Jeff Chamberlain

INTERVIEW

By Bailey Kalesti

Bailey: I know that you went to college back East?

Jeff Chamberlain

Jeff: I did. I went to college at James Madison University in Virginia. At the time there was a teacher there that was a little more forward-thinking because CG wasn't really common back then. This was back in 1996. He started the one class for computer animation. I went to college for graphic design and then we shared the same computer lab with the animation students. So, I saw what they were doing and I knew that's what I wanted to do, so I switched over and have been doing that ever since.

Bailey: Was that the first time you had seen it in practice?

Jeff: I used to always be a fan of it. There was this tin can commercial, I can't remember exactly who made it, but it was for tin cans with a robot. While I was working on my graphic design degree, I remember watching all that stuff and just being amazed by it. Even when I was a kid we had a Commodore 64, and my brother programmed and I would spend hours and hours making little sprites of ninjas running across the screen and stuff like that. And then I would spend two or three hours saving all the data onto a tape drive. So, I've always been into art with computers, and animation as well. I just didn't have any exposure to actually being able to do it beyond sprites, and stuff like that, until I got to college. I didn't realize it was something you could really go into until I saw that and decided that's where I wanted to go. This was all before Toy Story, I'm pretty sure. Maybe it was right after.

So, I went to college for two years, then I left college for a few years to play in a band, and then I came back and finished up. So, prior to leaving for the band I remember seeing all this stuff, like the tin can commercial, and thinking it would be really cool to someday make a movie with that format. Then Pixar did it while I was playing in the band. I came back and once I saw that it was something you could do, that's the direction I wanted to go.

And I remember being in college thinking that either I'd want to go to a studio, like Pixar or ILM, or go to a gaming studio. Because with gaming the content is usually either sci-fi or fantasy, which were two things that I really enjoyed. So, I think I lucked out that I had the opportunity to work here.

Bailey: You said you went to play in a band. What did you do in the band?

Jeff: I played bass guitar.

Bailey: Was that more of a side hobby, or did you want to be a musician?

Jeff: Well, it's hard to say. Our band was pretty serious. If it had taken off I might have gone in that direction. But I always felt that I was destined to do something with art rather than music. I struggle with music. I don't struggle as much with art, but I do struggle with art too—I think everybody does—but not as much.

Bailey: A little more towards the visual side of things.

Jeff: Right.

Bailey: You've been with Blizzard for close to twenty years.

Jeff: I think it's about eighteen. I started in '98 I think.

The Blizzard cinematics team, circa 1999. Jeff is second the from right, back row.

Bailey: What's it been like to watch the team evolve over the years?

Jeff: It's been really fascinating. When I started here I would say there were probably around one hundred people, for the company in total. And in the cinematics department, I was the eleventh person. It was interesting. It started out as a small group. We all went to lunch together. We were all really young at the time, so we all hung out. Even after work we'd all go out together. Over the years we've gotten bigger and bigger. Back then we all did everything; we were all generalists in the trade. We all did modeling, animating, rigging, effects, lighting—all that stuff. But as we got bigger and bigger, we realized, obviously, we can't have a group of two hundred people that do everything. So, it split off into all the different groups that you would expect to see in a movie studio. We had a group of animators, a group of riggers, and all that stuff. So, it's changed a lot in that way.

So, in developing those groups you create these sub-cliques. I think our department's about two hundred people right now. I think it might be a little bit over. And so with two hundred people, you can't all go to lunch together. So, it's a little different that way.

But the benefit of having that many people is that we can create way more content. Back when we did stuff with a group of twelve people, we'd spend years on one project. Whereas now we can crank out multiple projects in a year. So, there are pros and cons. I prefer both for different reasons.

Bailey: What do you miss about working on a smaller team?

Jeff: It's a much closer group. It's like a family more so than it is now. One of our goals, over the years, has been to try to keep that small studio vibe no matter how big we get. So, we have events that are really fun for everybody and we try to make sure that everybody knows who everybody is. We try to keep it somewhat casual in that way, and I think we succeed as much as you can with a studio at this size. I would hope we do at least. But back when it was twelve people—or even for a long time we were around twenty-two people—you don't even have to try. That's just what it is. And back then we had the opportunity to do pretty much anything you wanted to do as far as art goes. That was a lot of fun. If one day you decided you wanted to light a shot, you'd just go talk to Matt Samia, who was our director of cinematics at the time, and say, "I wanna light this shot." And as long as no one else had claimed it, you could do that. That was usually pretty cool.

Bailey: You could experiment with stuff and try new things.

