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Downers Grove artist fires up a career in special effects

One of the most provocative job titles in Hollywood — aside from best boy and gaffer, of course — has to be “Flame artist.”

Flame artist?Sounds like a guy who paints with a blow torch. Or sets things on fire with a flame thrower, artistically.

None of the above.

To find out more about this mystery title, we went straight to 27-year-old Downers Grove native Sean Wallitsch, an official Hollywood Flame artist who's worked on such features as #8220;Hop,#8221; #8220;The A-Team,#8221; #8220;Night at the Museum#8221; (both 1 and 2), #8220;The Curious Case of Benjamin Button#8221; and #8220;Iron Man.#8221;

#8220;A Flame artist is a pretty specific title,#8221; Wallitsch said. #8220;What I really am is a compositor #8212; someone who takes multiple images and stitches them together, very similar to what photographers and artists will do in Photoshop.#8221;

Uh, let's pretend we#8216;re abstract-thought challenged. What exactly does that mean?#8220;We'll take multiple elements #8212; such as the film shot on the set, a couple of computer-rendered explosions, and elements of the actors on a blue screen #8212; then glue them together to form the final shot. Sometimes there are three, sometimes 103, elements.#8221;

Not exactly what we imagined a Flame artist to be. Where did the title come from, anyway?#8220;Flame was in my title when I was a Flame artist. It was there because I was using a specific piece of software named #8216;Flame.' It never really involves working with actual fire ... except for the fire we composite into shots, of course!#8221;

Speaking of fire, exactly what was so appealing about computer compositions that it fired you up to go out and make it your life's work?#8220;I was attracted to this line of work ever since I saw #8216;Star Wars.' It was cemented when I saw #8216;Jurassic Park.' More than any other films, those two movies made me want to create visual magic when I grew up.#8221;

Level with us, here. What can we look for in a movie scene to know if we're watching real filmed footage or the creation of a Flame artist?#8220;The key idea behind my job is that if I do it well, a regular person can't tell the difference between a real piece of filmed footage versus a composite scene. That's our end goal: that the audience can't tell.

#8220;In the most glorious scenes, we're adding explosions to space stations and creating animals that don't exist.

#8220;But every day, you see many more examples of our work where we've removed wires on actors doing stunts, composited Philadelphia onto a Los Angeles soundstage, or even removed stray hairs from a wig.

#8220;And you'd never know we were there at all.#8221;

You have an amazing job! It sure sounds complicated.#8220;Actually, I stopped working on Flame and moved to working on desktop compositing. I don't even do that so much anymore.#8221;

Why not?#8220;I've moved from compositor to lead compositor. Now I solve issues for the entire compositing team, set looks for a sequence, do research and develop new tools.#8221;

What's your current job title?#8220;I'm now compositing pipeline technical liaison, which is a super-fancy way of saying compositing technical manager, where I manage technical issues, education, and software for the entire department.

There's not going to be a quiz on any of this, is there?#8220;That was probably way more information than you initially wanted. But I hope I've sated your curiosity.#8221;

Almost. Where do you work and where do you live?#8220;I currently live in Los Angeles with my wife Retno and my dog Jpeg. I've been at Rhythm Hues Studios for three years. I graduated from Loyola Marymount University (in Los Angeles) in 2006.#8221;

What are you working on?#8220;That's the one question I can't answer. The projects I'm working on right now aren't ready for the limelight.#8221;We get it. If you told us, you'd have to kill us #8212; but with a flame thrower, maybe?

#376; Dann Gire and Jamie Sotonoff are always looking for suburban people in showbiz. If you know of someone, send a note to dgire@dailyherald.com and jsotonoff@dailyherald.com.

An example of Sean Wallitsch’s work as a Flame artist from the movie “The A-Team.” Only actor Bradley Cooper is “real.” The explosion (filmed on a sound stage) and the pier have been composited into the frame.
An example of Sean Wallitsch's work on the animated feature "Hop." Every element was created in a computer: there is no filmed footage.
Downers Grove native Sean Wallitsch, 27, is shown shooting footage of the sky for a Hollywood project in Hawaii.