Interview with recom's CGI director Thorsten Jasper Weese
About Thorsten Jasper Weese
For over 20 years now, recom is one of the most famous artwork/post- and CGI-studios in Europe with offices in Stuttgart (head office), Berlin and London. Since 2006, recom is establishing in the field of CGI and has become one of the prime adresses in the area of photorealistic high-end-3D visualization. Recom works for various clients in the field of print and marketing.
We are talking to Thorsten Jasper Weese, CGI-director und from january 2010 on also managing partner of recom. Originally, he is a learnt typesetter, but in the meantime he gained a lot of experience following the development of digital imaging for over 15 years now. Today, he is responsible amongst others for clients like Mercedes Benz, Porsche and Sony Ericsson.
1. Mr. Weese, you are long experienced in the field of product photography. How did things change here from your point of view?
The main changes are for sure shorter timeframes for finishing and/or developing the final product. This means, first prototypes are always finalized even later, so there is less time to produce marketing imagery.
2. What do you expect from the future of the product photography?
Even less time ;-)
No, honestly, CGI has become a serious "competitor" and repeating studiosets can be reproduced perfectly at any time - as long as they are applied correctly.
3. Regarding the financial crisis, many photographers are confronted with difficult financial frameworks. How can CGI photography help here?
Graphical material (concerning especially secret car shootings) can be produced in noticeable smaller teams (lower costs for travelling and fees on location), you don't need to pay for expensive factors like transport and security, it is not necessary to block roads or to get location permits. Still you don't need to make a compromise regarding quality. Plus, it is impossible to say or evaluate how much mony can be saved by avoiding to produce as many expensive foto-cars.
4. How can VRED help to produce adequate graphical material for different media - in constant quality? How do you judge the use of virtual reality tools for producing graphical material in the future?
The mixture of different professional renderworkflows which we are using for years now, combined with VRED offers a maximized flexibility to fulfill any demand. You can find advantages and disadvantages in any workflow; ideally you take the best and leave the rest and use both in an elegant combination. The importance of the technical stuff is one thing, but the human, the team who uses it, is essential.
5. Where do you see similarities between the innovative software VRED and the innovative engineering work of your clients?
The borders of both are intermingling more and more and at the same time new intersection points from these different worlds occur. It is nice of course, to see how new standards come into being or already exist, to avoid annoying problems like interchanging data and problems using the data, so we can concentrate on the important things like creative development and visualization.
6. Thank you for the interview.
You are welcome.