And this movie [Real Steel] definitely looks like nothing else I’ve made, which was the point. I think also, Evangeline and Hugh are such a fantastic… Their chemistry is so genuine. And also it’s a good balance to all those visual effects. It’ll give you more of the tone.

The main prank that we play with props is for people‘s birthdays. The special effects people will put a little explosive in the cake so it blows up in their face – that’s always fun to play on a guest star, or one of the trainees or someone who‘s new.

There are so many films now where you know the story is a supporting role to the visual effects.

Any horror element is as much psychological as special effects.

Certain Academy Awards like Sound and Visual Effects and Editing are sometimes referred to as technical awards. They’re not technical awards. They’re given for artistic decisions. And sometimes we make them better than others, and I guess we made a couple of good ones on this one.

I think that if you’re creating an environment completely or…in my research, what I’ve learned is that if it’s a CG world or a lot of visual effects, you’re almost better doing that in post.

Special effects movies have taken over the universe. That and scary movies.

It’s more fun if you can control things like lighting and make special effects in the darkroom.

My name is Raquel Welch. I am here for visual effects, and I have two of them.

I think naturally I’m a very visual kind of person. If I wasn’t in filmmaking, I’d be in something related to visuals. And I used to actually work as a visual-effects artist.

The image isn’t just created with the camera. That’s just part one. The editor gets an imprint. The colorist does something to it. Visual effects does something to it. It’s not just what you capture that people are going to see. The image gets made in many ways. In production and then in post.

The best visual effects are when you shoot as much of what you can in camera. And it’s really good for the actor‘s performance to have something real.

What you can do with visual effects is enhance the look of the character, but the actual integrity of the emotional performance and the way the character’s facial expressions work, that is what is going to be created on the day with other actors and the director.

It’s a world creation show [Shadowhunters], so we’ve gotta work hard in the physical production capacity with the visual effects, the sets and everything. It’s not just the real world with two people chatting in a diner. That’s tough on a television budget.

In movies, you can basically buy the audience into the theater. If you spend enough money on visual effects, even if you are lacking in story and character, you might still pull it off.

One of my first things I was fascinated with when I got on set was how does Grant do all this Flash stuff? it looks so good as the end product, but how does the special effects team work? How does the visual effects team work?

There is a reality to the way the actors play the scenes, given that there is a real, animatronic, moving robot in the room. So the level of nuance and realism in performance was higher because we built the real ones, and it keeps the visual effects guys honest.

You set up the look, the visual effects and the sets, and that’s awesome, but I enjoy the casting most of all. That’s where you really get to define the show.

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play… there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there’s Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture.