Rob Legato is perhaps one of the most well known and respected VFX artist in Hollywood today, with a resume that looks more like the previews of the Oscars than a CV. He’s the visual effects visionary behind some of the most talked about, award winning films in Hollywood, and in the past decade alone has left his mark on such blockbusters as Avatar, Standard Operating Procedure, The Nanny Diaries, The Good Shephard and Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning drama, The Departed, to name just a few. When working with the iconic director Martin Scorsese, as the VFX supervisor, you’re challenged to match his vision with what actually can be done; and in most cases, you can’t be sure until you get to post. And in most cases, that’s often way too late. So Legato had an idea. What if you could plan your shots based on what you already know is doable? “How much easier would it be if we could produce a shot and say ‘yes, we can do that’ while you’re in production? Well, I was recently introduced to a tool that could help me do just that. mocha from Imagineer Systems,” Rob continued. In a series of scenes – many appearing in the movie trailer – Legato was challenged to determine if the desired illusions could be done in a believable way; would the viewers be immersed in the scene or would they be noticing the effects? And any VFX artists will tell you, the best visual effects are the ones you never even realize. “To test these shots, to see if they could be created effectively, there was a huge amount of roto and tracking necessary. And everyone hates roto,” Rob continued. “Roto and point tracking are tedious, painstaking raw labor tasks and I’ve always felt bad for the people who I forced to do it for me!”
Now, Rob has teamed up once again with Martin Scorsese on the soon-to-be released, Shutter Island. Leonardo DeCaprio, Ben Kingsley and Mark Rufalo star in Scorsese’s new psychotic mystery-thriller in which an artful blend of cinematography and visual effects not only create an edge-of-your-seat, skin crawling experience, but also a series of challenges for Rob.
