Alumnus works with global leader in VFX: Shreeharsha Rao’s Toronto Film School Story
Nearly 15 years after graduating from Toronto Film School Shreeharsha Rao has amassed a list of credits that young filmmakers would dream of.
“I dreamed of working with big movies and award-winning projects but wasn’t sure how long it would take,” Shreeharsha D Rao said. “My journey so far has had its ups and downs but, each time I look back, I feel proud of my decision to take up film studies at Toronto Film School and all the companies I have worked for.”
Among his many credits are working with Prana studios on Disney projects that included the award-winning animated movie Tinker Bell. For Dreamworks as the CG cinematographer on the Shrek series of movies. For Polygon Pictures Japan he worked as the CG cinematographer for the Emmy Award-winning film Transformer Prime. He is now a Central Production Manager at MPC Film, one of the global leaders in VFX, in Bengaluru Area, India. MPC is renowned for adding visual wonder to films. Some of MPC’s most famous projects include blockbuster movies like The Jungle Book, The Martian, the Harry Potter franchise, the X-Men movies and Life of Pi.
“I’m part of a team that manages the scheduling of the VFX for a movie,” Shreeharsha explained. “Once the shoot is completed all of the data captured from the movie is sent to the VFX studio for our VFX artists to begin working their magic.”
What does that mean day-to-day? Shreeharsha explained long hours dealing with MPC studios all over the world, setting the priorities for big-budget productions and allocating resources to specific projects, but he loves every moment of it.
“I currently handle a team of 400 people, but around 1400 people from around the world are working on the project I’m working on for MPC,” Shreeharsha explained. “The project management skill set that I use on my day to day work which includes, escalation, brains storming, team handling, motivating a huge team, project planning, project execution, shoot, scripts, budgeting. All of these essential elements Toronto Film School taught me and helps me with my day to day working life.”
Many of the films Shreeharsha works on is kept tight-lipped, so he isn’t able to talk about current projects.
“We don’t want to give away the magic of movie making before audiences get to see it first!” Shreeharsha said but added that he will continue to share the news of the fantastic films he works on with the Toronto Film School community.
