When Michael Fink joined the USC School of Cinematic Arts as an adjunct professor in spring 2011 teaching a course in the Animation Division called “The World of Visual Effects,” Fink - whose career as a Visual Effects Supervisor and Second Unit Director was entering its fourth decade — had come to realize that in addition to ensuring that his work be well shot and integral to the story being told, a major part of his job was making clear to the director, producers, actors and crew the reason, purpose, and technique of each shot and sequence – helping them see what was not yet produced. “I realized it was essentially teaching,” Fink recalled, discussing his SCA retirement after a distinguished 12-year run. He was the first professor to hold the prestigious George Méliès Endowed Chair in Visual Effects created by George Lucas, and served for six years as Chair of the Division of Film and Television Production, a division that enrolls nearly 800 students [approximately 950 including non-majors] who made well over 2,000 short films a year.

Fink arrived at SCA at a seminal time in the school’s evolution. The Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts had opened its doors 10 years earlier, a heartbeat in the life of a university that just turned 143. As the first all-digital production facility in an academic setting, the Center for Digital Arts threw down a marker for SCA’s continued innovation and leadership. With a blue-chip credit list that demonstrated a wide range of skills, Fink would play a pivotal role in the school’s transition to the digital era. He innovated and taught the first class in virtual production and, just prior to his retirement, helped expand the classes on that subject from one to six.

Fink helped achieve historical accuracy in Braveheart; brought fantasy worlds to life in 1992’s Batman Returns [Fink’s first Academy Award nomination]; and 2007’s The Golden Compass, which put both Oscar and BAFTA statuettes on his shelf. In the spirit of SCA’s tradition of faculty who are working professionals, Fink was CEO and Senior Visual Effects Supervisor for Prime Focus, an international visual effects company, on director Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life in 2010-2011, and Senior Visual Effects Supervisor for BUF Compagnie [Paris] on Ang Lee’s The Life of Pi in 2015. Fink supervised work on the “Tiger Vision” shot that expressed the connection between boy the young man, Pi, and the Tiger, Richard Parker. Though Fink began his cinematic career “wiring lightbulbs” on the motion picture The China Syndrome, he quickly moved on to films such as Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi landmark Blade Runner. His work soon touched just about every aspect of effects, from on-set practical work to animation and computer graphics.

When Fink was approached to work at SCA he was North American CEO and Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Prime Focus, now part of Double Negative. “At that point I was 67 years old, so I thought that maybe teaching would be ‘slowing down,’” he says with a chuckle. Even as an adjunct professor teaching one class per week, Fink poured all his intellectual capital into the job. “I prepared every available minute between November, when I was hired, and January, when I started at SCA.” I put in way too many hours for one class as an adjunct, where you’re basically asked as a working professional to teach out of the kindness of your heart, but I had a wonderful time.” By the end of that first semester Fink and SCA Dean Elizabeth Daley were discussing a full time position.

“At the time, SCA really didn’t have anyone like me on the faculty. The Animation & Digital Arts division had terrific people teaching Maya, Houdini, Nuke, and all the other tools and techniques for those disciplines. But they didn’t have anyone who had been a visual effects supervisor and second unit director, standing at the elbow of the director throughout the entire production process, deeply involved in preproduction, production, and post. I was there at the beginning to turn on the lights and at the end to turn them off.”

Fink’s experience as an administrator was a tremendous value-added. Fink had, over about three years, increased the revenue 10-fold. Working closely with Prime Focus founder Namit Malhotra, Chief Creative Officer and founder of Frantic Films VFX, Chris Bond, and Terry Clotiaux, Prime Focus North America Executive Producer, Fink managed operations in Vancouver, Winnipeg and New York — with additional duties in London and Mumbai. “Chris Bond and I did some great work there,” including on James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster, Avatar, Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, Chris Weitz’s Twilight: New Moon, and the aforementioned Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. During that time Fink gained experience in building entirely new VFX facilities and developing new software to improve quality and throughput, in addition to solving thorny problems as they arose. “There were things that might have made me an attractive hire at USC” Fink remembers, “but Dean Daley discovered that I also could be successful in the classroom.”

