‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘Interstellar’ SFX Artist Fon Davis’s 5 Tips for Hiring SFX
Posted on: Jan 30, 2025
Photo Credit: Fon DavisFon Davis is a visual storyteller, founder of Fonco Studios, instructor with the Stan Winston School and is on the board of directors of the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation. Fon appears on BattleBots, The Movies that Made Us, Prop Culture, Cake Masters and Super-Fan Builds as a celebrity guest. In his three-decade career, Fon has worked on over 45 feature films, including The Nightmare Before Christmas and the Star Wars series.
More recently, Fon has directed two award-winning shorts and worked on Godzilla, The Mandalorian, Fly Me to the Moon and the Academy-Award winning Interstellar. Fon has a reputation for being a kind-hearted team builder, hardworking planner and excellent troubleshooter who cares deeply about building and nurturing communities.
I had the pleasure of touring Fonco Studios recently, and spoke with Fon about what producers should know when hiring an effects supervisor like him, or a creative services team like his company.
Have a Clear Vision
Having a clear vision is the first step to filmmaking with effects. Breaking down the script into the effects and assets you need will help create a realistic budget, guide you to the right effects and team, and will allow everyone to begin the creation process during pre-production.
Fon warned that producers shouldn’t put too many boundaries on creativity: “Ideally your pre-production is where you should be free to express ideas and explore, and that’s when you push the money around and figure out what budgets you want to apply to what.”
By the end of pre-production, and before going into production, all the details related to the budget and effects and assets should be ironed out and in place. Your creative work and effects should be ready to go.
Bring in the Effects Supervisor Early
Bringing in the effects supervisor as early as possible allows them to form a team and work with the producer and director from the beginning. It will help collaboration between departments be more accurate, and sets you up for more success in production and post-production. Fon said the number-one thing that destroys movies is post-production, even after being funded and having distribution lined up—usually because post-production wasn’t planned properly during pre-production.
With visual effects, it’s even more important because you have to have all your environments before you even start shooting. So now you’re shifting everything from post-production to pre-production in terms of visual effects.
Fon said one of the biggest mistakes producers make with visual effects is hiring a visual effects supervisor too late in the game—some even waiting until post, and unaware they had already shot everything incorrectly.
“The projects that spin out of control the most are the ones that don’t have post planned in advance. ‘Fix it in post’ is a common joke, but very often you’ll have a producer that is on board for pre-production and then production, and then they switch out that producer for a post-production producer.”
He went on to say that this particular workflow is flawed because the producer that’s on for the beginning of the movie doesn’t have a stake in post-production. The post producer gets saddled with a lot of problems where the first producer was a bit sloppy, thinking post would fix it and any problems would be someone else’s fault. It’s important to have someone who is accountable and following through from pre-production all the way through post.
Different Types of Effects
Fonco Studios has a unique business model—they do creature effects, robotics, miniatures, plus many areas such as concept design with 35 years of experience. That’s not always the case, so it’s important to know effects can get very niche and you want to make sure you select the right people for those niche effects. It includes practical, CGI, hybrid, horror, creature, robotics, miniatures, pyrotechnics and pyrotechnics for miniatures. The list goes on and on.
Bringing in an effects supervisor early is a good call, but it’s also good to have a producer or coordinator with some experience, understanding or interest in the different departments of special effects. It’s also important to understand that an effects supervisor is not the concept artist. The effects supervisor works from a previously created vision. Concept design is a different skill and different line item in the budget. Still, you don’t want to get so niche selective that you are worrying about styles or time periods.
“You wouldn’t rule out a miniatures creative team or effects supervisor who doesn’t have previous experience recreating ancient Rome. Their job includes heavy research and they can use their skills/artistic abilities to get the job done. It’s likely they’d never done something in their portfolio until that specific job. The most important thing is they have the skills for the type of effect you need, as their portfolio shows they are capable of parlaying their skills across a diverse selection of projects. You can ask your effects supervisor about their comfort level in the types of effects you need,” Fon says.
Green Flags and Red Flags
When interviewing effects supervisors, Fon said what you need to look for is attention to detail. As a producer, your job is to oversee the production, and not always to understand every detail that goes into things.
Candidates should also be able to help you understand what team members you’ll need to pull the effects off. You also want them to be excited about your project, curious and invested. They should be asking questions and ready to present creative solutions. They should also be comfortable discussing and bringing up potential problems so solutions can be found.
Fon considers trash talk from any company or individual you’re interviewing to be a big red flag: “It means they’re putting the focus on other people and negativity instead of using the opportunity to show what they can do and ask creative questions or show passion for your project. Similar to being on-set, the more someone complains about other departments or candidates, the more you should watch them.”
Company Effects vs Outsourced Effects
When delving into effects, many producers are shocked to find that hiring a company may be quite a bit more expensive than hiring individuals. However, the company is going to pay their artists, cover their own overhead, provide their own tools, and handle their own payroll and insurance. There has been some changes to using 1099 labor, so hiring a company can reduce the production’s employees and payroll.
According to Fon, “It’s important to think about that because if you hire a fabricator that works from home, then that opens you and the production up to so much liability and legal trouble because they may not have insurance or proper facilities. If something goes wrong, your insurance company could also use that as an out for paying on a claim.”
Jessica Mathis (AKA Divinity Rose) is an award winning screenwriter/performer/producer from Louisville, Kentucky. She is the CEO of She Dreams Content Development and Production, which focuses on female forward projects in comedy, docustyle and genre entertainment.
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