Off to Madrid until April 21st

Just a quick note to say that I am off to Madrid tomorrow early in the day. As we say in the biz: shots are never really finished they are only abandoned! And thus, I have been released from the clutches of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! I am really looking forward to the break, hanging out with Megcita, eating properly, getting a little exercise, and catching up on a lot of missed sleep!!! HP3 was a pretty challenging and fun job overall from my perspective. I worked mostly on a few sequences that feature the Whomping Willow, although I didn't get too intimate with the beast. I began on the project by doing a lot of general lighting technical direction on the environments - the Scottish highlands recreated in full 3D glory - and then progressed to lighting on a slew of shots set on a gloomy night that included the Whomping Willow in one way or another. I assembled scenes, laid out props, created lighting and shading set ups to suite the lighting direction, and even composited a shot (or two) towards the end of the show when the compositing department got swamped. These days the "illumination" of a shot is so tied to both the 2D and 3D worlds that I can not imagine being a good lighting technical director without getting my hands dirty compositing shots as well. It is such a close relationship between lighting and compositing, they inform each other so much at every stage, I think especially for all CG or nearly all CG work the composite is often better left in the TD's hands if the TD can get the job done. We'll see how this current impression changes with time. But it is clearly the way a lot of studios are going.