Face to Face with... Jean-Marc Demmer

Having worked together in London, Paris and Los Angeles, Jean-Marc Demmer and long-time colleague, executive producer Baptiste Andrieux, decided it was time to realise their dreams of launching a company to demonstrate their “dedication to the making of visual effects” six years ago. The result, Eight VFX, has since built up an industry-wide reputation for inspired work in commercials, TV and features at its Santa Monica base.

The company has worked on titles such as Hostage starring Bruce Willis, but there was an even bigger personality on the set of its latest assignment, Family, for the Toyota Prius. The spot was shot over five days at Universal Studios with a team of five from Eight VFX supervising every technical aspect, including compositing shots in real time to ensure the project’s success. Demmer and his team of 22 spent over ten weeks replacing, reshaping and creating CG people and body parts, as well as fine-tuning and cleaning up all the various elements. Here, the VFX lead opens up about working with a ‘People Person’ for director Mr Hide (who features in the making of, above) and the craftsmanship of making images to support the director’s vision.

Why did you get involved with this particular job?

We had been admiring Mr Hide’s work for a long time. We were introduced during the bidding process and when he requested us for this very challenging project, we were really honoured to be able to serve his vision.

How much did the main character’s features and look change from the initial drawings to final film?

Mr Hide kept on doing sketches as we were building the character in CG to define how many people we needed for the People Person. Once shot, the designs were refined using plates and CG in the post process.

What was the most challenging part of the project?

Re-shaping the People Person to work with all the different angles they wanted, cleaning up a lot of rigs that people had to wear to climb on the main animated structure and integrating him into the right environments on a believable scale.

Do you enjoy the more challenging, complex jobs as opposed to others?

When you do visual effects you always like the most challenging job as it shows off your problem solving skills, but after all it is really a matter of having good creative, compelling picture, lovely music and people you enjoy working with.

What was the atmosphere like on set with the actors?

It was great, lots of energy and very busy. The actors did a wonderful job; it was really difficult for them to sit on this giant rig eight hours per day over five days. But everybody was really happy to do it and really cooperative because we all felt we were making something special.

Would you consider yourself to be a ‘people person’ and how important are good social skills in the VFX business?

Yes, definitely. Our job demands a lot of hours working behind a computer, doing and redoing the work to make it as good as we can. Social skills are a crucial part of our process to keep a team at its best.

You also worked on the recent Call of Duty Zombie Authority spot, tell us a bit about that...

Call of Duty Zombie was an amazing shoot, too. Seeing Rocky Morton put all his energy, talent and passion to direct this commercial was really a sight to see. The make-up artist and the special effects guy did an amazing job, too. We added a lot of gore in the post process; it was a new task for us.

Does working on a job ever take away from the illusion when viewing the final film back?

After spending a lot of time on a job it can happen but the process of releasing it and hearing everybody’s reaction gives you a refreshing view on it.