Christian Greet
"As a kid, I grew up without a TV and didn’t even have a radio until I was 12 years old. Before that, all I had was books and cartoon strips that I would create for my only entertainment. When I picked up a comic book for the first time in my life, it was so amazing. Having all of those colorful cool stories was about as close as I could get to a TV experience back then. The comics I was into were all the European ones that are almost graphic novels, like Tintin and Oblix and Asterix."
"While I was living in Switzerland, I was actually working as a builder. I could always draw and loved art, but I just couldn’t seem to make it across. I did try to get into arts school in Switzerland, but they didn’t like that I wanted to draw cartoon characters on my exam paper. Instead, they wanted to see if I could copy the letter ‘R’ in a certain font in perfect proportions; which of course I couldn’t! I am actually glad that I didn’t get into arts school in Switzerland, because they have such a traditional way of looking at design and that wouldn’t have been the right thing for me."
"I eventually came to live on the other side of the world, aged 23. I came to study graphic design in New Zealand, but soon discovered that I was a horrible designer! Back then I thought that my illustrations skills were always going to be my saviour, but they aren’t that wonderful either. Although the program I was studying was a graphic design course, it was based more on the Bauhaus model, which meant that you could do more of what you were good at. So I took the direction of going for animation and film more than the illustration or the design side of things."
"After awhile, I gave up on my thoughts of being an illustrator and realized that what I am good at, is story telling. I found that it was so much easier for me to work with 3D and film than it was for me to illustrate, simply because I could focus more on the narrative and the direction. It wasn’t until I came to live in New Zealand that I discovered 3D animation. I had no idea at the time if there was any future in this, all I knew was that I had real passion for animation and special effects."
"My first big break, came through a friend from college who was working as a previz artist. Back then people didn’t think that much about previz, whereas these days being a previz artist is highly sought after. The film industry was happy to take on students as previz artists then, which was lucky for me because my first project was ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. It was totally amazing to be given a break on something like that. It really was like doing an intense 9 month film school, but with a major Hollywood director!"
"All of the previz we were doing for ‘Narnia’ was done using full 3D scans of the entire environment, with everything and everybody to scale. Working at this level of detail meant that you knew exactly how many people you can fit on a ridge or how many people can run down into a valley for the various battle scenes."
"We then took it to the next level, and could tell them what camera-rig to use to get a particular shot. We could go into the previz-project and measure what height crane they would actually need on-set with incredible accuracy. One thing I learnt on this previz, was to imagine who and how the shot would be done in the real world, so you can introduce that level of realism to the CG world."
"After ‘Narnia’ finished, I was forced to go back to building once more. I had rent to pay, so to find myself back shovelling ditches instead of being in the creative industry was truly disheartening. At the same time it gave me plenty of motivation to get back in. After I finished working each day on the construction site, I would come home and work all night on a new showreel."
"Once I was happy with it, I then went and hit every company I knew. The only company I really admired was Fat Animation (now Cirkus), which as it turns out, were the only ones interested in my talent anyway. When I started, they had this really interesting MacDonald's TVC come through the door. They had two offices back then, with each pitching creative for the same job. For me, this was my opportunity to prove something, so I put my life into that pitch! I gave it everything I had. I drew back on my European background for inspiration, which luckily the client totally loved."
"So here I am, just starting out on a semi-intern basis and the client chooses my creative over everyone else. The owner, Marko, came to me wanting to know what I wanted to do on the production - so I said that I wanted to direct it! From that time on, I have been directing commercials ever since!"
"After that project, Marko then asked if I wanted to join him in a totally new company, he ended up calling Cirkus. I had this fascination at the time, wanting to do a movie about a circus. So I came up with this name and some old European type branding, and that’s pretty much how Cirkus came to be! For the last nine years we worked together on some incredibly creative commercials for all over the world."
"Later in 2007, I got to again work on the next ‘Narnia’ film, with ‘Prince Caspian’. This film was mainly shot in Prague, which was an incredibly beautiful city to be working in. I remember with this film, that they built a 1:1 set for the castle. It was so realistic that you thought that you were somewhere in Scotland looking at the real thing; it was that big and impressive."
"I have always been interested in film and hoped to push my career further in that direction, so I was really interested when ‘Underworld: Rise of the Lycan’ came my way. Charlie McAlphine was looking after all of the previz for this film and he was looking for me to assemble a special team to do all of the battle scenes. When you work on advertising projects all of the time, everything has to be colorful and happy. Well, here was a project that was gritty and dark and something that we could really indulge in. In the end, I established the team here, working out of the Cirkus office."
"We were given the storyboard and a script that details how the battle takes place and who wins; but it doesn’t detail exactly how that all happens. That’s where we come in. Our job was to work out the battle scenes and what actually takes place. There were already ideas fleshed out on the storyboards, but it was still up to us to choreograph all of his actions and really take it to the next level.
"Although I have enjoyed working on long-form projects, I love commercials because there are so many different solutions to the brief, that can take you off in any direction. The level of creativity you can bring to these projects is something I feel is one of my strengths. I am always looking for a new direction and a new angle for these things, so commercials really gives me an incredible level of creative flexibility. What I enjoy most about short-form I guess, is that every job can be different."