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I began my career in Visual Effects in 1985 at Apogee Productions in Van Nuys, CA. Aside from a brief stint at Robert Blalack’s Praxis Film Works, I spent my first 5 years in the business coordinating, producing, and then supervising Visual Effects for commercials at Apogee.
After working with Directors from many different client production companies, and internally with Directors John Dykstra, James Spencer, Trip Gruver and Eric Durst in the commercial division at Apogee, I left there to work freelance, and have since been fortunate enough to work with some of the top directors/commercial production companies in the business, including Tony, Ridley & Jake Scott, Jim Giddens, Mikael Soloman, Jan DeBont, Eric Saarinen, Alan Van Rijn, Dominic Sena, David Kellogg, Matthew Robbins, etc, etc. In addition to working as Visual Effect Designer for these other Directors, I’ve also Directed or Co-Directed a dozen or so commercials in the last couple of years for such clients as Coca-Cola, Dodge and M&Ms.
After doing a few commercials with Jan DeBont, he asked me to design and supervise the Visual Effects for his first film, "Speed." That was a 7 month stint in the winter/spring of ‘94. That film featured a fairly broad spectrum of shots, including aerials, matte paintings, miniaturers and CGI. The work on "Speed" was acknowledged by a BAFTA nomination for Visual Effects.
I then did a huge package of Dodge commercials for BBD&O and after that, spent four months doing R&D/Pre-Production for "Godzilla" with Jan DeBont, until Sony/Tri-Star pulled the plug in November '94. It was at that point that John Dykstra contacted me and we teamed up for the visual effects on "Batman Forever." In this film, I was one of five supervisors and was primarily responsible for the Batwing and Riddler's HeadQuarters sequences.
In the summer of '95, I did yet another package of commercials for Dodge, national spots for Revlon and Nike, international spots for Coke, Diet Coke, Cathay Pacific Airlines and Philips Electronics. Then in 1996, I worked on a TV mini-series re-make of "The Shining," as exec. produced by Stephen King and in 1997, completed "Face/Off” with John Woo for Paramount Pictures. Face/Off stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. This film featured many VFX stunts, extensive image manipulation and CGI.
In '98 and early '99 I completed another Stephen King Mini-Series called “The Storm of the Century”, for which I received an EMMY nomination. Aand somewhat concurrent to that, I finished a film for FOX2000 called “Pushing Tin,” directed by Mike Newell, starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie. In this film I did a substantial number of dramatic aerial and CGI aircraft shots. I really enjoyed that. And TONS of snow for both of these two films.
In May of 2000, I completed work on "Gone in 60 Seconds," directed by Dominic Sena for Jerry Bruckheimer/Touchstone Pictures. "Gone In 60 Seconds" stars Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie and Robert Duval. I had worked with Dom on several commercials prior to this film and he asked me to do "Gone," his second film. Notable challenges in this film included several difficult stunts and splitscreens, a CGI car and CGI pressurized gas.
June 2001 saw the theatrical release of my latest efforts, "Swordfish," for Warner Bros. and Joel Silver Productions. This film is also directed by Dominic Sena and stars John Travolta, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. It features an elaborate high speed explosion, very difficult aerial composites and copious amounts of CGI.
After a brief hiatus, I spent the next 8 months doing R&D for WonderWoman at Warner Bros.
We did some
brilliant motion studies (if I may say so myself) and some incredible cityscape
designs. When that picture failed to get off the ground, I was asked by Warner
Bros and Joel Silver to watch over their Jet Li action film, Cradle 2 the Grave. It was such a horrible experience that I took my name off of the credits for that one....but it kept me busy through the early part of 2003. I was challenged next with 6
months of R&D for Catwoman, also for Warner Bros. Once again, we managed to do some very cool motion
studies of the Catwoman character. However, I left the project for "creative differences"
before they embarked on production...I then spent a year doing sequence design work for Warner Bros’ “Superman Returns” until McG left the project...next was Wolfgang Petersen’s “Poseidon” in September of 2004. Poseidon was released in May 2006 and earned both VES and Academy Award Nominations for Visual Effects.
In 2007, I did some 911 work for a couple of films; The Invasion for Warner Bros. and Fantastic Four 2:Rise of the Silver Surfer for 20th Century Fox.
For More Information Contact:
Shawn Burns atSandra Marsh Management
Tel: (310)
285-0303