MySpace a place for friends

I'm Ben McEwan! I have a dedicated passion for visual effects in film and television. My life ambition is to get a job in the visual effect industry, and win an oscar/emmy award for my work.
I look up to companies such as:

• Industrial Light & Magic
• Digital Domain
• Stargate Digital

Those three companies have really inspired me with their outstanding level of work and achievement. ILM's work on Transformers left me in my seat with my jaw falling dropping through the floor from the beginning to the end. I even stayed and watched the credits. They have set the standard even higher than before! Back to my point, if you work in the industry or know somebody that does, I would really appreciate a job! Haha.
You can check out some of my short films and visual effects tests here on MySpace or on YouTube (where I upload most of my stuff).

• How I got into Visual Effects
I've always loved going to the movies. It is and always has been one of my favorite things to do in my spare time!
Personally though, I've been into certain aspects of film making since I was about 5 or 6 years old. I started out drawing up original ideas (concept art if you like) on MS Paint that I thought were cool. Then when I was about 8, I moved onto making simple animations using Microsoft PowerPoint. As I grew older, these animations became more smooth and more detailed, and overall the quality greatly increased! I never quite got into Macromedia Flash though. I preferred the simplicity of PowerPoint, even though the animations weren't as smooth and you had to mash the space bar really fast to watch what you had created. At 13 years old, I found the internet phenomenon "Ryan vs. Dorkman". At that moment in time i decided visual effects was the way to go! I didn't even know where to begin! So over the remainder of the year I watched Ryan Wieber's (Co-creator of Ryan vs. Dorkman) work, and found other visual effects artists work as well. No matter how good other visual effects artists' work was, Ryan was the one and only inspiration for me. At the age of 14, I finally got my hands on a copy of Adobe After Effects, which still seems to be the most popular software around for visual effects today. I started to use my mum's digital camera to film me doing random things around the house, then uploaded it to the computer to work my magic. Once again, Ryan's work had inspired me, so I copied a few of his ideas for some short visual effects tests. I started on Ryan's tutorial for the lightsaber. Lightsabers, and Star Wars effects in general, were the only things I made for quite a while. This was probably because I was a massive fan of the Star Wars saga at the time. At around 14 - 15 years old, I came across some internet boards, dedicated mainly to Star Wars fan films and visual effects, titled The Jedi Council's Fan Film Boards. I signed up and started reading through a few of the stickies in "The Everything Topic". I found some really useful links in there that sent me to more internet tutorials, things like sound effects downloads, etc. Whilst reading through one of the other users posts, I came across Ryan Wieber once again! I was amazed at the discovery I had made! These boards have one of the friendliest and best communities I've ever seen on the internet, and I would highly recommend them to any film maker seeking help. The more I played around with After Effects, the greater understanding I had of all the tools and functions. As I learned more (both from self-teaching and the odd internet tutorial) I drifted out into the more complex effects. At the beginning of 2007, being 16 years old, is when I started to really get passionate about visual effects! I'm still regularly posting at The Jedi Council's Fan Film Boards (which, by the way has spread out to Fan Films, film making in general and of course visual effects) today! Also, Ryan Wieber is still a massive inspiration to me today. He's currently 23 years old and has scored himself a job at Stargate Digital (which is well known for their excellent visual effects work on NBC's Heroes) and along with that, has won an Emmy award for his efforts! If you haven't seen his latest movie, , I'd suggest you go and check it out now. The high quality of choreography and visual effects are astonishing! It's a very entertaining lightsaber duel, and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end!

• Other Random Stuff Worth Commenting On
Whilst my passion is for visual effects, I still really enjoy all aspects of film making. I get a lot of satisfaction from writing a short film, whether it be serious or hilarious (normally only to me), and getting out there with my crappy little Canon MV830i MiniDV Camcorder and filming it. No matter how good or how bad the end product is, I always enjoy myself and have a few laughs.

I'm probably the biggest perfectionist in the world... I really hate showing people my work unless it's 120% to my standards (which normally means not a pixel is out of place). I've been encouraged by quite a lot of people on YouTube just to upload anything and everything I do, because no matter how crap I think it is, there will always be somebody out there that will think it's awesome. I have found that to be good advice and the thing is, it's true! On all of the comments of my video's, at least one person has said "OMG THAT'S AWESOME!" or something similar.

I'd also like to add is that I'm not open to industry only for work. I'm more than happy to accept jobs from anybody who needs visual effects! I've already completed several shots for various people, the films ranging from simple home movies all the way to films being submitted into international film festivals!
Whilst I've worked for free a couple of times before, I will generally ask people for a small donation these days. This is because my life is extremely busy with school work, my girlfriend and of course my own personal projects that I work on in the time I have to myself.

You can contact me at:
Aurellia
Hotmail

One last thing I'd like to mention is my website, Aurellia.net. This website holds informative video tutorials for Adobe After Effects, and soon Autodesk's 3D Studio Max! Although I am only the co-founder, I am the guy who designed and made the actual website, and will be making a few video tutorials myself in the near future!

I'll end that here before I think of anything else to add! Haha. Don't forget to go and watch some of my videos, and feel free to drop me an email at any time!
If anyone actually read through all that, I'm going to personally come to your house and take you out to lunch!
See you 'round!!