Cecile Marie Tecson – Visual effects artist

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Behind some of Hollywood’s special effects is a Filipina

ALMOST any Hollywood movie, music video and TV commercial that you see today uses visual effects of some sort -- from the X-Men to Die Hard to car and burger commercials - visual effects make the imaginary look completely real! Visual effects (commonly shortened to VFX) create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. If you go behind the scenes of most Hollywood films today, you will find incredibly talented visual effects artists who work with an amazing array of technology to create the incredible scenes in movies that look so real on the big screen! One of these very talented visual effects artists is a Filipino- American, Cecile Fortun Tecson.

Cecile has done a surprising array of visual effects that have been integral to the story and appeal of such movies as Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Hostage, Paycheck, Die Hard ‘Live Free or Die Hard’, The Spirit, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Music Videos for Celine Dion, N.E.R.D., Kelly Clarkson, Shania Twain, and others.

In an exclusive interview with Asian Journal, Cecile described in detail the amazing work that she does as a visual effects artist.

"Visual Effects often combines live action footage of people or computer generated imagery, with a background. It’s about taking these layers and compositing them on top of each other in order to create a real environment that doesn’t really exist. Sometimes environments are combinations of real places and actual paintings or digital paintings. I’ve painted in clouds, trees, mountains, and such in order to recreate whole live environments," explained Cecile. "For example, I’ve worked on car commercials from Mercedes to BMWs where we would have to cut the cars out of their real scenes and put them in a completely different location. This can be difficult at times because the camera may circle the car and it takes a lot of technique to try and cut out every detail needed to place it into a different environment. Also, when you watch car commercials, you don’t see the cameras that are reflected through on the sides of the cars. Part of our work is removing anything from cameras to truck rigs holding those cameras. It takes a lot of work for a simple car commercial." Cecile said.

A few seconds of visual effects for 30 second commercials we see on TV take many, many days to work on, revealed Cecile. "I’ve worked on funny Burger King commercials where a man walks around wearing a burger costume. I had to merge the costume with his body to look like he’s really a part of the burger. These are little things that we spend days on. I’ve also worked on 3D animated characters for a PETA commercial where a skinless alligator and furless rabbit demands their skin and fur back from a woman that is using the fur as a coat. This required a lot of work in adjusting color and lighting to place these animated characters in an environment and to make them look as real as possible even though they are talking."

Thanks to visual effects artists like Cecile, movies no longer have to have "a cast of thousands", as in the days when Cecile B. DeMille produced The Ten Commandments. Cecile admitted that part of the work she has done is multiplying people in scenes. "In music videos, for example, most of the time there are just 20 dancers and we create hundreds of them in order to come up with one big scene. Sometimes they are in front of green screens and we use what is called a keyer in order to separate them from the green screen and have them as one element. The same thing goes for filling up empty football arenas as well," Tecson revealed.

Born in Los Angeles in April 26, 1978, Cecile Marie is the oldest child and only daughter of Armando "Andy" Tecson and his wife, Elizabeth Fortun Tecson. Her siblings are Armando Jr., Samuel, and Joseph. Ever since she was five years old, Cecile has been into drawing. She graduated with honors from the Marymount High School in Los Angeles and was consistently in the Dean’s List at The University of California, Irvine, where she took up Fine Arts, major in Studio Arts and minor in Digital Arts.

"Being born from very artistic and musical parents, I wasn’t surprised that I also ended up in the arts. My grandfather, Lauro, was a painter in the Philippines under the guidance of the Philippine painter Amorsolo. I used to watch my grandfather as a child as he painted oil paintings in our garage. I still remember how he mixed paint and how he used his brush strokes. He passed away before I was able to ask him questions, but because of those memories I believe it was enough for me to understand how images are slowly created," said Cecile. "My father, Andy, is a photographer and a violinist. My mother was a pianist and a florist who designed flowers for weddings. I would assist them sometimes when they worked. I know now that their lives have inspired me and have strongly influenced me in pursuing art.

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