Meet The Matrix effects wizard John Gaeta

This year’s Networkers conference final day keynote presentation was delivered by John Gaeta, a visual effects designer for The Matrix trilogy.

This intrepid blogger was lucky enough to bump into the cool, calm, and very suave John Gaeta on the runway of Coolangatta airport when walking to our flight back to Sydney. And thanks to Jetstar’s lack of seating allocation policy, I got the chance to spend the flight speaking with John about a range of things, including his year living in Australia working on the Matrix films.

It’s somewhat of a Networkers’ tradition that the final day’s keynote be given by someone outside of the IT industry, and John held it up ion fine style. What really amazed me about John’s keynote was how far CGI has really improved when it comes to human skin tones, apparently among the most difficult to computer-generate.

John also spoke about the convergence of multiple media, like, for example, the Web and movie making. John asked me how this came across and I said there were a lot of people stunned (including me) at the possibilities such a converged environment could bring to the world of entertainment and other industries.

As mentioned, John, originally from New York and now living in San Francisco, lived in Sydney for a year to work on The Matrix. He said he enjoyed living in Australia and what a beautiful country it is. Although he was here for only a few days on this trip he did have a chance to catch up with some friends.

I asked John what he thought of the use of open source software in the movie industry. Like many people he sees using open source as a way to reduce the investment required to produce content. Hey, if you don’t need to be distracted as much with software licensing restrictions or costs, you can dedicate more time and energy to making great movies.

When we touched down in Sydney I politely asked if I could take a photo for my blog and John was happy to oblige. He thought the runway would make a nice background and as it turned out he was right. The flashback from the glass wall behind John provided a nice little special effect at the top of the runway. What can I say John, the special effects just follow you around.

John, it was a pleasure to meet you and keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing more of your work, particularly when more convergence of movie-making technologies begins to surface. At this time John doesn’t have an official Web site or blog but hopefully he will soon so I’ll sure be keeping an eye out for it.

Rodney

[Note to movie media: please do not steal this photo of John (or the words for that matter) as it was taken in good faith that it would be used for this blog ONLY. Under no circumstances will I release the original image to a third-party without John’s permission.]