fxphd member Eduardo Abon on translating fxphd to work

Here on the fxphd blog we love to highlight the work by our talented members. Director and long-time fxphd member Eduardo Abon is just one of them – and he puts his fxphd training to good use, often directly translating shots and skills he’s acquired from courses to real-world effects problems. Abon also wrote and directed the short film project called ‘The Last Chick’ in which the film’s hero finds herself in a deserted Mexico City – shots from the production have been used in several recent fxphd courses, including our new NUK309: Advanced NUKE & Digital Environments course with Eran Dinur. We sat down with Eduardo to talk about his experience with fxphd.

How Abon got his start in VFX and directing…

Eduardo Abon.
Eduardo Abon.

I started as an operator. I went to film school in New York and after that I went to Europe and worked on Shake and After Effects. There was a company in Germany called Das Werk where I worked freelance. My first client was an agency called Bates that gave me little bluescreen projects to direct. I ended up rotoscoping a whole commercial because the bluescreen spill was terrible – there was no way anything would key. It was a series of three and they asked if I wanted to do the next two, and that was my first job that I did.

I started to do less freelancing work until I got to the point where I was mostly doing directing and then would just do freelancing work. I like and I still do it because it makes me think. If you do a normal commercial it can be pretty simple, but a good effects shot really makes you think, ‘How am I going to do this?’ I also always edit all my spots and give the agency my cut. Knowing the VFX stuff – the bonus is I probably save them a lot of money sometimes!

On how fxphd has come in handy for real-world shots…

There have been a couple of times where I have taken a fxphd class and it’s been literally the same shot I’ve come across in my work. The NUKE course that involved blinking eyes (NUK305: Project Masterclass: The Machine, taught by Russell Dodgson) had an actor shooting a gun and he would blink after every shot. I had exactly the same thing happen in one of my projects and everyone was saying, ‘How are we going to do this?’ And I knew how to do it!

Patient Zero – jump to 1.06 for the eye blink corrections.

I took Eran Dinur’s NUKE course (NUK217: NUKE and Digital Environments) where there was a little boat coming into a harbor and he put a mountain in the back of it. Just three months ago I did a job for the Post Office in Mexico – MexPost – and they wanted to go to Monterey to shoot this post office truck with a distinctive looking mountain in the background. Another little lightbulb went off in my head – wait a minute! – we don’t have to go all the way over there to do that one shot. So I did the same thing that’s in that class and I put the mountain in and everyone loved it.

Above: watch the MexPost commercial.

I just shot four spots for Buick in Mexico. Victor’s removal class (NUK226: Painting and Reconstruction Techniques with NUKE X) helped a lot. Those were the first car commercials I shot and I didn’t realize how much clean-up is involved. There can’t be any objects on it or blemishes or anything. Victor had a couple of little gizmos and things that he did and I properly nicked them and used them!

In this Buick spot (watch <a href=

On shooting ‘The Last Chick’…

Sometimes on some sites you do a tutorial to learn something but afterwards it’s not really great useful footage to put on a reel. So I said, what about I shoot this stuff and that way everyone can work on a project with good footage – I shot it on Alexa – and then maybe afterwards as well, the members can get credit if I enter it into a festival or something like that. I thought it would be a good way to give back.

Filming the balcony shot in Mexico City
Filming the balcony shot in Mexico City
Filming on the streets of Mexico City
Filming on the streets of Mexico City

So I wrote this short and sent John Montgomery the script and I said come down to Mexico to shoot it. And he came down and we shot it. Shooting in Mexico City is very ‘film schoolish’. It’s got 25 million people. The story was a little strange because it’s about a girl who wakes up and no-one is around. It’s hard to get footage of no-one around because there’s always someone around! So we thought we’d go shoot Sunday morning at sunrise and get these shots and they won’t be too much trouble. If you saw the plates there are cars, there are people, there was everything. Victor did an awesome job on tracking and removing people and working on those shots. The new course by Eran (NUK309: Advanced NUKE & Digital Environments) is made up of shots from that project. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does with the footage.

Above: watch a preview of Eran Dinur’s NUK309: Advanced NUKE & Digital Environments course.

Why Abon would recommend fxphd…

The profs being working artists is a great thing. And they are on the forums. A lot of times with other VFX training if you have questions about the tutorial you are kind of on your own. But on fxphd you can post it, you can say I didn’t quite get how or why you did this, and the prof will write you back. For me, those are the two biggest selling points. And it’s not only profs, other members are there. They will reply. Sometimes I reply if I happen to know the answer. It’s the community that really sets fxphd apart from the others.

Above: hear directly from fxphd members what they find so valuable about fxphd

We’d really like to thank Eduardo for contributing to our fxphd blog. You can see more of his projects on his Vimeo page.