BEHIND THE LENS #321: Featuring Josh Tessier

It's an action-packed show this week as we go from the adventure and action of cruising the Amazon and our chat with JUNGLE CRUISE VFX Supervisor LUKE MILLAR, to fun-filled conversation with stuntman-turned-director JOSH TESSIER talking hard-core mafioso battles with Russians, Italians, good cops, bad cops, and an informant caught in the middle and bringing it all to life with his feature directorial debut OVERRUN. First up, take a listen to our prerecorded exclusive interview with LUKE MILLAR, Weta Digital's VFX Supervisor, talking about JUNGLE CRUISE! Although several VFX houses contributed to the film, it fell to WETA to handle some of the trickier and most important key effects of the film, among them, creating the beautiful jaguar Proxima as well as those dangerous whitewater rapids and hungry hungry piranhas! Luke and I dive in head-first talking about the technological wonders of Weta and the magic of Disney in bringing the JUNGLE CRUISE to life and some of the visual challenges faced and how Luke and his team mastered them. Then, it's a fun fun fun conversation with director JOSH TESSIER talking about his narrative feature directorial debut with OVERRUN. Non-stop action and twists and turns from beginning to end, and boasting some terrific casting and production values, not only does Josh bring his decades of experience as a stuntman and stunt coordinator to the table as he jumps into the director's chair, but he proves himself a more than capable storyteller. One of my favorite on-air interviews, Josh and I go "inside baseball" with some of our own filmmaking experiences and trivia, finding much less than six degrees of separation between us. Josh is no holds barred as he talks about casting (how about landing Bruce Dern AND "The Greatest American Hero" himself, William Katt?!), collaboration with his cinematographer, the editing process, focus on characters over action and finding a balance, score, and more. Plus, a real treat for all – – – how about Josh's personal take on working with Baby Yoda aka Grogu on "The Mandalorian"? That's right. Josh performed stunt work on several episodes of "The Mandalorian" and has some raves about the experience! http://eliasentertainmentnetwork.com