you don't need to participate but you need to be listening to what's happening you can you could be listening to the meeting while you work with something was impossible before now you had to go to the to the meeting room and spend the time than you need in the meeting and and now i can be listening to whatever is needed to be i need to know while i'm still working stuff yeah this is like the biggest productivity boost i found from working from house is um the fact that podcasts become i mean the dailies becomes like a podcast you can just have it on listen to it do your work you hear your shot name you jump in i mean i'm always behind with the mute button and all these things exactly you need to remember to mute yourself and we've all learned that like it's really useful because if dailies especially you have when you have later on you get like twice a day or three times now that i'm working on three shows at the same time i have dailies three three times a day and and in in the studio would be a lot of sitting on a room um time and now i can be sitting in front of my computer while i wait for dailies and i and we do all that stuff so in and and also over time it's easier because i would rather do overtime at home than at the studio if i have to stay late it's much easier it feels it feels different and so in a way we're working more sometimes sometimes yeah and but then the save of the commute actually kind of it feels like if i'm saving i mean maybe two and a half hours maybe even three hours a day then even if i had to do two hours overtime it's not as bad it's not as bad and it feels it feels easier and and you get more work done in less time so it's also less overtime in a way and you're not because when you're in the studio you need to stay late and you know you have to commute home late and it's dark and you're hungry and you don't want to eat overtime food and all that stuff it ends up being those two hours of extra time end up being miserable when you're home is not that bad cause you're home and you while you're rendering you can prepare yourself something healthy to eat and you have your dog with you and you get and you finish faster let's say so it's it's not that bad in that way yeah i know it's it's a lot easier and we've gone started people have gone back into the office now but it's still you know very much a mixed bit you're going into two or two times a week maybe three times a week and you're working two or three times at home which i think works quite well um but most people don't want to go back to the studio no i don't know it's amazing i i found great i've seen a few like on you know big company meetings where they've talked about pitching the return to the office as this amazing thing and then i'm watching the chat simultaneously and it's not very popular like lots of people like they actually now i've you know i'm with my cat and i i'm not traveling on the tube i mean if you've you know you've been in london you travel on the tubes yeah the train and it's it's not fun it's not fun so if if they make it optional or stuff like that or just once or twice a week i would be fine i would be okay with that because i would get to see my workmates again who i love i miss the team but i i don't want to go full time to the studio honestly yeah i think i don't think anyone really does um unless and i'm lucky i'm lucky enough that i can walk to work but still wow so how far is it if you walk half an hour oh wow so it's really really close so is vancouver very small i mean well the downtown the the core downtown is small you can walk from side to side in half an hour well it's it's long so the the yeah it's half an hour on from i'm on one side of the water and and the studio would be at the other side and it's half an hour walk and vancouver the the metropolis is bigger obviously but the downtown the studios that are downtown or ec are it's very manageable in that way except for it rains because it's half an hour to under the rain together and half an hour back which is also okay we all have big umbrellas and strong boots no and and then if you get snow as well and cold super cold not much when it's not much because this side this coast and in vancouver is the mildest of the weathers in canada if you go to the other coast toronto or or quebec or that that side that's bad and they're like minus minus a lot and they get a lot of snow and a lot of ice when it snows a couple times here and its nose is kind of messy because it's it's really wet snow so it's it's ends up being sluggish on the ground so it's it's more uncomfortable than then it doesn't get that all that cold um so i guess as a lead you're also going to have some involvement in in recruitment even if you're not looking at rules because at some point they're going to say hey we've got this person we want to bring in your department not necessarily that's more of a supervisor kind of role if if they're thinking of hiring someone that i've worked with or that they think i might know they might ask for my opinion but in general i we don't get involved in in at least in scanline i don't know it might not work the same way in other studios but um that's a supervisor role okay yeah no it just depends on the size because true as you know like when they when as the students get bigger i mean lead and supervisor gets blurred in a smaller studio and it it tends in general we have we have one lead per show and one supervisor per department so i can i can be leading one or two shows and and helping on a third one like i'm doing now and i don't always lead sometimes i just jump in to help whoever has a lot of work and and then we have a head of department cool um so apart from like i mean how close is your maya to just like stan and mile are you using things to i mean what sort of things are you setting up to make your job a bit easier i think i think that's also probably coming into in all studios in all departments we have the basic my obviously that is what we what we use the the basics of of what maya comes with but then we create our own tools we have tools for for bringing in what we need and that they're tailored for for our pipeline and it picks things the way we need them to and and when we publish things as well or when we need to to make um more tedious work we make them automatic by creating a tool that makes things for us and stuff like that we have a pipeline like every studio obviously have a pipeline department that programs those things for us and so yeah we we have a uh slightly different maya than everybody else and yeah no one none of these softwares come out are used as they come out of the box anyway exactly exactly and we have different tabs for different departments and we have our our own special tools that we get developing um this is some constant are you involved in that and or at least in asking for them or we yes uh artists work hand by hand with uh the the pipeline department and we ask them what