Teaching was something Fink had never really planned to do. Having grown up in the San Fernando Valley, he attended Cal State Northridge (then called San Fernando Valley State College), where he got a degree in accounting. “All of my friends were in art school, and as a kid all I did was draw, so I wanted to be there too.” Upon Graduation from Northridge, Fink was drafted into the Army and spent three years in the military, after which he landed a job as a Portfolio Manager in San Francisco, managing asset accounts for wealthy individuals, pensions, foundations, and trusts. Deciding that is not how he wanted to spend his life, he quit and used the GI Bill to enroll first at the San Francisco Art Institute, and then at California Institute of the Arts where he received his MFA. One of his roommates at Cal Arts was Stuart Ziff, who was hired to work on 1977’s Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. Fink, who was then on the Faculty and Staff at Cal Arts, found himself choosing between eating, doing art, paying rent or fueling his car. Stuart, meanwhile, was alternating between working on films and working on his art – using his film work to finance his art. Fink liked that idea and started to plan a similar transition from full time work at Cal Arts to work on motion pictures alternating with work in his studio.

Ziff hired Fink in late 1977 to work with him on The China Syndrome after promising the producers that he, Fink, and Richard Hollander, another Cal Arts veteran [via a Masters in Computer Science from UC Berkeley] “could build a computer that would simulate the function of a real nuclear reactor control room. “This was 1977-78, so we had to build the computer. You had to design the computer, buy all the components, and write code to operate it. Then, you had to create all the interfaces between the set and the computer. Ziff, along with Hollander and Fink, managed to pull it off in six weeks. “It wasn’t 20 or 30 special effects guys moving sliders and flipping switches, it was a button push by either Richard or myself to operate the set,” laughs Fink, who as a student had done some coding “back in the days of punch cards, so I unfamiliar with computers.” Of his first experience on a set, he says “I fell in love with making films the first half hour of that first day. The experience of doing work in an environment of intense creative collaboration with so many others was compelling. The Production Designer, while being supremely talented and experienced, didn’t feel confident in completing the details of the control room set, especially the build. He said, ‘But you do, right?’ And I said, ‘Sure’!”

Those early days taught him something he tried to impart to his own students: “You might choose film school, intending to become a director, a producer or screenwriter, but if you find yourself stumbling, that’s not a problem. There are other ways you can make films that play to your strengths. Maybe you love your editing classes. Then it's obvious what you should do.”

Now that Fink is retiring from the career he loves, he plans to stay busy with wife Melissa Bachrach, a ceramic artist, and son Alex, a luthier, and his own art. “We’re a family of makers,” he says with pride. When Fink gave notice that the 2022-2023 academic year would be his last year on the SCA faculty, he was asked by Dean Daley to help develop the Virtual Production Program – curriculum and necessary facilities, and budgets. “With Everett Lewis’ [Head of the Directing Track in the Production Division] collaboration, we worked on all the syllabi for the new classes and bought new equipment and software,” much of it destined for the state-of-the-art Sony LED Stage, which opened in 2023. “I also mentored some students during that last year who came to me for help on their projects,” Fink says, adding that he plans to continue making himself available for occasional consultations and guest talks.

Taking stock of his tenure at SCA, he says “it’s been challenging and thrilling. The students are terrific. They are always a step ahead of the faculty. Technology has been changing so fast the past 10 years, especially these last two years, and the students are like sponges, absorbing it all, hungry to learn.” One of those changes is that today, digital work is ubiquitous, and “even small student films need visual effects” or some sort of previsualization. He has kind words for the faculty, too. “They’re amazing. We could make a feature film using just the faculty and staff.”

As for parting advice to students, Fink says “learning to listen” tops his list. “The undergraduates come in, and what they have to show are the films they wrote, directed, edited and produced; casting family and friends. They’ve never actually had to collaborate or learn the protocol of working on a stage. I tell them, ‘Listen to the people you're working with and be open to what they say.’ The two major elements in film production are story and collaboration. If you understand how to collaborate and how to tell a cinematic story, you’ll have a career.”