Listen.Look.Plan.Act.
Listen.Look.Plan.Act. // CG Supervisor
I supervise. Sometimes. While I enjoy direct creative work on the box, I occasionally welcome the logistic challenges and different creative demands that come with managing projects. In the past I have done so on an array of tv shows, feature films, commercials, and experiential work.
I have a good eye. Whether I direct an entire department to tackle multiple shows simultaneously, or apply myself as an artist on a 2-person team, I do not glance over detail or overall composition. We’re visual artists, and we’ll live up to that name.
Throughout the years I have established a rich, diverse roster of artist whom I trust and bring in when extra muscle is needed.
Supervision to me means to understand what is desired, anticipate problems, identify and apply artist’s strengths, and shield them from the strains of logistics while giving an honest outlook of what’s to come.
Supervision credits include: movies: Uncut Gems, Woman In The Window, Wonder Wheel, Five Feet Apart, The Yellow Birds television: The Americans, Elementary, Shooter, The Affair, Quantico, The Path, Limitless experiential: Conan VR, Porsche: Salzburg Headquarters Projection Mapping
Supervision credits include: movies: Uncut Gems, Woman In The Window, Wonder Wheel, Five Feet Apart, The Yellow Birds television: The Americans, Elementary, Shooter, The Affair, Quantico, The Path, Limitless experiential: Conan VR, Porsche: Salzburg Headquarters Projection Mapping
Selected Projects: Uncut Gems
Uncut Gems features Adam Sandler as a charismatic NYC jeweler always chasing after the next big score. To contrast the harsh gritty visuals, directorial duo Josh and Benny Safdie wanted to open and close the film with a fantastical journey through a precious opal and the protagonist Howie’s inner workings.
As there was no visual blueprint other than macro-photography of gemstones, I asked to work directly with Josh and Benny to best understand what they were envisioning. The entire sequence was left blank in the film script and just stated that the camera entered a real opal and came out of Adam Sandler’s rear end during a colonoscopy.
We spent a large part of project time and budget on RnD & look-development, and Benny & Josh showed a great amount of trust to let us explore countless avenues, and play around with different ideas.
A main technical challenge was transitioning from shot-footage to cg and back. To enter the opal proved very challenging, as we travel into a transparent, but solid object, that changes its look significantly based on what angle it’s viewed from. After many failed attempts to accurately recreate the opal, together with Brainstorm Digital’s Jasmine Carruthers we created the entire scene as volumes with area lights acting to match the colored specks inherent within the opal. We were then able to address these lights individually and move seamlessly into the gemstone with no recognizable transition.
Our final transition was a minute long push into a bloody gunshot-wound. For this, Matte Painting Supervisor Nick Constandy painstakingly created a gushing wound from custom cg elements and real imagery. As the camera pushed closer towards the face, we used a cg head Kwan Au modeled to rack focus post shoot on footage of the real head.
Quantico: S 2
For Quantico’s season 2 premiere, the story takes us to NYC for a fictional terrorist attack. As the entire season is centered around the perimeter, we needed to create assets that could be revisited every episode.
The molecule’s own asset team recreated a cg-downtown based on photo-textures and scanned geometry while we brought in freelance fx-artists to set up simulations for fire, smoke, and debris. Assembling a library of pre-simulated elements for close-ups and wides, we were able to attend the large number of shots set around our ‘ground zero’. This in turn allowed us to free up resources early to tackle unplanned shots and extra elements.
Z - The Beginning of Everything
Set in the 1920s, period drama “Z – the beginning of everything” featured ‘Great Gatsby’ aesthetics that called for elaborate set extensions throughout its first season. Without a doubt the money shot, we follow the protagonist out side NY Penn Station to reveal a historic Manhattan, bustling with life and energy.
As New York’s original Pennsylvania Station was demolished in 1963, the practical shot was conducted at Thurgood Marshall US Courthouse which was then redressed to stand in for the historic railroad station.
With the major elements of architecture, crowds, automotive, and fx, and increasing work on 5 other tv-series, the molecule’s cg department needed to staff up significantly.
After extensive study of period records and photography, all cars had to be created by the molecule’s asset team lead by CJ Chun while VFX Supervisor Nico del Guidice set up layout and tracking. Our freelance Houdini artists created setups for atmosphere, exhaust and smoke. Traffic and crowd rigs were created using Maya and Adobe Fuse.
Contact
Brooklyn, NY
Phone: +1.917.216.0845
Email: office@manuelriedl.com
instagram: @bratengeyer
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