Alice Through the Looking Glass VFX supervisor is set to embark on a new journey. Working with VFX studio Double Negative since the past one year, Ollie Rankin has now moved to Uncorporeal Systems as Head of VFX and VR Production.
Hailing from New Zealand, Rankin has been a virtual reality storyteller and visual effects supervisor whose feature film career spans more than 16 years and 26 films. He has been involved in many of cinema’s VFX heavy franchises like the Lord of the Rings, X-Men and Transformers series.
His recent credits include Pelé: Birth of a Legend and Alice Through the Looking Glass where he served as the VFX supervisor. His journey with Double Negative was a shorter one as compared to his career at Method Studios which lasted for almost five years. He served at Method Studios as a VFX supervisor and completed his latest work for the legendary footballer based film.
Before Method Studios, Rankin mastered various roles at MPC for around five years. He tried his hands on as crowd R&D technical director, crowd lead, crowd and mocap supervisor. MPC is the studio behind the VFX for Batman vs Superman, upcoming movie Suicide Squad and also the recent The Jungle Book.
Recently in 2012, he founded Pansensory Interactive, a Vancouver, BC startup focused on pioneering the new forms of storytelling made possible by virtual/augmented reality and artificial intelligence. He also has a year’s experience at WETA Digital studio.
As far as Rankin’s future workplace is concerned, Uncorporeal Systems is known for its industry leading light-field capture technology, called 10DVR. This unique technology marks the first opportunity for VR filmmakers to tell room-scale character driven stories featuring real actors.
“When I went looking for the highest fidelity performance capture on the market, I was impressed with how far ahead Uncorporeal was in that field. I went on to co-direct a VR short, ‘Alcatraz Island Lofts’, with their talented team. I’m passionate about exploring the potential of this company’s unique technology to create narrative VR that’s truly cinematic, featuring real actors and performances,“ said Rankin.
Rankin’s vast pool of knowledge and experience can be used to help evolve the work flow at Uncorporeal Systems. His interests and ideation on virtual reality will definitely prove as an added advantage for the studio’s future endeavours. It may be an over exaggeration but what if we can experience something like an Alice Through the Looking Glass in virtual reality?