Adam Azmy is a London-based visual effects artist at award-winning VFX studio One of Us, where he leads design-driven work across feature films and other high-end projects. He is known for his contributions to visually ambitious titles and major studio franchises, including Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia and the Netflix series The Diplomat. He brings a filmmaker’s eye and deep compositing expertise to all of his projects.

Let’s learn more…

What does being a VFX supervisor entail?
As a VFX supervisor, you could say that one of my primary roles is as a translator between a director and the VFX artists who will ultimately create the work. I need to know how to speak fluently to both groups of people in each of their creative languages.

Throughout all stages of a production — preproduction, shoot and post — it’s all about understanding the director’s ideas and adapting to their way of seeing the world so that they feel confident in me being a custodian of their vision.

I work with all of the various departments on the shoot to provide the filmmakers and VFX artists with the best possible solutions so that we all align. Sometimes that even means advising a way not to use VFX at all. Strange as that might sound, I often push for a practical solution, even if only in part, so that the VFX focus remains where it’s needed.

Then into post, it’s often a continuation of that conversation. I work with the editorial team and director as the film is assembled, providing sketched-out VFX shots to aid the cut and solidify the creative intent of both the overall film and the tiniest details. This runs through the work I do with the various heads of department, artists and production teams on any given project. Clarity of ideas is what we’re always striving for.

What would surprise people the most about what falls under that title?
Something that might surprise people is how much, or how little, can fall under the VFX supervisor role. It can spread out much further than just giving post guidance or recommending cookie-cutter ways of shooting something on-set. For me, realizing that I could define the role allowed me to incorporate my love of building cameras and motion control rigs, and capturing physical photographic effects, miniatures and element shoots that play into the VFX work. Combining the real with the not-real helps keep the audience from guessing the magic trick.

How long have you been working in VFX and in what kind of roles?
I’ve been working in VFX since I graduated in 2008. I leapt straight into junior compositing on the film Australia, primarily working in comp and through the ranks as senior artist, 2D supervisor and then VFX supervisor.

How has the VFX industry changed in the time you’ve been working? What’s been good? What’s been bad?
It has and it hasn’t. On a human level, there’s been a dramatic shift since I started. There’s been the rocky uncertainty of work due to financial crashes, writer and actor strikes, COVID and shifts in taste due to filmmaker and studio over-reliance on VFX.

One big positive was how COVID forced the transition for artists to be able to work from home when needed. As an end-of-line department, VFX is always working toward the hard deadline of a film’s release, which used to mean working late, sometimes overnight in the office, both for security and technological reasons. Lots of missed dinners and strained family lives. But COVID forced everyone’s hand to make a remote option work. Being in an office with people is still a big plus, both for guiding new artists and for answering questions faster, but having remote as an option means people can go home, have dinner with family and then check in on a render instead of babysitting something from an office in Soho at 2am. To me that’s made things a little more human and efficient and gives people’s creativity time to recharge.

Do you like being on-set for shots? What are the benefits?
I love being on-set, both from a film lover’s perspective and because I enjoy the questions it creates and the direct answers it provides. With all the talking and planning that goes into making a shoot happen, nothing quite goes according to plan. That doesn’t mean there’s a dramatic break from the plan, but it does require all departments to improvise, and for VFX, it allows me to both improvise and plan at the same time.

For improvising, it could be a change that’s happened that needs a different way of shooting, something that hadn’t been planned as a visual effect but now needs it.

The planning side comes from being able to see the film we’re all making so I can chart a route for where the post VFX work will need to travel.

If the shoot is like a speedboat, able to change direction rapidly, VFX is often a much larger ship to steer, needing time to change course. Any head start I can get means less wasted work and more ending up onscreen.

Have you worked on any virtual production projects? If so, how was that experience?
I have, in a post sense, on the second season of The Agency. Our work mostly involved removing the tracking cameras that were used to locate the cinema camera in 3D space live on-set. It worked well for a mostly glass office overlooking the Thames, something traditional greenscreens would have been both expensive and difficult to make look good. Given how much of the series takes place in those spaces, it was a smart use of the technique.

Early in the days of virtual production, when the first season of The Mandalorian was in the headlines, a couple of colleagues and I at One of Us jerry-rigged our screening room with a VR Vive tracking setup on a DSLR and taught ourselves Unreal Engine, just to understand what virtual production was and wasn’t. We and some of the other supervisors and artists took this experiment to Unreal’s lab in Soho and tested it on their LED stage. It was a hugely useful exercise, so we could advise filmmakers with more confidence about where virtual production could and couldn’t be used.

