Visual Effects Artist and Los Alamos Native Steve Preeg
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
Visual effects in films are achieved by doing far more than just hitting a few keys on the keyboard. Just look at the credits roll in a movie and see the long list of names that appear under visual effects.
Los Alamos Native Steve Preeg, who earned an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his work on the movie, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, will reveal the complexity of creating visual effects during his lecture 7:30 p.m. Monday at SALA Event Center.
Preeg’s deep dive into the art and technology of visual effects is part of the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee (JROMC)’s Oppenheimer Celebration free lecture series. The talk also is co-sponsored by the Los Alamos Public Schools Foundation.
“We are excited to welcome Steve back to his hometown and to have him be the next speaker in our series honoring the memory of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” JROMC Chair David Izraelevitz said. “Oppie was interested in a wide range of subjects, not just scientific, and visual effects is an intriguing combination of both technology and art.”
Preeg said he will discuss in his lecture the tools and technologies that are used to create visual effects, some of which people may use every day.
While visual effects have become more and more of a major component in films, Preeg said he felt this both helps and hurts movies.
On the one hand, he said visual effects allow filmmakers to do things they were not able to do before. Take for instance “Benjamin Button,” Preeg said, it was floated around for 15 years because no one knew how to tell this story, but visual effects allowed the movie to be created.
However, visual effects can also make filmmakers lazy, he said. It allows films to be made faster and easier but there also is less planning. Preeg said there is a joke that a film’s third act doesn’t need to be written because it is known that there will be visual effects.
How successful visual effects can be incorporated into film depends on the director and producers, he said.
Preeg himself has a lot of experience in this field. According to a JROMC press release, Preeg brings more than 20 years of experience in visual effects. Some of his early projects were the development of character rigs and animation tools for “Beauty and the Beast” and Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”, and “King Kong”. Most recently, Preeg was the Production VFX (visual effects) Supervisor on “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers”, the life-action, animation hybrid comedy from Disney+. He led a team on more than 1450 VFX shots, including the creation of Chip ‘n Dale themselves.
He explained that he was introduced to the field of visual effects through a friend in college. Preeg was pursuing a graduate degree in mechanical engineering when his friend convinced him to drop out and start working in the film industry.
For those who are interested in getting into the field themselves, Preeg offers some advice.
“My advice is to get into (visual effects) only if you are real lover of film … get into it for the right reasons,” he said.
One of the highlights of working in this field for Preeg, he said, is that “I am not doing the same thing my whole career. Every time you do effects, it is a whole new thing.”
He noted he really becomes immersed in the film’s subject matter. If he is working on a film about cars, for instance, then he learns a lot about cars to create the visual effects.
Another highlight is he gets to travel all over the world and meet a lot of people.
“You meet a lot of interesting people,” he said. “I feel like I have been lucky in that sense.”
Although work has not taken him back to New Mexico, Preeg said he still visits Los Alamos, which is where his mother and sister live. Preeg himself is a 1989 graduate of Los Alamos High School.
He added he is excited to give his talk in his hometown.
“It will be really great to get to my hometown and do something nice for my hometown,” Preeg said.