The following is a breakdown of Michael Harbour's exact responsibilities and work done on each of the shots presented on his vfx demo reel (​www.michael-harbour.com)​ . They are listed in the order that they appear on the reel.

Iron Man 3 – Digital Domain - (lead compositor)

Shot One - the Mark 42 crashes into the snow (All shots comped in nuke). I was the lead compositor for the sequences comp supervised by Michael Melchiorre, and under the direction of VFX Supervisor, Erik Nash. Responsibilities included artist assistance and supervision, building show-specific tools in Nuke and the show pipeline in general, and compositing.

I composited this shot, which was one of the last in the show and done under a short schedule when many of the artists had already left the show. As such, I worked closely with our environments and lighting team to do quite a bit of debugging to get this shot technically correct before getting the shot aesthetically up to the level of others in the sequence.

Mad Max (E3 Game Preview Trailer) – Digital Domain Commercials - (compositor)

All Shots (All shots comped in nuke). Working on a short schedule with VFX Supervisor, Aladino Debert... (WIP), and CG Supervisor David Liu, I and (ultimately) two other compositors completed 22 all CG shots in three weeks. responsibilities included look development, some limited Nuke tool development, particle work in Nuke and compositing.

Argo – CIS / Method Studios - (lead compositor)

Shot One - the burning flag (All shots comped in nuke). I was the lead compositor under Alex Gitler (and filled in as Comp Sup for a short period of time during pre-production while he was out of the country, and under the direction of VFX Supervisor, Tom Smith. Responsibilities included artist assistance and supervision, building show-specific tools in Nuke and the show pipeline in general, and compositing. I did some limited work with Python and SVN in aggregating some custom tools from other shows into this one.

This was a complicated shot in that the show was without a matte painter or environments team so I had to pick up pick up these duties using a camera generated from Yannix, and working in Nuke exclusively to remove the existing flag (it burned too quickly), rebuild the building, street and people beneath it and extend the crowd down the length of the street. I worked extensively with Dynamics artist Sergei Kofareff on getting the flag animation and fire look development. The fg trees and embassy grounds were all cg.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One - under table (All shots comped in nuke). This is one of four shots on this sequence that I was the compositor for. The shot was done in nuke. Above and beyond the normal duties of comping (overall balance, etc.) I rebuilt and tracked in the lower neck shoulder areas, added additional cheated spec in the eyes and worked closely with Comp Sup Paul Lambert to drive the overall look of the head (including making adjustments to the individual lighting layers as opposed to the overall image) and peripherals to match the direction from both the director and VFX Supervisor. *T​ his shot was Awarded "Best Single Shot in a feature-length motion picture for 2008" by the Visual Effects Society.

Shot Two - outside One of two shots I comped in this sequence, this was the same as above with two exceptions: One, because it was an exterior Johnathan Litt (the 3D lighting and shading supervisor) tried a new technique with the subsurface element that I helped (along with the lighter assigned, Nic Leach) a comp treatment to derive the correct look (again, as determined by the VFX Supervisor); and Two, the shirt collars and shadows below the head had to be rebuilt extensively in comp to work with the head animation.

Shot Three- sitting at table One of 6 shots I comped in this sequence, this shot was the same as the others with two additional exceptions: One, because this shot was being worked on earlier in production than the others I was more involved (under the direction of my Comp Supervisor Paul Lambert and VFX Supervisor Eric Barba) in driving the overall look of the head in comp (as compared to "out of the box") some techniques which were folded into the comp template or emulated in 3D; and, Two, I helped realize Paul Lambert's technique for rendering and texturing the knit cap using elements in the plate in Nuke 3D (not as easy as it looks) as opposed to rendering entirely from scratch in 3D.

2012 – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One, Two and Three (All shots comped in nuke). Shot one is all CG elements combined with many practical enhancements from the element library. Shot two is a blue screen with all CG exterior. Shot Three: All of the crumbling objects, islands, freeways, planes etc. were generated in 3D and called for your typical comp work. However, all of the explosions, atmospherics and nearly all of the dust as well as the interactive lighting on the surrounding geometry are all done with 2D practical elements mapped onto cards and inserted into the scene in Nuke 3D. I was given a lot of creative leeway by the two VFX Sups, Mohen Leo and DFX Sup Darren Poe, as to the initial layout and organization and then followed their direction as to how to edit and conform to the overall "look" for the sequence. This was one of several shots that I did in this sequence.

