INDUSTRY INSIGHT
Truth and spectacle
VFX supervisor Kevin Baillie on the responsibilities and sensibilities required to lead a major project
News and views from around the international CG community
Greenscreen studio shoot for The Walk with Joseph Gordon-Levitt standing on a practical segment of rooftop [final shot below]
I t’s not many who have the opportunity, whilst still a teenager, to work on a Star Wars movie. That was Kevin Baillie’s rather spectacular professional starting point in visual effects. “Always have a goal, right?” Baillie notes. “Always have a trajectory. I knew that I wanted to help tell stories using craft and technology.” Having become local young filmmaking stars in the Seattle area back in the late 1990s, Baillie and his high school pal Ryan Tudhope had been spotted by Lucasfilm and were soon after invited by producer Rick McCallum to join the staff at ILM during their work for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
“For me, my experience working on Star Wars: Episode I was my first experience working in film,” Baillie recalls. “I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the best education I could possibly have asked for. I loved movies all my life.” Baillie goes on to describe the fateful moment when Lucasfilm came calling. “I get home one day and have a voice mail saying: ‘My name’s Rick McCallum, I’m the producer on a little movie you may have heard of called Star Wars, give me a call’. So, I call him back and he proceeds to invite Ryan and I down to Skywalker Ranch to see some of the work and meet George, and of course we said ‘Yes’ and had this amazing experience visiting Skywalker Ranch and ILM.”
Kevin Baillie (seated at left) with Ryan Tudhope (standing at left) and George Lucas with their pre-viz department colleagues at Skywalker Ranch during their work on The Phantom Menace
“EVERY THING WAS NEW AND EXCITING AND WE WERE FIGURING IT OUT ON THE GO”
Baillie continues: “We met some of our heroes, including Dennis Muren and Rob Coleman. They were our celebrities. We just bowed down to them and they were so encouraging. We also met Doug Chiang and his art department. At the time, it was like the most secretive project in the history of filmmaking and here we are, two 17-yearolds, just seeing all this stuff. Our minds are blown. We still had a year of high school left after that, so they didn’t offer us a job but said ‘Stay in touch’. So, we used our final year of high school to craft a visual effects project that was basically a no-brainer to say ‘Give us a job’.”