PROFILE
ZOE CRANLEY: LESSONS LEARNED, LEADERSHIP, AND A LOVE OF MATCH-MOVING IN VFX By IAN FAILES
TOP: Zoe Cranley, Head of CG at DNEG Vancouver. (Photo courtesy of DNEG) OPPOSITE TOP: Cranley holds a Macbeth chart during an on-set shoot. (Photo courtesy of DNEG) OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Cranley’s work-from-home setup in Vancouver. (Photo courtesy of Zoe Cranley)
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Zoe Cranley loves match-moving. As Head of CG at DNEG Vancouver, this is a VFX task she no longer gets to enjoy, but it is one that, when she started at DNEG in 2005 in London, immediately captivated her. “I really enjoyed it, to the point that later when I was a CG Supervisor, I would still say, ‘Oh, can I just match-move one shot? Just one? Please?’ It’s such great creative problem solving.” Problem solving is something Cranley currently does day-to-day in the Head of CG role, the pinnacle of a journey that has included stints at DNEG’s London and Singapore offices before the move to Vancouver, and experience on films such as John Carter, Godzilla (2014) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Before she embarked on a visual effects career in the U.K., Cranley was initially interested in going to art school. “When I applied they actually told me I was too academic to go to art school,” she says. “I was so mad! I actually argued with them about it.” After that early setback, Cranley thought she could instead combine her artistic interests with a love of computers and mathematics to earn a computer animation degree at Bournemouth University. This was in the early 2000s, a time when the London VFX industry was growing rapidly. “As soon as I finished my degree,” she remarks, “I sent off my DVDs – actual DVDs with a front cover and everything! – and I luckily got offered a job pretty much straight away at DNEG.” Cranley was hired as a render wrangler doing shift work to monitor render jobs on DNEG’s ‘Alfred’ render farm. At first, it seemed a far cry from her initial goal of working in feature animation. “Actually,” Cranley notes, “a lot of people from my degree course turned it down. I think they wanted something more creative. At the time, I was just grateful to get a job in the industry, to be honest. I’ve always been like that; you take any opportunity given to you and you build on it, no matter what.” The render wrangler job proved to be a “great first job,” Cranley says, since it required her to meet a lot of different people at the studio and understand the technology early on. She also got to wield some impressive rendering-related power. “I had to be able to walk up to people or email them and say I’ve turned their priority off because they didn’t have permissions or discuss that their render was causing errors. It was a great introduction.” Cranley was able to segue into a match-moving and lighting role after a few months at DNEG, working on films Flyboys and World Trade Center. But then she decided to quit. “I went to America and did three months in a summer camp in a leadership role, which was really fun, but also tough going. While running the Arts and Crafts program, I got a chance to lead very creative and artistic sessions, but at the same time a lot of managing as well. It was at that point I realized I just really enjoyed leading people. I got a taste for it quite early on from this and I learned some really valuable people skills.” After the summer camp ended, Cranley returned to DNEG in London as a lighting TD and later a 3D sequence lead. In those roles, she contributed to films such as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Sherlock Holmes and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Then along came John Carter. “That film is still my favorite show to date,” Cranley exclaims. “I was on it for almost two years. I worked mainly on the baby aliens, I had so many high hopes for toys and backpacks
and everything from them, but that never happened. I was so disappointed – it was two years of my life and I didn’t even get a backpack! However, the experience and lessons learned while working on that show were still worth it.” Cranley’s work on John Carter, however, led to another significant change – being asked to move to Singapore where the studio had set up a satellite office. “They were looking for people to go out there, to help advance the team, their pipeline, and start taking on more challenging work. I thought I might go for six months, but it ended up being for two-and-a-half years.” It was in Singapore that Cranley had to take on some of the most challenging assignments in VFX she had ever faced. She would oversee a significant number of shots for the film Total Recall, many with complex CG ‘Synths.’ It was some of the most complex work that the Singapore team had tackled at that time. “The team wasn’t really ready. I wasn’t ready. It was really tough work, but we had to get it done. It was probably one of the hardest challenges of my life until then, actually. I didn’t know the team. I didn’t know their strengths, their weaknesses or their skillsets. They also didn’t know me. We did some long hours, and sometimes I’d be ringing London at three in the morning asking for help, but the team delivered some impressive shots. I’m still really proud of the work we produced in those short months.” Cranley moved into a CG Supervisor role at DNEG after that, working on films including Alice Through the Looking Glass and Wonder Woman. Over the course of those projects, she moved back to London from Singapore, before transferring to the studio’s Vancouver office. Becoming a CG Supervisor opened up a whole new set of experiences and challenges for Cranley. “The difference now was, whereas I used to look to someone else up the chain to make a
decision or propose a solution, there wasn’t that person anymore. Suddenly that was me. “I also had to learn how to delegate to other people,” adds Cranley. “It wasn’t just about you being a good leader anymore. It was about also getting others to lead as well, make the best decisions on artist assignments or how artists were going to work.” Cranley realized that key questions would come directly her way on a myriad of issues. “The VFX supervisor might say, ‘Hey Zoe,
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