Jeff: Exactly. You could develop as an artist in pretty much any direction you wanted to as long as it aligned with the goal of the project. We often stayed until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. because, like I said, we were all young and didn't have families or anything like that yet. So, we'd stay until the crazy hours of the night learning how to do something new and teaching each other and learning from each other. It was pretty fun.

Bailey: I like the smaller groups myself.

Jeff: There are great benefits to the larger groups too. I'm really enjoying the stage our studio is in right now. We still are small enough that we know each other. Everybody knows each other and we all hang out in different groups, but yet we're able to create a lot of hopefully inspiring content.

Members of the Blizzard cinematics team, 2009.

Bailey: Now how did you end up settling more into being a vfx supervisor and being a director?

Jeff: Well, I was a director first. I started out as a generalist, like I said, and then I was one of the first supervisors of the group on the art side. My title was finishing supervisor. Because back then we said lighting, compositing, and even effects were one person's job. We called it finishing. I did that. And from that point on I had the opportunity to work closely with the directors who were doing the projects at the time. And so then when the next director position opened up, I was able to move into the position. That was for the Burning Crusade cinematic. I'm not sure how long ago that was.

So, then I got to direct for a while, which I have a blast doing. Eventually Nick Carpenter, who was the original director that I worked with, had a project that had a very tight deadline and the studio was working very hard to get toward that. At that point I moved into the vfx role to help the studio finish in time and help Nick get the project done.

Bailey: Which project was this?

Jeff: That was Diablo 3. Ever since then I've had that title. I feel like I've kind of grown into a different role for the studio than what that title indicates. So, often when I meet people that are from the industry, and I tell them I'm the vfx supervisor, I feel like it's a little inaccurate to what I do every day.

So, now, from time to time I direct a project, but for the most part I run the artistic side of the studio.

Bailey: In terms of figuring out who's gonna direct each project, what's the process for that? Do you guys have a pool of directors and then you figure out what you want to do?

Jeff: Yep, we have a pool of directors. They report to me, and my partner Philip—he's the director of production for the animation team—and I sit together and determine who's available at what time. He brings the schedule in so we know which projects are running at which time. First and foremost we try to make it so that each project plays to one of the director's strengths so they can get on that show. But if they're not available then we'll give it to someone else. And then he and I just go through the whole chart and try to place who we think is best for the project and just line it up that way. So far it's worked out. Every once in awhile, if we don't have enough directors available, we give someone in the studio that has shown potential of being a director, or is very story focused, the opportunity to direct as well. So, there are occasional times when we can grow someone in that direction as well, which is a ton of fun.

Bailey: I know that Pixar—they're doing features, of course, which is a little different—has a whole system set up for allowing newer people to come in and direct the shorts. They pitch them and go through that process.

Jeff: Yeah, that's actually a great vehicle for finding good talent. We've talked about doing stuff like that before, but we haven't successfully implemented something like that quite yet.

Bailey: What enticed you about the Overwatch trailer that made you want to direct it instead of playing a different role on the project?

Jeff: That's a good question.

Bailey: I know that's something you wanted to do, right?

Jeff: Yeah, it was definitely something I wanted to do. The truth is, when Titan was going on—which is the project we haven't talked much about—I was really anxious for our studio to do something for it. And I saw that opportunity slip away. And so when the opportunity to make something for Overwatch came about, I immediately jumped on it and did everything I could to make sure that it happened. Which meant I just put myself out there as the director. Mike Ryder, the head of the entire studio, and I had a conversation and he agreed that it would be good for me to do it. We just went from there. Jeff Kaplan, who's the game director, came in and he pitched the whole idea to the team. I have to admit, I kind of fell in love with the IP right away. I fell in love with the universe, the characters, and everything. So, I felt really strongly that I wanted to direct it. I just did everything I could to make that happen.

Overwatch Trailer

Bailey: That's awesome. I know you guys work closely with the games teams to make sure that they're in sync. Is there a lot of back and forth, or do the cinematics mostly follow the lead of the game art and then just adjust and up-rez things as necessary?

Jeff: Overwatch is a little bit unique in that way. When we did the first piece, they were developing characters almost at the same time we were. So, there was a lot of back and forth. There were some things they hadn't figured out yet. For instance, for Reaper's abilities we actually had to finish ours before they had finished theirs in the game. We weren't sure if they were gonna line up perfectly. But they had already figured out some of the other stuff, and that was great for us because there was no better reference.

Widowmaker's muzzle flash effects reference video.

Tracer's energy effects.

