Inside a VFX Career: 5 Minutes with Hamish Ballingall

How did you break into VFX? What was your first real job, and who gave you your first “yes”?

Back in 2015, after applying to 30 VFX companies in London, by some miracle the only reply I got was number 1 on my list, Framestore. Months earlier at the London VFX festival I plucked up the courage to talk to Anna Swift, head of Recruitment at Framestore film, after a panel event she was doing. Turns out she remembered and liked me and replied to my application ultimately giving me my first job in the industry as a runner. I guess I owe my start to networking, courage and a bit of luck.

Being a runner was a great opportunity for someone like me, who wasn't good enough for a junior FX role, to learn and show potential through hard work, teamwork and communication skills. One day, whilst chatting to the head of FX in a kitchen whilst washing up, he took a chance on me and after 9 months I was promoted to my first 'real' job as a junior FX TD on Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

At first I was very stressed as I didn't know what I was doing but I think they saw potential in my work ethic and communication skills, also I was very cheap. I got my first proper 'Yes' on my 2^nd project, Thor Ragnarok, surprising the supervisors with some great looking spaceship Thruster simulations. I jumped at the opportunity to temporarily cover this task whilst more senior artists were on holiday. Although my technical skills were limited, my artist eye, determination and asking many questions helped achieve great results. The supes were impressed, kept the task with me and that's when I realised, not only that I could do this, but I really enjoyed it. 

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What’s the most memorable project you’ve worked on? 

Hm,  it's hard to pick one as every project is different with its own fun and challenges. Shout out to Dune at Dneg Vancouver, the most excited I've been to watch the final result and be part of such an epic Oscar winning film. Although I've worked on many big blockbuster films, I might actually pick an advertising project I worked on at The Mill, Cryptoblades, a 3 minute video game cinematic about a fantasy world at war.

I was very lucky to be given the shot of my career. I had 7 weeks to do all the FX for 1 epic shot in which a meteor smashes into the ground. The great thing about advertising is the creative freedom and variety of work you get to try and in comparison to film, being a bigger part of a smaller project. It was an absolute FX playground for someone like me to show off and push my FX skills. I created so many layers of simulations, explosions, destruction, shockwaves, dust, mud etc... I'd never been so excited to create something and the result was epic. The shot was done sooner than expected, the team was thrilled and I moved onto other fun tasks on the show.

That whole show was great, an amazing team and we were all proud of the work we made. Also this show was a great balance between not being too nit-picky but also a very high quality result with some creative freedom. So it was a real shame when the client's company went bankrupt and the ad was never released, luckily we were allowed the work for our showreels.

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What has changed the most in your day-to-day workflow over the last few years? What change surprised you the most (e.g., tools, pipelines, client expectations, pace)?

Obviously covid and working from home has changed everyone's jobs drastically. Personally I still work much better and enjoy being in the office with a team around me, but I love the freedom and the work life balance I now have. Our remote technology has improved and it's changed all of our meetings and daily communication, I believe for the better. For many big companies cross-site shows are standard, right now at Dneg I have daily meetings with my team split across London, India and Canada.

A huge recent shift is that clients increasingly expect everything faster, cheaper but same quality or higher. With all the VFX growth in India in the past few years it's very hard for western companies to compete pricewise. Recently many jobs have been cut in London as they've shifted to India, good offers and longer contracts are a lot harder to come by these days and people increasingly prioritize job security over pay or projects. I've been quite surprised at the amount of clients that prioritize cheap costs over quality of work. I recently led a team of 20 Fx artists in India on an animated Netflix show called Wolf King. It was very different and many ways challenging with communication, massively reduced budgets and time frames that are expected by clients working with India, however it was a hugely rewarding show and I was very proud of how much work our team produced so quickly. With all the global collaboration comes many challenges but also positives bringing us all together working with new people.

In the past few years I've seen almost allVFXpipelines transition to a USD workflow and to be honest I have mixed feelings about it. I believe Pixar invented it to work with their pipeline and systems but I think others have adopted it a bit quickly and blindly without proper testing or knowledge. It definitely has some benefits and for many departments it's great, but for many it requires a lot more careful planning and I don't think many companies have actually got it all figured out and implemented in a good way yet.

A more recent change creeping particularly into advertising is the false belief from clients that AI is here and 'can't we do it quicker and cheaper with AI'. AItech and pipeline isn't quite there yet for VFX but the client expectations and budget reductions are. This is something changing currently day by day and likely the next few years we'll see even bigger changes in our industry than the previous few.

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What’s something people outside the industry misunderstand about VFX/post-production?

I think most people don't think about it, I always found it funny that most people at the cinema never question how they're witnessing dinosaurs running around or space battles etc. I think this shows we're doing our job well, keeping them engrossed in the story, often bad VFX will snap you out of the magic and back to the real world. It's a very new industry that's evolved very quickly and many people don't even know what VFX is, even after I graduated some of my friends and family would still say 'how's the graphic design going?'.

I think the main misunderstanding is how many people it takes and how much work goes into it. I think most people think of it in a similar way to what AI is, that it's the computer doing most of the work and an artist is just guiding it somehow, when in fact there are  many talented artists and amazing pieces of art involved. I think, to our credit, the average person doesn't realise quite how much of what they watch is VFX. It's very easy to point out bad VFX but many invisible Fx like paint and roto and even more complex cg can often slip by and convince anyone. Many great VFX shots will go by and the viewer will never know or appreciate how creative or clever some of the artistry behind it really is. At Framestore I sat next to a comper who fixed a difficult shot by filming his own hand and replacing the actors with it. Another great example is the Train Heist scene from Solo has an incredible gigantic cliff explosion that was actually a miniature underwater explosion they filmed and composited in a genius way.

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Looking at the future of the industry, what are you most excited about and what are you most cautious about?

I love my job, every new project or task offers exciting new challenges, problems to solve and art to create. What an Fx TD really is, is creating anything with complex motion that animation can't animate, so it's always changing, exciting and different every day. As software and tools develop it allows us to create higher quality art faster, so I'm always excited by developing technology and what it will allow me to do. AI could potentially grow the industry as VFX becomes cheaper and more accessible to the average film-maker. I'm excited about being part of the evolution of entertainment, maybe soon I'll be creating interactive simulations we can touch in some evolved VR/AR technology. I'm also excited to explore more story telling side of things perhaps in writing or directing, as ultimately what we do in VFX is a tool for telling stories and humans interest in that will never diminish.

I am cautious like many others about AI.. So far advancements in technology have caused our industry to grow, although there is a worry that AI is such a drastic sudden change that we cannot transition in time and are replaced by people with totally different skills. I'm also cautious about roles continuing to move to India as clients prioritise cheaper budgets over quality of work. But perhaps the more junior roles in India are more threatened by AI than ours, who knows how things will play out in the next few years.

It's always been a rapidly changing, slightly unstable but exciting industry and whatever happens in the future I consider myself lucky for my time in VFX so far and hopefully to come. All future projects offer me artistic opportunities to explore, improve and create as I continue to master my craft in whatever way the industry moves.

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