Izzy Traub, VFX Supervisor

For the past 21 years I’ve been living my dream…

I remember the feeling that washed over me when I walked into our living room and saw the most amazing scene on TV. The movie on the TV was the Matrix.  Neo was being shot at and was bent over backwards, magically dodging the bullets. I thought that was so cool. That was the moment when I knew I wanted to make films for a living.

I was eight years old.

By the time I was fourteen, I had made 20 short films and on spring-break my parents sent me to G.I.F.T.S. (Gulf Island Film School) in Canada for a week-long intensive. That experience turned my world upside down because they introduced me to visual effects, which opened up a whole new world.

From then on my films took on a whole new dimension, with guns spewing flames, slow-motion bullets, missing limbs, explosions, that sort of thing.

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Living in Australia…

For my fifteenth birthday I got a copy of XSI Softimage, which is the same 3D software that was used to create Jurassic Park, the Mummy, Alien:Resurrection, District 9 and of course, my childhood favorite; the Matrix. I fell in love with that software and worked almost 60 hours a week with it over the next two years while living in Sydney Australia.

Then I got very lucky and met Fred Chu, a compositor and visual effects artist who, at the time, was working in Sydney for Animal Logic, the same company that made Happy Feet, 300, and the Legend of the Guardians. Fred took me under his wing and tutored me 1-on-1 which really helped me with some of the technical hurdles I had been facing and opened up my horizons on how to texture special effects shots and make them look really good when close up.

UCLA…

When I moved back to North America I enrolled in the Directors Program at UCLA, graduating with honors in 2012.

Riding on Hollywood’s coattails…

Since then I have directed over ninety commercials, made even more short films, and got a contract to do motion graphics for the Hollywood feature film, ‘Ender’s Game’, starring Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley.

Ever since I can remember I have wanted to make films, and here I am… living the dream.

I have written 8 feature film scripts. Two of my films have been awarded with Special Selection by international film festivals. I’ve been featured in the press and I was invited to give a lecture at the University of California, Merced.

I have a passion for motion graphics and love using my creativity and technical skills to to develop unique, high quality corporate videos.

VFX LA

I founded VFX LA in 2017. Since then I have had the great pleasure to work as a VFX Supervisor with many superb film makers and producers. My specialty education in AI has enabled us to stay on top of the latest technologies, such as NERF and Deep Fakes. It just keeps getting more exciting!

Looking forward to the next twenty years!