we think could be improved or what we think we need or we and they get feedback from us and we test things that we they they do and we make sure that it goes the right direction and they need our feedback obviously to make the tools uh usable for us and and we need their feedback to to know what's possible what's not and and things like that so yeah it's it's teamwork cool um and in terms of notes i guess at some point client that's going to affect what you do but as well as client notes you might get notes i guess from animation or lighting if they need this so they need that so how um how are you set up for how are you set up for dealing with with feedback on your well we we get uh notes from client for because layout needs to be approved by the client before we pass everything to the next uh departments so the only times that things come back to us after we pass everything to animation is when things change or the sequence changing or there's a new camera there's a new read time and and they need to push things back to us to do our stuff again for them or when something breaks because things break as well and and we need to redo things that are not working properly but uh generally speaking in an ideal world when when the client approves our work then we should be done layout is done and then we pass everything to the to the next apartments and and and that's it that's that was our part and in terms of like animation and real world effects obviously if you have match move cameras that changes things a little bit but in terms of full cg is it pretty similar if it's animation or if it's for the wheels is it really changing anything for you now the only difference is that we have obviously we don't have a plate we don't have the restriction of the camp track and and we have the freedom to to do whatever whatever we want to do we still have to stick with the with the previous and and follow instructions obviously depending on the on the show and the director we have more or less freedom sometimes we can we can give ideas or try to to propose things but some but in most cases especially in bigger bigger movies we have to stick with with the previous and what the director of the the client wants but but there's not much difference other than that everything the workflow is the same when you have to when you want to propose something creatively so you would pose that to the supervisor and then they would prove it to the client or yeah usually we like uh artists show their stuff to the lead lead show stuff to the to the studio vfx supervisor every every show has a studio vfx supervisor for skyline in this case and the vfx supervisor in the studio shows our work to the vfx supervisor for client which who is the one that is in direct contact with the director so once they approve they show to the director the director approves great if not director notes go down the ladder down to us again and then we have to start over and show the the the studio vfx soup and then the the client vfx soup and then director and then back then yeah do you ever do you ever think it would be nice if they just sat in a room i mean i i feel like layouts you could set it up to i mean that's one of the things that's sticking up some of the real it's like where you know if you could just have them sit next to you like like a flame up or a colorist does and just do layout stuff if the if the director had the time to sit by my side and tell me what they need will be faster but they don't have the time to sit the side of every artist of her studio wherever there's a lot of us oh yeah so this is the i guess the most efficient way still the vfx supervisor especially on the client side they they know what the director wants and they they they're the ones that tell the director what's possible and what's not and all that stuff so when when they show stuff to the director it's much closer to what they know the director wants than if we started from scratch what's the biggest like um change you've seen in sequence or shy you've been working on oh reshoots sometimes you know the case you the the few cases they're very famous that when they do a family screening or a pre-screening they decide that the movie is not working and they decide to reshoot one third of the movie so we have to go back to editing and the movie changes quite a lot so yeah sometimes you get to months after shooting is over you you start over and then you're on other projects you disappear you know and then it comes back and it's a different movie and the dog's getting involved yeah it looks really sunny though i guess you just set up your you've laid out your apartment to look something i have i have a lot of light and the camera picks as much light as as they can but it's quite cool um so that's been really uh really really good uh i've learned i think i've learned a lot about layout i'm sure there's more we could go back and i'd like people to post any specific questions they have um if we would like to try and get you back or if you you know if you have any questions that come through in the comments we'll try and get you on board where can people go to find out more about you and what you do um as we said twitter is a good place uh instagram as well and the the my youtube channel as well what's the name of your youtube channel uh it would be my name under carolina jimenez garcia which is my second surname we have two family names and but probably just by googling it or or my handle the okay infographia thing that is so hard to to is that that's on that's your instagram as well yes instagram twitter and everything but twitter if you want if you want the the breakdowns of like a history of vfx techniques of um vfx and super long threads on of just movie stuff yeah and they they're like pretty detailed but and i actually found really good if you know the thread on rollerbot on twitter if you're going to read them because the fed on rollerblade is is a game changer i think yes cool that's brilliant and do you have a website no i have a blog but it's also in spanish where i i write um articles on trying to explain things on how to start in this industry and and i have a list of of schools in the spanish-speaking community that they can go to and stuff like that it's it's a blog on vfx and but it's in spanish as well it's in spanish but lots of people speak spanish you can use google translate lots of people are learning spanish lots of people speak italian or portuguese and they can kind of model through a blog in spanish that's true as well and if anybody has a question that uh or or they need information in english just let me know let's keep connected because i'm happy answering as much as i can in both languages so yeah you can do that brilliant so that was uh carolina garcia and we will be speaking again soon um and that's the end of this episode thank you very much for having me and you know where i am if you need me thank you for coming on[Music]