My name is Boris Peresechensky, yes its a mouthful. I was born in Russia and grew up in Israel. My life up to the age of 15 was pretty boring in my opinion, I did normal boring 15yr old things. and just so happened watching movies was one of those things. One evening after coming home from the video store my life changed I don’t remember exactly when but in the year 2000 I saw “Wo Hu Cang Long” (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). I remember thinking that I never saw something quite so epic in the sense that I have always watched movies but I was occupied with the story like any other audience member not the technical know how. The first week after seeing “Wo Hu Cang Long” was a long sleepless one I remember trying to look up how was it possible to make people fly from tree to tree or branch to branch or how was it possible to see a city that is no more and yet it was so vivid and real. Slowly I began to find out about the world of computer generated graphics. Like most people I saw CG every were in computer games or TV but until that moment the question never dawned on me… HOW is this achieved?

I spent the next couple of years reading articles online and trying to figure out things that seemed beyond my comprehension. At age 17 after finishing high school I decided that going to university was beyond my reach for financial reasons so the next best thing presented itself in the form of an internship at a local tv station. I don’t remember being so exited since that week of obsession after watching “Wo Hu Cang Long”, Finally I could be in the industry, finally I could learn that which eluded me for far too long. My first day I was responsible for the cables. I was in charge of making sure that they never got dirty and that they were always neatly packed… cables!!! I don’t think I was ever as excited to carry cables around in my life. I got really good at folding cables let me tell you and eventually I was allowed to follow the camera man around holding his cables so he wouldn’t trip over them, a great responsibility I thought. I mean if he trips then the camera breaks and they must trust me if they are willing to let me in the studio while they are on air. The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months soon I was learning how to hold a camera, how to pull focus, what white balance was, why we do all the things we do. Finally after all that time some of my “How?” and “Why?” finally got answered. Eventually I moved up in the world and got to shoot while the camera man was standing behind me making sure I wouldn’t screw up . It wass then while I was watching the weather man talk in front of this wired blue wall I asked my fellow cameraman “What is that for?” and “Why are we not doing this in front of a map like on TV?” and then I heard the magic words “its for the chroma key” he said. After drilling him for a while he told me to go into the editing suite and see for myself. So I did. I saw the same weatherman with a map in displayed behind him just like on TV. Then it dawned on me I never had a moment like that before where all the pieces fit together so perfectly. I still kept shooting but now I was in that editing suite every free minute I got. Eventually I moved up again and this time to the editing suites where I learned how to edit online on a Liner editing system. I felt like in the movies there were all these buttons and you needed to press every one to make stuff work it was epic. When I mastered the Liner editing system I moved on to the Avid suites. I could not really grasp the concept of not having a tape were every thing is in order and instead having a workspace where you can move clips around back and forth with layers on top of them and what not all on a screen. My fellow editor suggested I get a very cheap NLE to learn on with a copy of Premiere. I got it the next week. It was very exiting. I started editing clips together and cleverly using the clear blue sky for a chroma key as practice :]

When I was 19 I moved to Canada, I felt bad leaving 2 years of work experience behind but I did not have a choice. I couldn’t get a job doing what I did in Israel in Canada so instead I went to work for a photo store. I learned about negatives and chemical photo development, how to print and colour correct photos, and even how to take pictures that were not just random shots. I learned basic lighting and do’s and dont’s of photography. I spent about a year in that store still doing the same old things I did and then a co-worker said that the college he attended had some really nice media programs I should check out, so i did. Three weeks later I was enrolled in the Digital Media Arts Program at Seneca College. Oh it was exciting. My first semester I got exposed to all aspects of post production. I did sound engineering, story boarding, script writing, and a lot of epic stuff. The semesters flew by and in my second year I had advanced editing were I learned Final Cut and DVD authoring. The most important event came in my 3rd semester when I had a weird class called intro to combustion and 3d max. I knew what 3d max was, I’d played around on it, but I never heard of combustion. After my first class my eyes were open after years of searching I finally knew how everything was being done. I finally knew what I needed to do. Compositing! I spent the next 6 months spending every available buck on books and self training DVDs. I was so hungry for knowledge that my professors could not keep up. I graduated in 2007 from my program and went on to take classes at Fxphd.com, CmiVFx, and the Gnoman workshops for Fusion, Nuke, PFTrack, and every other major VFX player in the industry. Today I have accumulated a fairly Solid knowledge base of VFX in general. Unlike before when I see VFX in a movie I can tell where it’s CG, where it’s composited together and all the little things that I could not even understand before. Although I will admit I do miss just watching a movie and not rewinding it 26 times just to figure out how someone did a window replacement on a moving car while having a camera inside the car rotating 360 degrees ( Children of Men) which was epic but I digress. I don’t presume to know everything. Still I read books every day on lighting concepts, fundamentals on color theory, design composition, and pretty  much everything I think is relevant to making me as good as the people who work at ILM or DD or any other of the major studios… shout out to you all for all the great work you do. You inspire me. I am currently employed at a small design studio where I work as a Motion Graphics Designer, I’m developing my portfolio and hoping for that big break. I’m fascinated with the art of moving pictures. It is the only thing  I’m really interested in pursuing. I sometimes feel that it’s too big of a profession to master but I keep trying anyways. Plus, I got nothing better to do :]

I love animation and if you haven’t guessed it by now I am the biggest nerd ever and proud of it! I have never come across a problem I did not eventually solve  and I don’t intend to. Well, that’s me.

Cheers

B