Andy Orloff, co-founder of Zoic Studios, has worked in visual effects for 30 years. With over 100 motion control shoots to his name, Orloff was instrumental in setting up Zoic's proprietary pre-visualization technology, ZEUS, which is used for both episodic and commercial projects. In 2020, he spearheaded the launch of the company's Real Time Group, leveraging a coveted Epic Unreal MegaGrant to advance the company's internal real-time filmmaking capabilities. A pioneer in real-time filmmaking, he’s overseen the creative direction of Apple TV+'s heralded space series For All Mankind, Netflix's fantasy drama Sweet Tooth, and CW's Superman & Lois, among many others.

As part of our Well Versed series, we asked Andy about his career highlights, the trials and tribulations of working in visual effects, and how he stays inspired.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

What is your proudest accomplishment as a visual effects supervisor?

My proudest accomplishment as a visual effects supervisor is running a large team and constructing a pipeline that allows artists to do what they do best—to express themselves and make work that everybody can connect with. We worked for a couple hundred episodes, eight seasons straight, on the show Once Upon a Time. It had a broadcast schedule, which in some cases meant a two-week turnaround with shot counts anywhere from 300 to almost 1,000, all shot on greenscreen, most of them very early virtual set work. It was the excitement of doing something so ambitious and the fact that fans loved the show so much. Folks were so proud of the work and enjoyed gaining the experience of conquering so many different creative challenges on the show. So that was a big one for me. It was a lot of fun.

Have you ever had to completely rework a scene in VFX just because something on set didn’t go as planned?

Changes are inevitable in visual effects and there are many, many times that the intention of the crew on the ground is thwarted by circumstances beyond their control and the scope of work for the VFX crew is more extensive than we thought that it would be. We had the opportunity to work with Chad Wanstreet, visual effects supervisor, and Park Chan-wook, director, on The Sympathizer for HBO where there was a huge scene that’s emotionally incredibly key to the story of the show. The scene is the last U.S. military transport leaving Saigon. They wanted to shoot a lot of it practically, they wanted to have a wetdown on the tarmac, but they were really stretched for practical reasons and ended up shooting it in a much more limited fashion without the lights that they wanted and without the practical special effects. So we had to work with Chad and Director Park to really make that sing, to really make it resonate—the danger and the tragedy of the whole scene mark everybody in the story for the rest of the series. So it’s a heavy lift for visual effects to take on that storytelling, that setting of the scene, creating that kind of gut punch that needed to happen. 

It turned out really well, but it was a lot of bobbing and weaving, considering we had to do a lot more to create the illusion of that scene being realistic. It was a big stretch. When you see some of the before-and-afters we did, it’s pretty incredible. We’re changing the entire lighting, adding explosions, adding reflections and wetdowns, adding vehicles and cities on fire in the background. But sometimes, when those unexpected changes occur, everybody gets really excited to dig in and do something really special, and I think it happened on that project.

How do you get inspired or stay inspired for creative work?

Whatever it is that you do, whether you’re fixing cars or making sculptures or painting or drawing or making music, I think it’s really important that an artist of any kind, especially if they’re working commercially, has a kind of pressure release valve for their creativity. A lot of times, you can get really in the weeds working towards studio deadlines and budget considerations, and lose sight of where the art is, where the story is, where the emotional center is. So, my advice to anyone who does this type of creative service work is to have something of your own. For me, it doesn’t have to be a big—I don’t need to write a hit single, I don’t need to make a drawing that ends up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the feeling of just getting your creative ideas out there in the world is like a muscle that you need to exercise to keep that focus going. If you don’t do that, a lot of times work like visual effects can feel like a chore, like you’re just cranking out a machine. And the people who want the visual effects work, why they’re paying a lot of money for this high end service, is because they want creativity—things that make the artistic vision, that take it, and build on it, and make it bigger. If you have that practice of doing something creative on your own, I think it’s easier to switch into that mode when you’re doing your work.

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