CG Garage

Donna Smith was the first woman to serve as President of Physical Production and Post Production at a major Hollywood studio. Her years at Universal produced Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Apollo 13 and Casino. She arrived in Los Angeles with no film school and no contacts, took a temp job at Chartoff-Winkler during the Rocky II reshoots, and was running The Terminator with a nonunion crew by 1984 while the town called her "some broad." She went on to run a completion bond company and serve as President of Women in Film.
This is the first conversation Chris ever had with her, recorded at THU in Malta in 2018. Halfway through, he describes winning VFX bids by turning them into creative conversations with directors and guesses that makes him a producer. Donna tells him, "It is, kiddo." She became his mentor, and that line is where his path as a producer started, all the way to co-founding Monstrous Moonshine. Most VFX artists making shorts are already producing without the title, and Donna lays out what happens after the short gets noticed, down to why Universal returned 42 unsolicited scripts a day unopened.
Originally released November 12, 2018 as episode 198, with a new introduction from Chris.
Links and sponsor block
Donna Smith on IMDB >
Mentioned
THU (Trojan Horse was a Unicorn) >
Women in Film >
Films: Rocky II, Raging Bull, True Confessions, The Terminator, K-9, Leviathan (short),Maze Runner, Lost in Translation
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Ed Ulbrich thinks the world needs more slop. Flood the market with AI-generated content and work with real taste becomes impossible to miss, which is how he expects the next Fincher to break through. That take comes from someone who has called these shifts early before. As a Digital Domain executive and later its CEO, he helped get Benjamin Button and Tron: Legacy made, then produced Ender's Game himself. He went on to run production at Metaphysic, doing licensed likeness work during the strike, and now he advises the startups building AI into film production.
Those startups are where he sees the trouble. AI-native studios are walking into the trap that hollowed out visual effects. Most came from tech and raised money to make movies, then found that selling a film is as hard as it ever was. So they are taking VFX work on franchise films to keep cash flowing, with nobody on staff who knows how to price a bid, and the studios are happy to play them against each other. Ed's advice to them, in his words, is to swim up. Chris and Daniel also get into ByteDance owning both the platform and the model, and into where artists learn taste once the junior jobs are gone.
Ed Ulbrich on LinkedIn >
Ed Ulbrich on IMDB >
Companies and tools mentioned
Digital Domain >
Metaphysic >
Moonvalley >
Seedance (ByteDance) >
Motion Picture Association >
AMC Theatres >
 
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Digger opened to $8 million on a nine-figure budget, and critics split almost exactly in half. Chris and Daniel think Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Tom Cruise made one of the best films of the year, and they spend this Moonshine Drive-In trying to work out why so many people hated it. Their suspicion is that the divide runs by age. Chris and a friend his age both loved it. Both of their teenage sons hated it. Daniel's theory is that younger audiences find films like Brazil and A Clockwork Orange on Tubi with fifty years of approval already attached, so liking something the whole internet calls garbage is a skill most of them never had to build.
Chris and Daniel also make the case that Digger is the answer to Don't Look Up. Adam McKay's film knows it's right and treats anyone who disagrees as the enemy. Digger opens as a broad cartoon of a Texas oil baron, then slowly asks you to feel for him, with Jesse Plemons delivering what Chris calls one of the best speeches ever put in a movie. They also get into why this is Cruise's biggest career risk since Magnolia, and why nobody greenlights this film without him attached.
Spoiler warning: the full plot and ending are discussed from 30:16. Everything before that is spoiler-free.
Mentioned in this episode
People
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, director
Tom Cruise, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg (cast)
Nikos Kalaitzidis, VFX Supervisor, Digital Domain
Films referenced
Don't Look Up, Dr. Strangelove, Brazil, The Truman Show, Downsizing, Children of Men, Edge of Tomorrow, Magnolia, A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club, The Irishman, One Battle After Another
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Most VFX supervisors trained on tentpoles have no idea how to make an independent film. Ed Douglas (VFX supervisor on Kane Parsons' Backrooms) and Peter Timberlake (VFX on Curry Barker's Obsession) have built careers doing exactly that, and they're back with Chris and Daniel for a Rough Cut on where VFX leadership is heading. Ed recently bid the same work at $8,000 with a legacy vendor and $250 elsewhere, which is why on a $10 million film he works as supervisor and VFX producer at once. Peter makes the case that big-studio pipelines got complicated to impress other pipeline TDs, and both of them have blunt advice for graduates who can't find a studio that's hiring.
The panel also takes on AI. The year's breakout films came from YouTube-native directors working without generative tools, while Scorsese has signed on to advise Black Forest Labs. Ed argues the word "AI" now covers dozens of unrelated technologies and the industry needs sharper language for them. Chris raises the one-person Grok remake of The Odyssey and the IMAX audience that booed an AI ad before Nolan's film started. The episode closes on tax subsidies and whether they've made movies more expensive.
Panel links and mentions
Peter Timberlake on LinkedIn >
Peter Timberlake on IMDB >
Peter Timberlake on Instagram >
Queen Studio >
Edward Douglas on LinkedIn >
Edward Douglas on IMDB >
Films mentioned: Backrooms, Obsession, The Odyssey, Zodiac, The Irishman, The Batman, Oblivion, Tron: Legacy, The Day After Tomorrow, Jurassic Park, Rogue One, The Rise of Skywalker, Avatar, Digger
Companies and tools mentioned: ILM, Weta FX, Digital Domain, Black Forest Labs (Flux), Grok, Wonder Studios, A24, Queen Studio, VIEW Conference, USC ICT (Institute for Creative Technologies), Blender, Nuke, Maya, After Effects, Full Sail University
People mentioned: Kane Parsons, Curry Barker, Inde Navarrette, Osgood Perkins, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, James Cameron, Tom Cruise, Paul Debevec, Richard Crudo, Steve "Spaz" Williams, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan
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Jonathan Goldman called CAA to find out if his agent still worked there, and the replies to his Threads post said more about Hollywood's middle layer than most trade coverage this year. Jonathan has spent thirty years on the development side of the business. He started as Phillip Noyce's assistant, directed second unit for him, then rose from story producer to showrunner at Thom Beers' Original Productions on series including Ice Road Truckers. Last year he pitched six projects with CAA packaging and A-list partners. One got a development step, and the network passed a year later.
Chris and Daniel get their answer about CAA. Jonathan's version is that the people who greenlight shows aren't paid to take risks, in a town that gamblers built. The route there runs through Noyce handing him second unit at Shea Stadium once he'd fetched the coffee, a Phoenix strip club series he pitched as the Sopranos of the Southwest, a Terlingua, Texas murder trial he covered for Nat Geo, and why Obsession, Backrooms, Widow's Bay and Coyote vs. Acme all made the same case for leaving creatives alone. He also predicts the next studio mistake, which is plucking a YouTube director for the full studio treatment and then declaring YouTube filmmaking over when the movie tanks.
Guest links
Jonathan Goldman on IMDB >
Jonathan Goldman on Threads >
Jonathan Goldman on LinkedIn >
Companies, films and shows mentioned: CAA, WGA, DGA, Original Productions, Fremantle, Warner Bros. Discovery, National Geographic, Apple TV, HBO, Imagine Entertainment, Netflix, A24, Neon, Miramax, Paramount, The Saint, Clear and Present Danger, The Bone Collector, Dead Calm, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch, Badlands, Texas, Obsession, Backrooms, Widow's Bay, Coyote vs. Acme, The Bourne Supremacy, Apocalypse Now
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