As far as characters go, for that cinematic, we decided to do a pre-rendered version of the characters. We took Arnold Tsang's artwork, who was the lead character artist at the time, and we developed our own characters. It was pretty much at the same time they were developing theirs. So, if you were to put them side-by-side, there's a little bit of inconsistency. But when we did the four shorts that just came out recently, we actually used their game models. We just added more detail when necessary around facial structures and stuff like that. Just so that we had the topology needed to do the facial expressions. But for the most part it's the game model. We take a surfacing pass at it, but often we use a lot of their textures and then we just go from there.

Overwatch character mesh comparisons.

Same thing with the environment model. We take the levels and we detail it up where we need to. Especially where you can't get close to an area. For instance, you can't really get up on the rooftops in King's Row. At least where we were shooting. So, some of the detail up there wasn't quite holding up. So, we'll detail up wherever the camera sees. For a lot of the stuff we can just use what the game model has and we just re-surface it.

King's Row environment mesh differences.

Mesh differences.

Stage mesh differences from Alive.

Bailey: Are you re-texturing a lot of things as well?

Jeff: It's kind of the same thing. You can't get close to some of the textures they have while you're playing the game, so they don't hold up if we have a camera close to it. So, we'll have to re-texture that. But a lot of the stuff is totally fine. We just reuse the textures and just plug them into a new shader.

Explosion effect from Overwatch.

Bailey: Over the course of your career, what was one of your favorite cinematics to work on?

Jeff: I've been asked that a few times. It's hard to pick one. I can tell you three that stand out (I know that's not one). The first one would be the Warcraft III announcement trailer. I'm not sure if you remember that, but it's the orc and the human fighting out in the field of grass with big, blue skies. And then the Infernal comes down, lands, and basically wipes them both out. That one was important to me because it's something I remember fondly. I had just started here at the time. Nick Carpenter was the director on that one. He came and grabbed me and said, "Hey, I need to pull you away from Diablo 2 to work on this other project with me." I was young and ambitious so I was like, "Yeah, let's do it." A small number of us worked on that for—I think it was about fourteen weeks. We just worked day and night to get it done. It was kind of one of those passion projects where it was painful to do, but once we got it done we were super proud of it. So, I think because it was so early in my career, it seemed like the impossible to us at the time. And because we managed to make it happen, that one really stands out as something that is a great memory for me.

The Infernal from the opening cinematic for Warcraft III.

The next one I would say is The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic which I really enjoyed. The first piece I directed was the Burning Crusade piece, but The Wrath of the Lich King piece was the first piece I got to direct all the way from the beginning of the story development to the end. It was still a super collaborative effort. I sat with Chris Metzen, I sat with the game team, and obviously everybody on the cinematics team had input as well. But it was the first one that I felt like I got to at least coordinate all that input and steer it as best as I could in the direction that I thought it should go. I really liked that piece, just in general. I think everybody did a great job and it turned out really nice.

And the last one is the Overwatch piece that we just talked about.

Bailey: In terms of The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic, it was a little different from the first two in that it was more of a full story piece versus a montage. Little more of a narrative.

Jeff: Yeah. It's little unfair in some ways because Arthas had such a huge backstory at that point, so it was easy to leverage that and make a really poignant piece; a moving story about him—or at least we hope it was moving. It was a little bit of an unfair advantage I guess. The cinematics team had already told a lot of the story of Arthas through the Warcraft III cinematics. But when we knew that the expansion was gonna be about Arthas, it just seemed natural to just focus on him and his story rather than the way the other two pieces had been.

Arthas in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King cinematic.

Bailey: Yeah, leverage all that work that had been done already.

Jeff: Yeah.

Bailey: Of those, were there any particular shots that come to mind that were particularly difficult for you to puzzle out?

Jeff: Ah, that's a good question. So on the first one, the Warcraft III announcement, we didn't have any fire technology at the time. Sorry, we did, it was AfterBurn, but we never got it looking as great as we wanted to. And so I was tasked with making the Infernal look good. At the time, fire was really hard because you didn't have the fluid simulations that you have now. So, I spent a lot of time trying to make that Infernal look good. I still look at it today and it still makes me cringe a little bit because I wish it looked better. So, that was pretty difficult.

Bailey: What did you end up doing more specifically? You didn't have the fluid simulation, so what did you resort to?

Jeff: We used a plugin called AfterBurn. It basically created a volume around a particle and then in that volume you could break it up with procedural noise. It was often used for smoke back then, but then if you inverted the noise then it became more tendril-y and you could use it as fire. But it never looked photo-real by any means. It was pretty much the best thing you could do at the time with the tools we had. It just took forever to get it to look semi-good, just because it's not a fluid sim and it doesn't behave naturally or anything. And the thing is since it's based off a particle system, then you could iterate on the seed of the particle system and get a completely different look.

