ABOUT ME
Senior Compositor. Lead Compositor. Editor . Filmmaker
I'm a Senior Compositor currently based in Wellington, New Zealand, working at Wētā FX, one of the world’s leading visual effects companies. My VFX experience is combined with photography and lighting fundamentals, and a strong background in filmmaking, photography, video editing and colour grading. With 8+ years of experience working on high-end feature films and series, including the past 2 years at Wētā FX, I continue to learn and improve every day, embracing new challenges and opportunities while working at the highest level of an industry built around a passion I have developed over many years.
MY STORY
My name is Pablo Ibáñez and I'm a Senior compositor.
My journey with my interest in post-production started when I was 10 years old, since then the world of Cinema and VFX became my hobby, dream and biggest passion.
Throughout my career, I have continued to learn and improve my skills, learning from great artists in the industry while constantly looking for new ways to approach and solve challenges. VFX compositing for me is the perfect mix between my creative and technical sides, allowing me to apply my precision and hard work to what has always been my greatest passion. I have a strong interest in perfecting details and crafting the best image possible, which drives me to explore different approaches and continuously push myself to improve.
Always focusing on bringing out the best in people and having a global vision of the work has allowed me to take on different roles throughout my career, including leadership responsibilities. I am always looking for new challenges to keep growing as a professional. I believe that challenges are opportunities for growth, and I strive to find the right solution and workflow to overcome them.
PABLØ IBAÑĘZ
MY DREAM
“Every story has a beginning...”
At age 10 I discovered the magic of an editing and effects software, since then I kept learning and made my first Chroma key at the age of 13 years old. From that moment, I knew I wanted to dedicate myself to it, and spent the following years without stop creating things for a single moment.
Since and as an involuntary way, my journey in the digital creation began and I started to tell stories, shoot videos, work for brands, and create all those effects that I always wanted to do. Every new thing I learned was a new challenge for me, which I loved. Chroma keying, integration, still photography, lighting, color grading, continuity, motion tracking, basically moving pixels was my passion since then and something that I got better and better at every year, without knowing that there was something called digital compositing.
Filmmaking
and post-production
While my passion for postproduction and effects creation was growing by leaps and bounds, my hobby for video creation and filmmaking was growing in the same way. Creating travel videos, working for brands, corporate videos as well as festival events and short films, anything that was shooting and editing later became a very strong hobby for me. That made my creative side and my photography grow in the same way that my post-production and design skills did.
Thenceforth I always had a camera in my hands, that made me understand concepts of light, lenses, color, perspectives in a much more practical and visual way. The mixture of the two, made my interest and knowledge of visual effects grow even more.
Here’s some screenshots of the first visual effects compositions from my teenage years (14 to 15)
At the age of 14 I started creating Youtube and filmmaking videos that develop my creation ideas and effects. That made me stay motivated every year since then, and combine my filmmaking passion with the dream of visual effects and post production. This combination gave me a much better understanding of photography, lighting, editing and I was able to create visual effects and ideas that in the future would help me create my shots, and help my workflow and ideas as a Digital Compositor.
Not only am I passionate about cameras and filmmaking, what I have always loved most was editing them. Being able to have control and design with the different softwares, the effects, motion graphics, the sequences, the color and contiunity between them was my favorite thing about creating content. To be able to redraw the shots, and give my creative vision, to put them together and get the feeling I wanted to give them, was without a doubt the greatest thing.
Since then I have not been able to stop creating, making content and learning all the information there is about it. Before I knew that my favorite thing to do was called compositing, I was already creating videos and my first image compositions, mixing what I recorded with digital techniques to create the effects I wanted to tell my stories.
Then I focused my career as a digital compositor for feature film VFX, an industry that keeps me enormously motivated every single day.
My Professional Work
THE DIGITAL COMPOSITING
VFX COMPOSITOR & LEAD COMPOSITOR
VFX
SHOWREEL
Visual Effects
❝Where the magic happens❞
With all of this, I was able to combine my two worlds becoming a Digital VFX compositor & Lead Compositor specializing in high-end visual effects, working through the years under many different setups, pipelines and teams. As a Digital Compostor I've got a solid photography and lighting fundamentals and a strong background in filmmaking, 3D, video editing, maths and colour grading.
Also, I'm always focusing on bringing out the best in people and finding new ways to help my team and my way to work, which has allowed me to be promoted as a 2D Lead Compositor.
2D LEADERSHIP
I don't want to forget to talk about my rool as a 2D Lead Compositor where I could develop my teams' skillsets, and create my own systems & workflows to produce better-quality VFX, more efficiently. Since then I have had the opportunity to managed teams of up to 25+ compositors on high profile shows and manage entire sequences of 100+ shots while maintaining continuity between them, where I have been able to developed templates, be involved in lookdev development, complete complex hero shots for the seqs, and much more.