The Wolfman – Rhythm & Hues - (compositor)

Shot One, Two and Three (All shots comped in Icy, R&H's proprietary compositing package).). Shot one: Enhancement to the practical tearing of the suit using a blood element from the practical library. Shot two: Matching in CG Feet and reflections (harder than it sounds with all that firelight). Shot three: I picked this shot up from the start of the show, working closely with lighter Dan Gilbert and under the direction of sequence supervisor, Pauline Duvall. I did look development as to the impact fire, look of the blood and overall face integration and balance. I booked another job and The Wolfman extended another week or two beyond this, so I believe the final shot might have been picked up by lead compositor Heather Hoyland to make a change here and there.

Percy Jackson – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One through Four (All shots comped in Nuke). I came back to Digital Domain for the tail end of Percy Jackson under compositing supervisors Mike Melchiorre and Michael Maloney. Shot’s one and two: Basic compositing duties, matching the dragon, fire and environment to what was already look-deved in the sequence. Shots Three and Four: Joe Farrell, then a compositor, accepted a promotion at Scanline LA and I was handed these two shots. The basic blocking and ideas were already done and I worked with the FX department to hash out what was needed from dynamics, worked out some reflection and optics tricks in Nuke and added practical elements to enhance the final water effect. The surrounding city was actually a par and tile collection of stills setup by our Environments department and passed on to comp in Nuke.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green – CIS / Method Studios - (compositing supervisor)

All Shots (All shots comped in nuke). The show dealt with extensive redressing of the neutral plate environment to create the formalistic, colorful world of seasonal trees through set extension, careful color correction, cg tree integration, 2.5D environments using static matte paintings manipulated in Nuke to give realistic movement.

I worked closely with VFX Supervisor Greg Oehler and Color Scientist Robert Minsk in setting up the color pipeline for this show as it was, initially, the first that Disney intended to test the ACES pipeline with. Ultimately it was decided that the format was not practically ready for production, but the color pipe was no less tricky in that this was one of the first shows in which Technicolor decided to try out their CDL system with a visual effects house. Robert Minsk and I did extensive work in getting these to work seamlessly within CIS’s native DCI-P3 color pipe (workstations to screening room) and ultimately carried over with us to Method Studios during the merger. The merger itself created unique problems for the show as I worked to maintain the shows integrity as artists and hardware were moved across-town at the end of pre-production for the merger.

Once the show began, duties included management of artists and leads, working closely with CG Supervisor Michael Sean Foley to make sure 2D and 3D were working smoothly together, working wtih production on shot scheduling and staffing needs, working with Greg Oehler and Senior Matte Painter Rasha Shalaby in look development, building show-specific tools in Nuke and the show pipeline in general, and limited Python (with assistance from the TDs) in migrating some tools from other Method shows that would prove useful for our purposes.

New Year’s Eve – CIS / Method - (compositor)

Shot One - Times Square (Comped in nuke). This is actually only part of a much larger shot (I believe the final frame count was close to 1600 frames) which fell into my lap during the last two weeks of the show. I was given a few free compositors and divided the shot into separate tasks, managing all artist, and with myself handing the Nuke environment clean up of the ground around and under the horse, the replacement of the horse and generation of additional ground confetti. In addition I managed and assisted with some of the various signage replacement, reflection rebuilds where necessary and crowd removal and cleanup. I was assisted in these tasks by fellow compositors Kama Moiha and Matt Wilson.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – Digital Domain - (lead compositor)

All shots - Eiffel Sequence (All shots comped in nuke). I was one of two lead compositors (Kym Olsen was the other) on the Eiffel Sequence (only three shots represented here). Kym focused on the look dev of the nanomites (the green goo that eats away at the tower) while I worked extensively with the environments department to help integrate the nuke 3D environments and sometimes to rebuild the camera move in 2D to pass back to integration to re-output as a published 3d camera for all departments.

Shot One- Eiffel snaps Compositor on this shot. This was one of our typical "pan and tile" shots as well where the bg was worked out between comp and the environments team as well as the usual compositing duties.