So, what we'd do is set up a fire solution that we thought looked decent and then put it on the Infernal. And then we'd change the seed, render it, change the seed, render it. And we just kept doing that over and over until one of the seeds finally looked good. I would set up several renders a night, at a super small thumbnail size, and just keep track of what seed each one was. Then in the morning I'd check all ten of them and say, "Oh, this one looks the best. Let's try that one." And then we'd render it large, and it didn't look anything like the thumbnail so we'd start all over again. It was really tedious. It took a long time. And we used AfterBurn for all the clouds in that piece as well, and it was kind of the same process. This is back when we would work until 4 in the morning. It was a challenge, but it was a lot of fun.

Bailey: Definitely. When you're doing something that's on the edge of your knowledge it's always pretty invigorating.

Jeff: Totally.

Bailey: Getting back to more of what's been going on these days, is there anything that you have been trying to learn more of? What's got you personally excited lately?

Jeff: Well, lately we've all been trying to push all the stories to connect more emotionally with the audience. So, we've been studying a lot of storytelling. Methods of storytelling and ways to evoke different emotions and stuff like that. It's been our target more recently. Just to really connect with the audience emotionally through the characters, the music, the edit, the camera movement—all that stuff. So, it's a little less technical but there are technical things that get you there.

Overwatch Trailer breakdown

Bailey: And I certainly noticed that with both of the Overwatch trailers and the shorts you guys have been making. They are definitely more character focused. How has that been different from the character work you guys were doing on the Diablo cinematics? Because there was some heavy emotional stuff going on in those as well.

Jeff: That's an excellent question. I don't know if I have an answer for you to be honest. Maybe just chalk it up to us hopefully getting better at what we do. I don't know. I think we always try and sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don't. I could say that I think Overwatch is an IP where there isn't a lot established currently, so we have the ability to help the game team. Obviously we worked very closely with the game team to help establish what the story for each character should be. I think that's a little bit more freeing when you don't have ten years of history that you have to stay within the boundaries of. I think that helps. But I also think that lately we've been really focusing on what it takes to move an audience emotionally. And what we can do to get the piece to be really poignant in some way or another.

Bailey: And the music certainly helps with that side of things.

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. I feel like the music is key for that, to be honest. We spend a lot of time with the composers. We have composers in-house and we also work with contract composers that we've worked with for several projects. And we just spend a lot of time iterating with them until we feel like we've got the right emotional beats at the right moments. I feel like the music almost tells you how you should feel. And so, without it, it doesn't play as well by any means.

Overwatch Trailer - cinematic development progression

Bailey: Oh yeah. When the visuals and music come together, some pretty great things can happen.

Jeff: For sure.

Bailey: How early does the music production come into play. During the storyboarding phase?

Jeff: It depends on the project. There are a couple different composers that we use outside of Blizzard. We've used them for years. Either we contract them early on and work with them, or we work with one of the composers internally. If the project needs something specific to put onto the storyboard and animatic that we can't find in a temp track, then we'll do that. Otherwise we'll find music that conveys the emotion that we want for the moment and we'll drop it in as a temp. Then once we get an animatic approved and everybody that's invested really likes it, then we'll get the composer on at that point and start talking about what key emotional beats we're trying to hit. We'll show them the temp, why we used that piece, and just have a discussion with them. And then they start working at that point. We iterate on it until we feel like it's something that we all really like.

Bailey: Who are the composers that you contract out?

Jeff: Well, we work with two composers. We work with Neal Acree. He's worked on pieces ever since Burning Crusade. I think he's worked on everything I've ever directed. I wouldn't say definitely, but I believe he has. And then a little bit more recently we've been working with a composer named Sam Cardon. He's done a lot of our Hearthstone stuff and he's done some of the stuff for Overwatch as well. They're both amazingly talented. It's really fun to work with them.

Left to right: Eimear Noone, Neal Acree, Ben Dai, Jeff Chamberlain, and Russell Brower.

Bailey: Yeah, I know of Neal Acree.

Jeff: Cool. Neil's awesome. I love working with him. Actually, both of those guys.

Bailey: Some good music, for sure. You mentioned the Hearthstone stuff. You did vfx supervising on those trailers as well, right?

Jeff: Yep.

Bailey: Do you like working on 2.5D sort of trailers?

