Meet "Five Days at Memorial" VFX Supervisors Eric Durst & Matt Whelan on Film U!

On Tuesday we talked with "Five Days at Memorial" VFX Supervisors Eric Durst & Matt Whelan!  Join us for a behind the scenes chat on the complexities of recreating New Orleans during the Katrina tragedy and much more!  Tuesday, December 13th, 2022 | 2:00pm ET/ 11:00am PT  Use promo code “filmmaker” for 30% off your first month of Pixelview.io.  Go here to redeem your code: https://bit.ly/3SuqzfY.  Eric Durst attended California Institute of the Arts and studied animation under Jules Engel, who taught the art of making films with the simplest of tools, a pencil and a stack of paper.  Studying this discipline, and learning how to create the illusion of life and movement with just lines on a page is what Eric credits as one of the greatest teachings, a foundation that he says influences his work in film every day.  Witnessing the sweeping growth of visual effects, and having an insatiable love of the field, Eric decided to transition from commercials and dedicate his time exclusively to feature films.  His first assignment was to create Gotham City for “Batman Forever”, which started his long career in cinema.  Credits include “Snowpiercer” with Director Bong Joon-ho,“Gods of Egypt” and “Knowing” with Director Alex Proyas, “Knight & Day” with Director James Mangold, “Spiderman 2”, “Syriana”, and many others.  With the harnessing of feature quality visual effects into the world of television and the episodic series, Eric teamed with director Ron Howard on the National Geographic series ”Genius”, for which he received an Emmy nomination, and continues to blend feature and episodic assignments with credits on “Perry Mason” for HBO, “Messiah” for Netflix, “The Terror” for AMC, and currently "Five Days at Memorial" for ABC Signature and Apple TV+.   Graduating from classical animation at Sheridan college gave Matt Whelan an extensive animation and storyboarding background, but since 2010 he has been leading the vfx department on various film and TV projects as the VFX Supervisor, where he also often supports productions as 2nd Unit Director on visual effects demanding sequences or episodes.  Most notably, Matt has VFX supervised and 2nd unit directed on "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" feature for Netflix, and TV shows such as "Five Days at Memorial" for ABC/Apple+,"American Gods" S3 for Starz, two seasons of "Reign" for CW/CBS, and "Hemlock Grove" S2 for Netflix, which received Visual Effect Society Award nomination.  Matt is currently supervising "Murder Mystery 2" for Netflix. Alongside his career in VFX, Matt has directed dozens of commercials, and several live-action short films. He co-directed Netflix’s animated feature "Marmaduke" which racked-up over 15 million hours of viewing, obtaining a spot in the NETFLIX Top10 for 3 weeks. --  Filmmaker U Chats are Powered by OWC!    This year OWC celebrates their 30th anniversary serving the Apple community with the best upgrades, gear, and accessories. OWC cannot thank their customers enough for the opportunity to serve, dream big, and for allowing them to do what the love so much each and every day. OWC can't wait to showcase everything they have planned for the next few years, and they're excited by the boundless opportunities the next 30 years will bring.  Always focused onward and upward with dedication to innovation, quality, and trust, they always strive to go further to deliver a better return on our customers' technology investments. OWC's customers rely on them to provide dependable products and support, without hesitation or compromise. They're committed to providing free, comprehensive educational content and the support necessary to ensure that the MacSales.com customer experience is second to none.  Please go to https://www.owcdigital.com/ for more information.  --   Also sponsored by AJA  AJA develops an extensive range of solutions for the professional video and audio market, from conversion devices to I/O solutions, digital recorders, cameras and more.AJA also provides its unique technology to leading manufacturers and developer partners across the professional video industry for integration into their product lineups. High-profile media companies around the globe, along with broadcasters, networks, post-production houses, mobile truck operators, cinematographers, film editors and more, rely on the reliability, flexibility and performance of AJA technologies.  Please go to https://www.aja.com for more information.  Every week, Filmmaker U is joined by award-winning filmmakers and creatives from the film and television industry. Please join us weekly to ask your questions live with our guest or watch or vast catalog of talented lineup of past interviewees on our YouTube page or facebook page.  Go to  https://www.filmmakeru.com for more information on all of our courses and our past interviews.  #filmmakeru #FilmU #FilmUChats #PoweredByOWC #AJA #PixelViewio #EricDurst #MattWhelan #VFX #5DaysAtMemorial #VisualEffects #vfxsupervisor