Shot Two- Eiffel coming down This one was the same as the above two with a more involved 2D to 3D camera setup and anid the added experience of working with Whiskey Tree (a 3rd party 3D Matte Painting company) which brought their pipeline in house for the 'ruined cars and bridge" in this shot and one other. This just required a little more thought as to color space, etc. as they were used to quite a different setup than what DD was using internally and this was their first time integrating with nuke.

Starship Troopers – Sony Pictures Imageworks - (compositor)

Shot One - The Space Battle (Composited in Alias/Wavefront's "Composer"). This is actually the second half of a larger shot. The first half of the shot was composited by Jason Dadswell (with a small portion in the middle composited by Serge Sretschinsky). because of the scale of the whole shot and the number of elements this shot was broken up, my responsibilities were the compositing of all of the 3D elements and their treatment with a lot of work going into tracking and comping in practical fire elements and their interactive glows in and onto the model ships.

Stealth – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One - tailing E.D.I. (All shots comped in nuke). Comped the plane (E.D.I.) based on the look development of the plane as established by my Comp Sup, Rob Nederhorst. Built in atmospherics: Flaring; condensation on lens).

Shot Two - jet cockpit (All shots comped in nuke). Adjusted windshield and helmet visor (as with most 3D elements at DD, these are exr files that are generally passed through as layers to nuke where we run them through template scripts that we can modify in nuke to get the final result). BG is a single tile. Built FG atmosphere and optics (flaring, etc.).

Shot Three - plane emerges from hanger Compositor. The shot as seen here is not actually the final from the film. This was as far as I had taken the shot prior to taking a leave of absence for my wedding and honeymoon. The final shot is very similar with additional work being done to the man in the plane cockpit (and elsewhere I am sure) and was done by Mark Rienzo. This was a fun one to build in that the plane followed the usual comp routing mentioned above but the swirling smoke, guy rolling over, etc. were built from many 3D and practical elements not necessarily intended for this purpose but the final soup giving a nice overall effect. Other than this it was your usual balance and integration type of shot.

Red Dawn – CIS - (compositing supervisor)

All Shots (Most shots comped in Shake while some were done in Nuke as I assisted the artists in the transition). I worked closely with VFX Supervisors Tom Smith and Geoffrey Hancock and CG Supervisors Joe Henke and Michael Sean Foley to build out the pipeline for this show. CIS had not used Nuke up until this point and likewise had not implemented a full DCI-P3 color pipeline utilizing the Dreamcolors recently purchased by the studio.

In addition to the usual comp sup duties of making sure 2D and 3D were working smoothly together, working with production on shot scheduling and staffing needs, working with software in developing pipeline tools necessary for the show, working with Geoffrey and the Rob Stromberg (out of house) on look development, building show-specific tools in Nuke and Shake and assisting with the integration of some of the Massive assets being rendered at CIS Vancouver, I spent a good deal of time getting the studio’s already senior compositing staff up-to-speed with Nuke and helping them to make the transition from Shake to this new package.

Speed Racer – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One - retro scoreboard (All shots comped in nuke). These are actually two separate shots that I dissolved together for the reel. These were a lot of fun as the only elements given to me was a single frame over-sized chassis for the scoreboard, a couple of plain logos and some reference artwork. Everything else in this was built in Nuke using basic textures and comp treatments or painted by myself in gimp (with the exception of the bg and sky which were part of a large, static, generic Pan and Tile put together for these sequences). Kim Libreri, the VFX Supervisor on the show worked with me on the look development and was very happy with the final result (and that there wasn’t nary a cg element in it).

Shot Two - Mach4 alone on the track (All shots comped in nuke). The establishing shot for this sequence, I comped the shot as well as building the mid and distant stadium and sky in nuke 3D from single frame renders or artwork which was particularly tricky because of the wide pan (background elements were not an exact fit and took extensive warping and cover-up to conceal the gag).

X2 : X-Men United – Cinesite Hollywood - (compositor)

Shot One (All shots comped in shake) Compositor. Worked on several of Cyclops optical-blast shots throughout the show doing a little bit of look-development in the process along with fellow compositor Chris Lance under the supervision of our vfx supervisor, Steven Rosenbaum.

