Connecting the creative work with everything that makes it possible

Today my work spans executive production, strategic development and client relationships. That can begin with a formal brief, but it can just as easily begin with a conversation.

Deadpool & Wolverine grew from one of those conversations. A casual exchange with a producer became a lead, then an opportunity, then a substantial body of work for Rising Sun Pictures. That path from conversation to trust to delivery is a good example of how I work. Business development in visual effects is not separate from production. It depends on understanding the creative problem, the people involved and what a team can genuinely deliver.

My recent work has included Executive Producer responsibilities across major film and television projects. Before that I worked as a Senior VFX Producer, Producer and Bidding Producer, moving between clients, internal teams, schedules, budgets and the changing needs of a production.

That work has taken me into review rooms, client meetings, planning sessions and onto sets. I do not think of on-set experience as a separate chapter of my career. It is one of the places where the same skills matter most: listening carefully, understanding what the filmmakers are trying to achieve and connecting that ambition with the people and systems required to deliver it.

My credits include Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Deadpool & Wolverine, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Widow, Mortal Kombat, Gravity, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Prometheus, Superman Returns and work across the Harry Potter series.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny received the 2024 AACTA Award for Best Visual Effects or Animation. Thor: Love and Thunder was also recognised with an AACTA nomination. Those acknowledgements belong to large teams, and I am proud to have helped those teams do their work.

Long before “pipeline” and “workflow” became standard language across the industry, I was interested in how information moved through a show.

As a coordinator, production manager and production supervisor, I built early systems for organising show information and helping artists and production teams see what was happening. That experience shaped the way I approached every role that followed. Good systems should reduce uncertainty, make communication clearer and give people more room to concentrate on the work.

I contributed to the early development of Shotgun by bringing practical production needs into conversations about what the software should do. Later, as production and bidding became more complex, I continued building tools and processes around the work, including client tracking, business systems and the development of CRM and HubSpot practices.

The technology itself has never been the point. The useful question is always the same: does this help the work move?

In 2004 I began pitching cineSync into client conversations, including work connected with Harry Potter. The proposition was simple: both sides could look at the same moving image, point to the same detail and have a much clearer conversation.

As cineSync developed, I worked between clients, production and the Rising Sun Research team. I gathered requests, translated production problems into useful features, tested builds and helped organise the feature, sprint and release process.

That experience captured something central to my career. I was not trying to become a software engineer. I understood the production problem, could talk with the people using the tool and could help the development team decide what would make it genuinely useful.

The same instinct later carried into real-time production and virtual production. In 2020 I helped bring together the partners, production requirements and industry demonstration for an Adelaide virtual production project involving Rising Sun Pictures, Novatech, Storm FX and the South Australian Film Corporation.

From 2007, I moved into Marketing and Communications while continuing to support production.

It was not a conventional marketing role. I knew the artists, the projects, the technology and the pressures behind the finished images. That made it possible to explain the company’s work with some substance.

I helped drive major Rising Sun Pictures rebrands and marketing pushes, developed communications around projects and technology, and found better ways to get the work in front of clients. One early example was moving the RSP reel online at a time when physical reels and tightly controlled distribution were still normal. It sounds obvious now, but it changed how quickly and widely the company could present its capabilities.

This period also expanded my client and industry relationships. It eventually led back into producing and bidding, but with a much broader understanding of how reputation, communication, trust and delivery fit together.

Education has appeared throughout my career rather than sitting beside it.

Before joining Rising Sun Pictures, I taught creative software and worked with artists and students. Later I helped develop RSP Education, supported the relationship with the University of South Australia and contributed to courses and VFX Industry Nights that brought students into contact with working practitioners.

The aim was never simply to promote visual effects as an exciting industry. It was to give emerging artists a more honest picture of how the work is made, how teams operate and what production expects of them.

I have also spoken about visual effects, production and filmmaking technology at industry events in Australia and overseas, including the 2009 Asia-Pacific Blockbuster Animators Tour, SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, Semi-Permanent, Autodesk events and GISA. In Adelaide, I have joined Rory McClaren on ABC Radio to talk about film and what is worth watching.

Speaking, education and industry development all come from the same impulse: making complicated work understandable and connecting people who can learn from one another.

My route into visual effects was not a straight one.

Before Rising Sun Pictures, I worked across IT, early internet projects, technical support and creative systems. I left a secure IT career, returned to university and followed the creative work that had kept pulling me back.

I built and supported non-linear editing and animation systems, trained creative professionals in 3D software, became a technically certified Discreet Logic edit* engineer and trained teams including Fiji Television. My own creative work included 3D, compositing, motion design, interactive projects, voiceover work and some fairly experimental laser-show production.

Teaching at Raffles College led to the opportunity at Rising Sun Pictures. I joined as an artist, then moved into coordination. From there came production management, supervision, communications, producing, bidding, senior production and executive work.

Each role added another view of the same process. Being an artist taught me what production decisions feel like at the desk. Coordination taught me the value of clear information. Management and supervision taught me how teams and schedules behave under pressure. Marketing taught me how to communicate the work. Bidding taught me how creative possibility, risk and commercial reality meet. Producing taught me how much depends on trust.

Looking back, the variety makes more sense to me than a neat ladder of job titles would.

I have spent my career connecting artists with production, production with technology, technology with practical problems, clients with teams, students with industry and creative ambition with the systems and relationships that allow it to become real.

That is still the work I enjoy most.