This Saturday was a big day for me: My first Visual Effects supervision job apart from anything related to my education. Magic Movie hired me for the visual effects to their documentary for national TV which will be aired some time in fall. I can’t tell you about the story (because I’ve signed a non-disclosure contract) but I can tell you about my day.

The day started by missing the first train thanks to a couple of old ladies who were totally inapt when trying to purchase a train ticket from one of the ÖBB vending machines on the ramp. After they somehow managed to get a ticket they got onto the next train to Salzburg city, but I missed my connection and had another hour in the morning to get ready for the day.

Usually I avoid riding in trains but when money is tight there’s not much you can take. On the plus side you have six hours of time for disposal when you’re not the one driving. Luckily there weren’t many passengers traveling to Vienna that day except that one guy who sat across me and nearly finished “Hector’s Journey” by some French author by the time we reached Vienna. I was plugged into my iriver the whole train ride and enjoyed the three hours I had by napping for two of them, the other hour was filled with listening to Calexico ¹, reading the IHT, preparing for my upcoming tutorial-class and, most important, reading and pondering the storyboards for today’s shoot.

I arrived at the studio at around 1pm as the crew just had finished painting the white background to blue. It still smelled of wet paint while I was offered a strong espresso. I didn’t even notice that there was no sugar in it for I was so eager for some java. It was the first time I went to Vienna without paying good old Starbucks a visit.

When the actor arrived too and got his special-effects makeup applied by no less than director Michael Satzinger himself I set up the blue screen for VFX with Christoph Skofic, now a very talented and passionate cameraman and cinematograher I know from school. Luckily he already knows much about working with visual effects so I could spare everybody the explanation what exactly tracking marks are and why I need them so badly. On some DVD commentary track I’ve once heard somebody say “Why did we need a visual effects supervisor anyway? Last time the VFX came out well without one”! I say: That might me true, but it would’ve been much cheaper and faster with having a VFX supervisor. Not to mention the thousands of curses from the guys in VFX…

My last train back to Salzburg was leaving at 8:40pm so we had to carry out the most important and most difficult dolly shots in the beginning – the dolly shots. Usually everybody on set hates a Visual Effects Supervisor but I felt fine with that team: They gave me the time needed to mount the tracking marks on the background, on stand-ins and to perform the tedious measurements of everything and the camera’s gamma-mode. You can’t be too thorough when recording what’s happening on set, especially when you do the post-production of the shots yourself. But this crew was very relaxed and gave me the time I needed which I appreciate much.

Difficult VFX shots are always a compromise between what you can force on set to decrease the workload in the post-production, and what you can’t do on the set which results in hours of clean-up in the post. Working as a VFX supervisor means balancing these two positions. It also means being imaginative enough to tell whether a shot works or not by just seeing two people walking around a blue studio. And it also means that it looks like you’re the only one without a “real” task like grip.

Bewteen two shots our director was asked by Lukas, another old classmate of me and grip/lighter/sound in this team
  “Hey Michi, why aren’t you into commercials at all?”
Michael replied boldly that
  “I am not making films to make money!”, directly followed by a comment from technical director and co-founder of Magic Movie, Jörg Steger,
  “Well that’s exactly the problem!”
Jörg spent about 100 € that afternoon for purchasing 30 liters of buttermilk among other edible props for upcoming scenes the next day. “Nobody drink the wine or eat the prosciutto!” – pause – “It’s poisoned!”.

New Horizons

Time flew by and I could assist on three shots before I had to leave for one interesting train ride home. First, I nearly ended up in a train car to Venice (Italy) but finally found a seat in a cabin with only three older ladies and an older man reading a thick book. I thought that they wouldn’t be trouble when I was trying to sleep. Big mistake. Except for the man with the book (who got off after 15 minutes) they were all drunk. Majorly. Plus their husbands where only one cabin apart — just as drunk and also with an open door towards the aisle. One of them paid cheesy visits and babbled something about “how I love you, Hildegard” and “how I hate you, Hildegard”. Somehow I still managed to sleep a one and a half hour in total, waken up every ten minutes by a high-pitched sharp laugh. When the old men started singing again on the aisle I woke up and harshly shut the door which irritated the old drunks but I couldn’t care less.

In Linz they finally got off and I was alone — at last! I switched seats and just when I had fallen asleep again three young black hip-hoppers with two local R’n'B-styled lower-Austrian girls hopped in and started babbling, partly in French, and insulting each other so bad that I wasn’t sure if they really belonged to the same clique. Half asleep I learned that one of the girls, Kathi, was pregnant and always concerned that her folks would stare at her belly while she was insulting Foma all the time that
  “Africa stinks of all the cows and I’m gonna sue you because you ain’t Austrian.”
Foma kept laughing
  “It’s the corruption that’s so terrible don’t you go to school?”
Kathi growled angrily. Foma looked at me
  “Sorry, man, she just keeps talking and talking and talking.”
He laughed tipsily and one of his “brothers” leaped in and gave him a 2-liter plastic bottle of whine of which he took a big gulp.

Half an hour later their peers found a cabin they had for their own, one without a creepy sleepy blond guy, and went off. Before he left Foma looked at me.
  “Everything alright? You want me to turn off the lights so you can sleep?”
  “Thanks, man. I’m fine. But keep them on, I don’t wanna fall asleep again and miss my station!”
He nodded, smiled and left, keeping the door open, but I didn’t mind. Still after another thirty minutes I got a terrible headache, dimmed the lights and decided to order my thoughts while blankly staring into the dark, ever changing landscape outside as Foma and his folks were merrily goofing around in the aisles. Suddenly one of them looked into my dark cabin, assumed that I was sleeping and silently closed the door before he went back to his friends.

In Salzburg I got off, paid the exorbitant amount of 5.20 € for a pair of hot wieners and went to my train due campus Urstein that wasn’t leaving for half an hour and so I waited more or less alone and more or less awake for it to start moving. I was tired and exhausted and felt as if I was the only one awake around. But I was mistaken. Two stops before I had to get off a goth girly all in black, of course, tumbled in, nearly tipped over her enormous boots and cranked up the volume of her white iPod Nano to the max listening to an old Evanescence track. She opened her bag and dug into it for something. As she finally found a tiny lip-gloss she let out a sigh of relief while applying it. I could tell from the intense smell that it had some very fruity flavor. And I am not sure but I think she even ate some of it.

When I got off at my station there was cold silent fog everywhere. It carried away some of my dizziness as I made my way towards the campus building. As I was making my way to the backside I noticed that it was full moon and with the floating fog around and with the already turned-off garden lamps the place looked nearly magical. Behind many blinds the rooms were lit, probably with awake people inside them, working, talking, still I was certain there was nobody else awake. I was so sleepy that it was enough for the whole campus that night.