Jeff: Yeah, I think they're really fun. It's a different pace. We do them a lot quicker than the other pieces. So, that's fun. It's a little more exciting. Obviously the ideas behind the Hearthstone pieces are a little bit more quirky, for lack of a better word. So, that's kinda fun too. It's just fun to feel the energy. The director gets into it and the composer and all the artists working on it. They all really love the zaniness of it. It's just contagious. It's a lot of fun working on those pieces.

The Grand Tournament trailer for Hearthstone.

Bailey: Just getting some of that variety in the work.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. It's nice to have a little bit of variation during the day.

Bailey: Absolutely. To satisfy that—or not—do you have passion projects that you have for yourself?

Jeff: Outside of Blizzard?

Bailey: Yeah.

Jeff: I'm mostly kept pretty busy, and I have a new son at home. I try to keep family as family and work as work. The stuff that I do outside of work is pretty related, though. I like to watch a lot of movies, and I like to read a lot of comics. Stuff like that. But I like to spend time with my family as well.

Bailey: Oh yeah, it's super important to have that life balance. In terms of the movies or comics, are there any that are inspiring to you or that have had an impact on you?

Jeff: More recently, or ever?

Bailey: It could be either.

Jeff: [laughs] Well, comics-wise there were things that really influenced me as a kid. Kent Williams did a piece called Blood. For me, that was one of the first comics I ever saw where the art was outside of the norm. I think that was pretty inspiring. And then following that, there is a comic called Elektra: Assassin which had an artist named Bill Sienkiewicz. And that one, for similar reasons, was pretty amazing to me. Later on there were some others like Dave McKean comics. All the covers for the Sandman were really inspiring, and the story of Sandman was great as well. Watchmen, obviously. Dark Knight, obviously. Year One. All that stuff was pretty influential to me. It was right around when I was in junior high, I believe. That's kind of when you're easily impressionable, and I would spend hours and hours just reading and re-reading them, really getting into them.

As far as movies go, it's hard to pick. I like almost all quality movies for all different reasons. I like to study why I feel a certain way during different scenes and try to figure out what it is that makes you feel that way. If there's stuff to learn from there that we can then apply to our cinematics. If I were to pick, then obviously Star Wars was a huge influence on my life. It was the first movie that I saw as a kid, I think. I'm pretty sure that's accurate because I think I was like two or three. My dad came home and grabbed my brother and I to take us out to see it (right after he saw it). All the ones I grew up with like Indiana Jones. ET was huge I think. Even going back to watch ET now, like the original version, I think it's very well set up. I don't think there's a single person that doesn't end up in tears at the end. There is a lot to learn from all that stuff.

Bailey: I agree. I like all films, if they're quality and there's something to learn from them.

Jeff: And there is a lot of great stuff today too. I just saw The Revenant. That was amazing. It was really good. The director of photography did a great job on that.

Bailey: Yeah, the visuals were stunning.

Jeff: Yep.

The Tracer facial rig.

Bailey: There's a great breakdown of The Incredibles on this blog called Flooby Nooby. Did you ever read that?

Jeff: No, I didn't. It sounds cool, though.

Bailey: It's basically a crazy long blog post that goes shot-by-shot and breaks down composition and all the visual storytelling elements that are at play. It's super good.

Jeff: I gotta check that out. I really love that movie, so that's great. Actually, he's one of my favorite directors too. I mean, I have a lot of favorite directors I guess, but he's one of them.

Bailey: Yeah, Brad Bird is definitely one of my top as well. Before we wrap it up, I wanted to give you a chance to share something that you feel is important; something that you think about a lot in your career and in your day-to-day experience.

Jeff: Like I said, we've been really focusing on how you are hopefully able to emotionally move the people who are watching your cinematic. I see a trend in the game industry, especially, to do cinematics that are just really, really cool. Where the characters are really cool and they're fighting in a really cool way and all that stuff. I think that's really awesome. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I'd love to see more and more pieces where there's an emotional connection with the audience as well. So, taking it one step further where there's backstory to the character, or at the end you actually feel like you went through an emotional journey watching it. I would say to any new artists out there, keep that in mind when you're working on stuff. I think that makes the piece that much more memorable in the long run. You know what I mean?

Bailey: Definitely. Some that come to mind would be the Naughty Dog titles like The Last of Us and Uncharted.

Jeff: Yeah, those are great.

Bailey: I think they've done well with that emotional stuff.

Jeff: Yeah.

Bailey: Well Jeff, thank you so much for talking today. It's been a great pleasure.

Jeff: Cool, yeah. No problem. It's been a pleasure.

The views and opinions expressed in this interview are solely those of the people in this interview and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers.

Behind-the-scenes images and clips in this interview are courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.

Jeff's Cinematic Credits