What do you see as a big trend that is happening now or maybe on the verge of happening? Is it AI? If so, what are your thoughts on how it could be used for the good and not the bad in VFX?
AI, or machine learning, is certainly changing the field, and not just for VFX. While I remain skeptical about the whole industry folding into an AI model, it will no doubt have a large impact on all our work and lives. And in some cases, it already does.

Much like when digital cinema cameras came about and celluloid was declared dead, there will always be filmmakers and audiences who want to see something genuine and handcrafted. So I’m hopeful in that respect.

However, I’m still skeptical about it making things cheaper or easier. The claim that shooting on digital was cheaper than film is much the same; the change to digital actually just restructures the costs and increases the amount of work it takes to make a good-looking image. AI could be something similar. Fewer people involved, perhaps, but costwise, we’re only just starting to figure out the actual cost of image generation, versioning, creative tweaks and repair work.

Not to be completely archaic about it, but it starts to take some of the magic out of things, much like the overuse of VFX has swamped our screens. As with everything in film, no one department should be the loudest all the time. AI will, I’m sure, find its place as another tool, but it’s down to us — the audiences and the filmmakers — to collectively find our tolerance and taste levels.

Did a particular film inspire you along this path in entertainment?
For me it was Spielberg and Jurassic Park. I’ve always marked that down as patient zero, and still do. It’s one of the greatest examples of a film using as many different tricks as possible to overwhelm an audience with the spectacle of cinema so they can be fully immersed in its story. It’s often remembered for its groundbreaking VFX, and they are astounding, but the number of VFX shots in the film would be on par with a low-budget indie film by comparison. For me, though, it was the fact that everything felt connected: the practical effects, the sets and locations, the characters and the animals.

I think that’s why I love the orchestral nature of cinema. Everyone plays a very different instrument, be it costume, acting, photography, lighting, set building or audio recording, but for one moment it all syncs up, and you don’t hear just one instrument; you hear the whole symphony.

Did you go to film school? Art school?
Bournemouth (now the Arts University Bournemouth). I loved it. I loved having the opportunity to shoot on 16mm film and edit on a Steenbeck, working through every roll on-set for the short films we all made. Sometimes directing, other times building sets or recording sound and editing. It was great to build a picture of what everyone does, not necessarily to an expert level, but it helps to know all the work that goes into it.

What’s your favorite part of the job?
Being able to work with so many different people, each with their own skill set. Personally, I’m more of a jack of all trades and master of none, but I have immense respect for those who are masters of one, and it’s wonderful to work collaboratively with people like that.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
Well, after working in VFX and comp for 10 years, I actually stepped away for a few years and built furniture, cameras and lenses, and whatever other commissions found their way to me at my little studio at Blackhorse Workshop. So I’d probably be doing that. I’ve found a good balance now between the virtual work and the physical, but if I had to choose just one, I’d probably unplug and carry on making things in the real world.

Can you name some recent work?
The most recent, and the work I’m proudest of, is Bugonia from last year, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It was a joyous project to be part of, like joining a small family of filmmakers, and we’ve since gone on to collaborate on a music video and a couple of commercials. The team at One of Us was incredible and also felt like another small family. Everyone was quite protective of maintaining the quality of the VistaVision 35mm 6K film scans and the film we were all making. Yorgos trusted me to shoot a number of real physical elements and build the wormhole sequence between the office cupboard and the mothership entirely as a special photographic sequence that I designed, built and shot at my little studio. I also managed to sneak our cat into the end montage.

What tools do you use day to day?
As I’m from a comp background, Nuke is a big part of my daily work, whether for sketching out shot ideas or jumping in to help build a look or a shot. Resolve, RV and ShotGrid are the other daily drivers, along with the dreaded spreadsheets and documents. It can’t all be pretty pictures.

Where do you find inspiration now?
I find inspiration from all over: galleries, exhibitions, nature and photography. I’ve also found a lot of inspiration from science and the accidental design aesthetics of items built for pure function…  the NASA rover tires, for example.

What do you do to de-stress from it all?
I find peace in being able to make something for myself or friends. Making furniture for home or repairing and fixing things. I like to think that if something was made by a person, it can be fixed by a person too. Anything that takes me away from a screen for a bit.