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Dazzling career

Phoenix Latino sees a high-tech future in film special effects

In fall 2004 the independent film What the Bleep Do We Know hit movie screens and quickly amassed a loyal army of Bleepers – viewers who connected with the controversial documentary’s mix of quantum physics, biology, consciousness and spirituality. Some Bleepers have seen the film 20 times during its long run at Harkins Valley Art Theater in Tempe.

Now the film’s producers have returned with a sequel, What the Bleep Do We Know – Down the Rabbit Hole. This time a Phoenix digital production studio and Latino students were directly involved in creating some of the eye-popping special effects and animation. The sequel had a special screening in Scottsdale.

Gabriel Naylor-Sanchez, 23, is among the growing numbers of Latinos who are taking movie special effects from being their passion to becoming their career. The son of a Mexican mother and an American father, he recently graduated from the Phoenix Art Institute. As a PAI student, he was recruited by David Blum, founder/owner of Catalyst FX studio, to work on Rabbit Hole.

Blum recently relocated his digital production studio from the Los Angeles area because L.A. is "crowded, noisy and dirty." He and his crew – many hired locally – have worked special effects for movies like The Matrix 3 and Charlie’s Angels. His studio is housed at the monOrchid art gallery at 214 E. Roosevelt St. While teaching at Phoenix Art Institute, he enlisted talented students such as Naylor-Sanchez for the Bleep sequel.

"I was doing some compositing work, then the job changed from animatics to doing some of the special effects work for other parts of the movie," he says. "We had instructions on how to make it all look."

Possessing a degree in visual motion graphics, Naylor-Sanchez has recognized that the movie industry increasingly needs specialists who may be working on images manufactured in computers, rather than footage from film cameras. He says he is busy with other film special
effects production and now commutes between Phoenix and L.A.

Blum, who regularly does the same commute to the mother lode of movie-making, says that more studio heads are looking to Phoenix to relocate. "I’ve found such a diverse and qualified talent base here in Phoenix," he says.

"Commuting, the Internet and technology has made outsourcing and working in different cities a whole lot easier. There isn’t a movie industry yet in Phoenix, but it’s coming."