We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jake Akuna. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jake below.

Jake, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Is your team able to work remotely? If so, how have you made it work? What, if any, have been the pitfalls? What have been the non-obvious benefits?

What’s interesting is that we’ve always worked remotely; even pre-pandemic. Our company was founded using a decentralized model, hiring artists from all over the world and communicating by phone, email and video conferencing. At first, it was out of necessity as at the start, we couldn’t afford the overhead of a studio or office space but as the work progressed, we thrived on the freedom and flexibility that came with remote-work.

When Covid hit, the world was forced to go remote and many of the studios we work with began beefing up their file-sharing pipelines to meet the demand, which just made our jobs easier. Previously, we’d still have to send someone across town to either pick up or deliver hard drives to or from the various post houses.

In fact, when productions began ramping back up, mid-pandemic, on-set supervising for visual effects also changed a bit. In some instances, where the visual effects weren’t terribly elaborate but VFX supervisor would normally be present to keep an eye on things, we began offering remote supervision services. This would involve the production piping the camera feed to us through Zoom, where we could keep an eye on framing, movement, lighting and other factors that could affect the creation of the visual effects in post production.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve been a filmmaker and visual effects producer, supervisor and artist for going on twenty years now and my company, VFX2GO, creates VFX for the film and television industry. Besides creating explosions, blood, gunfire, magic and other fantastical digital effects we also provide design, pre-vis, animation, performance capture and consulting services for everything from big, multi-million dollar films to micro-budget indie shorts.

What really sets us apart is, I believe, our ability to reframe what’s possible. Often, a lot of our clientele approach us, wanting to tell a story with Avengers-level VFX in their film or screenplay, with a Blair Witch-budget, but rather than turning them away, we help to design or redesign the visual effects of their films to better fit their target budget and still stay true to their stories.

We also believe that a lot of challenges faced in post-production, which also contribute to a higher budget, are a result of a certain “fix-it-in-post” mentality that often relies on visual effects as the “fix”. Such challenges might include a boom mic dropping into frame, erasing a person who wasn’t supposed to be in a shot, or even painting out a coffee cup from a big HBO drama about dragons and thrones. While some of these challenges are unforeseeable, many are a direct result of a lack of planning; VFX2GO aims to be involved as early in the process as possible, consulting directly with directors, producers and even writers, helping to identify any challenges that could come up later down the production line. Rather than “fix it in post”, we “fix it in pre!”

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

So much of what we do in visual effects is misunderstood by those outside of this field; even those within the film industry. A big pivot we’ve recently made has been toward educating our clients and the film community as a whole (through YouTube, social media and direct consulting services) about what goes into visual effects; not just how to shoot VFX, but how they work and what goes into the process of creating them. Overall, I’ve found that when a producer, director or filmmaker is better informed on the subject and can shoot their film with a broader understanding of the VFX pipeline, the material/footage they then bring to us in post comes with far fewer issues, which helps us to do our best work and in turn, makes their film look even better. Many of these topics and insights will be covered in my upcoming book (also part of the pivot) “VFX on the Go”.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Our flexibility and ability to find solutions outside the box. Many of our clients come from the mid-to-low budget range of independent films and don’t often have the resources of the big studios at their disposal, so when it comes time to create the VFX of their films, they aren’t often left with much to work with. Rather than try and offer up services they either can’t afford, we help to find solutions that work within their budgets, even if they don’t involve us working on them. For example, a film that I was recently approached with had a driving scene which took place at night and they wanted to shoot the scene on a green screen. On a technical level, this isn’t a huge deal, but when you consider that the scene would be between three and five minutes long, the cost to replace the green screen with a dark nighttime exterior shot would fall well outside their budget. Instead, I proposed that since it was at night, they could put up a black curtain outside the car and use moving lights to simulate the streetlights passing by the car. This practical solution wouldn’t cost them any more money on VFX, freeing up their funds for other, more involved effects shots.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vfx2go.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vfx2go
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VFX2GO
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-akuna-10798838/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vfx2go
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@vfx2go

Image Credits
Cherie Pavico-Tsukayama, Christian Yi