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

Chris, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I am always disheartened to hear about art programs being deprioritized and defunded. Art can be a powerful tool for communication and health. This includes painting, drawing, music and performance. For me, art was a safe place to focus and let my imagination run and to this day there are things easier communicated through imagery rather than through other mediums. It’s why I gravitate toward filmmaking and photography. By taking away this option from children, we are taking away an important tool. I love history, and the majority of what I remember from school was due to my art history education more than any social studies class. Art, culture and history are all tied together and it helps provide insight and perspective to some of our greatest triumphs and darkest hours. I would love to see those programs prioritized and given the focus they deserve just as much as programs like STEM. STEAM (including Art) has a better ring to it!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My career has been a bit of a journey through a lot of different disciplines. I started in visual effects as a matte painter, but quickly moved into compositing. Years later, I got hooked on previsulization, the process of planning filming before shooting by using rough 3D animation. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a lot of great projects including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Spiderman No Way Home, Wakanda Forever, For All Mankind and Watchmen. While doing previsulization work, I rediscovered a love for filmmaking and adjusted my path to getting back into directing. I began directing cinematics for video games a few years back and am loving the change of pace. I get to work with amazingly talented teams to tell stories while focusing on bigger storytelling techniques and direction. I enjoy the challenge of trying to marry narrative and art design to make the story in games as emotional and powerful as possible. For me, it always comes back to the narrative. Finding the core moment within each scene that an emotion circles around. Sometimes it’s hard or impossible to fully realize it, but with every new scene you get to try again. When it does finally land though, you get goosebumps! The ending to Marvel’s Midnight Sun’s, which I was the cinematic director on, felt this way for me. It was a big journey to get to the finale of the game, but I’m really proud of how the visuals, music and emotion landed at the end of the story. I get really excited at the beginning of every project to discover these moments. It’s when music, visuals, story and art all come together to be a bigger sum than its parts that the real magic happens. I continually challenge myself with new filmmaking ideas or techniques to find better ways to connect with the audience.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I have had several big pivots in my career both out of necessity and a desire to better prepare for the future. One was moving from post production to preproduction. Another was moving from vendor to client side work. The biggest shift of all was in industries, from film to games, a couple years back.

I had worked for nearly 10 years in visual effects, both in pre-production or post production, and had generally assumed that was where I was going to stay. As I worked more in previsualization, I reconnected with a desire to direct; to help shape a story into a visual experience. That opportunity to do that didnt come from film or vfx, but from an opportunity to work in games as a cinematic director. There is quite a bit of overlap between previs supervision and cinematics direction in games, but also plenty of new tools and workflows to become familiar with. Most previs sequences I had supervised before were 10 minutes long at maximum and now I was responsible for directing over 2 and a half hours of animated cinematic content. Getting up to speed on that was a unique and exciting challenge. To make it even more of a unique change, this shift happened during the covid pandemic when remote work was being embraced. My company, Firaxis, embraced remote work, allowing me to stay in Los Angeles despite them being based in Maryland. This simply wasn’t an opportunity for my career before covid.

This pivot was also motivated by an awareness of emerging industry trends. Around the time I began this switch, Mandolorian was coming out and Unreal Engine was becoming a powerhouse in the film industry. I could see game engine tech and the tricks from realtime computer graphics eventually moving its way into all entertainment, I felt it was a really smart pivot to go to the source and begin working in games. It gives me first hand, hands on experience on where the tech is going while also getting to help tell stories!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is finding out my work has impacted someone. When I hear an image I helped create has inspired someone or reminded them of a memory, or elicited an emotion, I know I’ve created something powerful. Really that’s where art transcends into something special and meaningful. It becomes art when craft, passion and execution meets the experience of the viewer. It’s a relationship between you as an artist and those who experience it. I love the challenge of trying to create that relationship through my work and think that will be a lifelong journey of discovery. Getting to do that with a team of passionate artists who also want to do the same thing makes that even more rewarding. These game cinematics or films aren’t created by one person and to work together toward a singular vision is something we all love to do together. When our work finally comes out and we hear how much people have been caught up in what we created, it makes it all worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.chrisstaehler.com
• Instagram: @cstaehler
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cstaehler
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cstaehler
• Other: https://cstaehler.wixsite.com/photography