Ari Rubenstein is creative director and VFX supervisor at Break+Enter, the VFX division of Nice Shoes. It is an exclusively remote-based creative studio providing a full gamut of visual effects and animation services.
We reached out to Rubenstein to find out more about his dual roles and how he works.
Outer Range
You have two titles. Can you talk about what each job entails?
As creative director, I’m responsible for leading the studio’s team of VFX supervisors and artists, and co-managing its slate of film and television projects while setting its overall creative approach.
As a VFX supervisor, my work begins by reading and breaking down scripts, sometimes before we even have storyboards to review. I’ll assist in the preparation of bids, which aids production with early budgeting and potential options for their shoots. I might suggest more economical, efficient and creative ways to tell their story.
Next comes on-set supervision of all the visual effects shots our company is slated for. After this, once we get the footage turned over to us, I’ll kickoff the team and work with our respective supervisors to cast the work out. From then on through to our final shot delivered — which could be dozens to hundreds of individual shots — I’ll collaborate with our clients and convey their direction through supervision of our in-house crew. Finally, I’m responsible for approval and facilitating delivery through to the project’s completion.
Outer Range
What would surprise people the most about your job?
The sheer scope of moving interdependent parts and how far off-course just a single poor decision on my part could take us.
How long have you been working in VFX and in what kind of roles?
It’s been approximately 30 years, and not to sound flippant, but I’ve worn just about every hat in the filmmaking pipeline. I founded a VFX company back in the ‘90s (Curv Studios) and had to do sales, marketing, producing, VFX supervision and just about every artistic craft required.
Though I was a jack-of-all-trades, I did choose compositing as a specialty and was fortunate to work on many high-profile films throughout my career.
Can you name some recent work?
The last film I supervised was Nanny, a psychological horror by director Nikyatu Jusu, which won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. That was a great experience all the way through.
Then there was the eight-part series Outer Range, an Amazon Prime series with Josh Brolin. Break+Enter delivered over 200 shots, including the highlight of our VFX effort: the trippy, mysterious black hole.
Outer Range
How has the VFX industry changed in the time you’ve been working?
When I got going in the early ‘90s, there were many pioneers still trying to tackle aesthetics, which at the time had never been done before. That spirit and feeling is a bit lost now, with all the software and technique worked out and just about anything you can envision a relatively straightforward process now. And the hardware has evolved to support it all. Back then even if you knew how to do it, and the tools were available, you couldn’t necessarily do it because the hardware wasn’t strong enough to accomplish the task.
Beyond that, and that’s a lot, tax rebates and global outsourcing of labor have changed the industry irreparably. The good part is that aspiring artists from around the globe now have opportunities that never existed before. Inspiration flows like a river, but the bad part is that compressed budgets and schedulesand regional financial incentives iron out those opportunities as much as they create them.
Ari Rubenstein’s WFH setup
How has the VFX industry been affected by COVID?
The pandemic enabled the dream of remote-based filmmaking. We’d all fantasized about working from wherever and not having to uproot your family to go find work, and that has been realized. No one doubts the viability of remote crews anymore.
The unfortunate part is that we’ve lost some of the essence of filmmaking, those intangible moments of face-to-face collaboration. Sitting in a theater together and reviewing work on the big screen and then gathering with the entire crew for a wrap party. That’s the juice, and I miss it.
Why do you like being on-set for shots? What are the benefits? And how has that changed during COVID?
The best thing about being on-set are in those rare moments with the director, when they are uncertain and look to you for expertise in helping them pull off a shot and tell the story.
The benefits come later when you’re planning, and work on-set bears fruit with a well-oiled workflow back at the shop. The alternative can be pretty painful.
Outer Range
For Outer Range, COVID shut down production a few times, which resulted in plates being shot at different times and in different seasons throughout the year. Those shots were cut back to back in the same sequence, so we had greenery in one shot and dead grass in the next for as far as the eye can see. We had actors wearing different clothes from one shot to another. Really a myriad of logistical problems based on schedule interruptions of different shoots. This resulted in us having to change the seasons, change people’s outfits, replace skies…all for continuity and all of which could’ve been avoided were it not for COVID.
What tools do you use day to day?
All the standard VFX pipeline tools, like Nuke, Houdini and Maya.
Did a particular film inspire you along this path in entertainment?
Jurassic Park, The Exorcist, Superman, Star Wars, you name it, I was hooked from an early age. I have always been blown away by the notion that film is the greatest of the arts, if for no other reason than all the arts have to work in concert to create a great film. And a great film has the capacity to transcend any other medium, at least for me.
Nanny
Did you go to film school?
I did not go to film school, I’m completely self-taught and have an insatiable appetite for the arts and technology of filmmaking. At 54, I still feel like a kid in the theater. I have lost none of my appetite as a fan or as a creator.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
I love when there’s a visual effect that not only serves the narrative but intellectually inspires me at the same time — the type of shot that could really enhance the story point in some clever way and blow away the audience and, potentially, my peers.
The Matrix was probably the best example of this. There were many things we had to figure out, and all of us loved working through the problems together and then celebrating our solutions and final work. And almost every shot had layers of depth if you cared to dig down and consider the ideas presented by the Wachowskis and us.
Ari Rubenstein channeling his inner ski bum.
If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I would have been a ski bum working at some dead-end job just so I could live in a mountain town, playing guitar and skiing with my free pass because I had friends who could hook me up.
I did horribly in school growing up; nothing interested me, and I couldn’t apply myself. I was a late bloomer, and then I found film. From that point onward, I came alive and couldn’t get enough of it.
Where do you find inspiration now?
Everywhere. My mind is always racing with new ideas. I watch films, read books, listen to audiobooks and constantly scour the internet to review the art and technique of my peers.
Finally, what do you do to de-stress from it all?
Play guitar, take walks, watch movies with my family. Take my youngest daughter Lily out for driving lessons. Wait, scratch that! That adds to my stress!