Duck Dodgers in the 3rd Dimension – Dreamquest Images - (modeler, animator, lighter)

Shot One - spaceship landing A very early ​stereoscopic ride-film project (​ 1996) which I modeled, textured, animated and lit this shot in Alias PowerAnimator and composited it in Composer. I was provided artwork by the production and then modeled, textured, lit and composited to match. A custom tune shader had been written for Alias by a TD at Warner Digital which we used for the project to get the cel effect.

Garfield – Rhythm & Hues - (compositor)

Shot One - Garfield flies into window (Composited in Icy). CC and integration of cat as well as having to rebuild portions of the wall and window to help with the integration. One of many such shots that I did on this show under the supervision of Mary Lynn Muchado, sequence supervisor.

My Super-Ex Girlfriend – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot Three - My Super-Ex Girlfriend - Digital Domain Compositor working in Nuke. Typical DD composite with the exception of working with the pan and tile (nuke 3D environment - originally built by sequence lead, Jason Selfe) and getting it and the CG van to match-up with the existing van and store front (quite a bit of work as the scene camera and practical shot never lined up properly).

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One - ship over the edge (Composited in Nuke) Much in the model of DD's typical workflow this was the overall integration of all 3D elements, sometimes working with the individual layers to get the desired effect (the spec on the underside of the ship for example) as well as the incorporation of various 2D practical elements (mist, water, etc.) to help fill-out the shot.

The Golden Compass – Rhythm & Hues - (compositor)

Shot One - the attack (All shots comped in ICY). A unique sequence in that the work was split between houses on individual shot basis. So, for example, anything with one of the armored bears would be Framestore in London, any environment and people comped into it would be Cinesite London, any animals other than armored bears and any spark/disintegration would be Rhythm & Hues and, sometimes, Digital Domain would do (if I remember correctly) arrows or gunshots. I was at R&H for this show and handled all the CC, and integration of the animals in this shot.

Shot Two - Tartar falls to the ground Same as above.

Flags of our Fathers – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One - Armada (All shots comped in nuke). I was the main compositor on this shot but received help from another, Chia-chi Hu, in doing overall CC on many of the ships as I was assigned this shot in the final weeks of the show and it became a real bear just to get everything into the script and rendered for final before the end of the show. All elements outside of the cabin window are synthetic. Although the look of the exterior armada had already been realized at this point, this shot had not been touched since the beginning of the show and the lighter only worked on it for a week before having to exit. This meant that a majority of my work (beyond the usual integration, keying, optics, nuke 3D business) was trying to brute force elements that weren't rendered properly (and from the wrong direction in fact) to match the other establishing shots.

Shot Two - tanks landing ashore Compositor. Integrating the CG tanks and water to match the practical ones in the plate.

Shot Three - the aftermath Compositor. Essentially a matte painting incorporating the same techniques from above plus adding in the nuke 3D environment of the ocean,landscape and Mount Suribachi as well as cg soldiers, smoke, etc.

The Day After Tomorrow – Digital Domain - (compositor)

Shot One/Two- downtown L.A. destroyed/on the t.v. (All shots comped in Nuke) The first portion of this shot is not actually in the movie but an element I had to build entirely within nuke to display in the t.v. at the end of the shot (which was the shot actually in the film). This was my first experience with 3D in nuke (but I had been a 3D digital artists previously so the concept wasn't alien by any means). A fun shot. Done in the final weeks of the show, my composite lead David Lauer gave myself and matte painter free reign to build this one. We worked with Integration to get our camera and simplified buildings and ground plane and built a 3D matte painting in nuke. This shot was then taken by me and color corrected and tweaked to look as if it were being broadcast on the old CRT television. Aside from the logo (a still) all television elements were built and animated in 2D. Done in a relatively short amount of time (a little more than a week) I really like this one because it was made from scratch and worked out so well (relatively speaking).

Shot Two - New York library is flooded (All shots comped in nuke). Compositor. This shot was not actually the one from the film but the work done to it was minimal (basically the VFX sup took at the water shots to another house for color correction and additional fg rain). This is an entirely cg environment which I balanced and then augmented with some practical elements. I also did a bit of work on this using nuke's optiflow (an in-house time modification tool that did per pixel analysis).